123 days ago
The liberal media is wetting itself with excitement that a female person of colour is going to be the Democratic nominee for President. Okay, so polls only last week showed that Kamala Harris would do even worse than Joe Biden against Donald Trump in battleground states and her national popularity ratings are lower than even the senile old sniffer of the hair of young girls. The Libs reckon that Kamala will beat Trump. I hope they bet the ranch on it. I quite like the idea of Jon Sopel having to live in a cardboard box. Anyhow if you think Kamala is the answer have a watch of this video from the great Mark Steyn covering a Kamala speech a year ago. Every US voter needs to watch it before November.
1093 days ago
Simply right click the photo below of two innocent men smeared by Joe Biden, the Democratic Party of America and the mainstream media but who were none the less found not guilty as charged. Then frame it and pop it in the post with a covering card featuring Jesus wishing the sort of folk who celebrate a God free “happy holiday”, a very merry Christmas. Trust me they will love it. I am already planing it for both of my sisters, the Mrs and for thirsty daughter Olaf.
1759 days ago
Surely everyone watching any coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day must have thought just for a second how truly evil the Nazis were? Okay not everyone. Mark Steyn once joked that if the Diary of Anne Frank was performed in modern day Holland, as the SS entered the house, half the audience would start shouting “she’s in the attic.” But leaving aside the chattering classes as they drone on offensively comparing life in Gaza to death in Belsen as factual and moral equivalents, most of us realise that the Nazis were utterly evil, deliberately slaughtering men, women and children.
2192 days ago
Steyn is a genius and he sums up the difference between the UK's worst ever Prime Minister and the worst ever leader of the opposition superbly over at www.SteynOnline.com . The great man writes:
2409 days ago
Anglophile conservative columnist Mark Steyn is always very funny but this video on the quite pathetic combo of Mayor Khan and Cressida Dick's Met and its response to knife crime is a classic. As Steyn says, the Met wasn't always a complete laughing stock. It is now. Enjoy.
2429 days ago
Across the West the story is the same. Offended snowflakes object - or in some cases far worse - and craven academics cancel events or no platform speakers. This is a matter I am now all too familiar with after giving this most excellent talk at Bath Spa University. It is surely only a matter of time before some liberal arts faculty somewhere organises a book burning. Today's demonstration of the Orwellian nature of the liberal arts campus of today comes from McMaster University in Hamilton Canada.
2660 days ago
Mark Steyn wrote a funny piece a few years ago about why it would soon be hard to perform a play about Anne Frank in her native Holland. Steyn reasoned that as the German troops marched on stage looking for the little Jewish girl who was hiding in the attic, the audience would start shouting out "she's hiding in the attic, she's up there."
2703 days ago
All journalists have opinions. None of us can be truly impartial as we have our own views and prejudices. If you are a columnist, that is to say you write opinion that is why you do what you do. The views of Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot and Owen Jones are well known. They are Big State money tree worshipping lefties and argue that line. On the other side Mark Steyn, Melanie Phillips or Peter Hitchens take a different tack. I do not hide my own libertarian take on life. But none of the above are reporting news and when doing that your prejudices do matter. You should bury your on news when reporting FACT.
2866 days ago
Once upon a time, on both sides of the Atlantic, those on the liberal left believed in free speech and liberty. Back in the era of Mccarthy it was we on the right who were, correctly slammed, for stifling debate. I like to think that was an glitch in that for most of us who believe in a small state, freedom of expression is a given, it is part of the DNA of our thought set. It is the Big State loving left that wants to decide what the little people should think and say.
2918 days ago
The celebs who lined up to back crooked Hillary Clinton actually thought folks cared what they thought! Mark Steyn dishes it out in splendid style in the short video below.
2924 days ago
Life on Britain's campuses is meant to be all about protecting freedoms and as the proud home to one of the UK's finest journalism courses you would have thought that City University in London would stand full square behind a free press.
2942 days ago
This was the strap on an article posted on LinkedIn. aka facebook for really boring adults. It is a great headline which arouses interest but I really doubt that "I'm an emergency surgeon" was quite the answer you were thinking of as you hit the link. I am sure you could do better. For instance, when with the mad public sector working bunch of lefties who are the friends of my Mrs, I could come up with:
3032 days ago
Jeepers!. Folks must have thought I was a deluded lefty as the Mrs sent me off to Sainsbury's with a rafia bag emblazoned with the name and logo of her "new" university on it, so as not to use any plastic bags. It could have been worse, the Mrs does have one from a recent conference she attended. It boasts the emblem of "The British Sociology Association." It might as well say "mad middle class Guardian reading lunatic."
3044 days ago
My lefty sister N is the one who gave her husband, the kraut, membership of the Labour Party as a Christmas present. Jesting with her about the current woes of the People's Party is therefore not something that boosts family unity. But there is a new tease from my father.
3069 days ago
The UK Investor speaker, Moneyweek columnist and gold guru and professional comedian Dominic Frisby sends me a flyer for his gigs at the Edinburgh Festival. Unlike some want to be writers, such as Ben Turney who are accidental comedians in that we just laugh at them, Dominic really is a professional comedian and is very funny so if you are in Edinburgh this year go see him. His main gig is Tax!
3074 days ago
And so our party finally made it through the large blue door which marks the entrance to the house that Paddy built in Kardamili. Turning right along a terrace open on one side we found ourselves with the rest of the group in the library. This was all rather different from the Greek Hovel.
3581 days ago
This is easy. All you have to do is name the odd one out and why. The deadline for entries is noon on Monday 2nd. Simply post your answer in the comments section below. The prize is a bittle of Greek Hovel olive oil.
So which is the odd one out and why? (hint the picture is a clue)
Voltaire, Peter Tatchell, Schillings the lawyers, Mark Steyn, David Cameron, James Beckwith, Guy Aldred.
Easy…
3753 days ago
And so it has arrived, my new toy for boys as my guest so kindly puts it. It is wicked. You just stick it into the frigana bush and with a pole long enough to keep you out of harm’s way should any wildlife leap out, off it goes. You swing it too and fro and the stalks are cut back to the base with violence and speed.
The next job is for my guest to rake them away and apply poison to the stems to kill the roots. As an added bonus I gather that the poison also works on reducing all sorts of local wildlife diversity.
3839 days ago
Are you coming along tomorrow says the Goddess by text. Cripes thought I: to what? Not wishing to offend I said “of course”….”but won’t’ I lower the tone?” I think it is a safe bet that I will.
As an aside just remind me of the details? The Savoy at 10 AM.
Hell’s teeth I appear to have wangled myself in invitation to a City breakfast. I would rather have wangled myself into the Millwall Supporters Club Christmas Party, the deodorant free summer meeting of the local Green Party or a long weekend in Homs.
But I do not wish to offend the Goddess.
Another text: “Wear an Ironed Shirt!”
I somehow do not think she is referring to an ironed Viva Steyn T-Shirt which I had laid out for tomorrow’s trip to London, I think she means shirt short with a collar. The last time I wore won of those was, from memory, in early 2012. I shall see what I can do.
4252 days ago
If I wish to read more than 20 articles a month on the Telegraph website I now have to pay £1.99 a month. And so the Telegraph loses another reader and an active one. I am not sure how much it makes in online revenue but if we say that it is £4 per 1000 Page impressions I think that the paper is now about £1 a month worse off.
I read that paper out of habit not because it offers that much. My most visited page was the Premiership table which I seem to check far too often. But I can get that data elsewhere for free as I can also get for free West Ham team news and forthcoming fixtures. I read the odd news story but it is a commodity so I can get that elsewhere.
I do like reading Christopher Booker’s column but Richard North always reprints that on his blog. And so I am left with Jeremy Warner (who is occasionally good), Ambrose E-P and Tom Stevenson. And that probably comes to about 15 columns a month which I may bother to read. Because I was drawn in by the columnists and the league table I inevitably ended up reading a few more articles but I did not need to. They were junk food. So I was responsible for a good slug of Page Impressions.
This is the problem that newspapers have. They have high fixed costs (staff, printing presses, lavish offices) and 98% of their content is commodity content. Why should anyone pay a fee to cover all those fixed costs when all they want is the odd bit of unique content? Start charging me 2p a go to read a given column and I might well play ball and then read all that junk food material and give the paper advertising income as well. As things stand I, will like many others, just turn away.
I used to read the Times online. I thought I’d miss Matthew Parris
4406 days ago
You and I know that hurricanes just happen. No-one is to blame and mankind just carries on. But out there in the twittersphere the left is already working out whom or what is to blame for Hurricane Sandy which is now battering New York. Just to help these simple folk along so that they can cut and paste away for the comments board on the Guardian, BBC, etc here are the top ten candidates for who or what is to blame.
1. George Bush Junior – he caused all that is evil on this planet.
2. Global Warming. I know Sandy is rather cold but it is all to do with Global Warming which was partly caused by George Bush ( see above)
4473 days ago
http://www.steynonline.com/5118/stick-it-where-the-global-warming-dont-shine
4496 days ago
One of the minor matters that I have resented during the past few years has been the idea of dressing to a corporate standard. There are greater issues that have caused me angst but this is an easy one to address going forward. When I started t1ps my attire was T-shirt and shorts/jeans. When the office was in my home I used to work in my underpants. It was a time when life was simple, work was fun in that I did only what I enjoyed (mainly writing) and was – I think – quite good at what I did. And no-one told me what to wear. I remember Algy Cluff being a bit surprised to find me wearing Irish rugby shorts and a T-shirt with some vaguely controversial message across the front, but most CEOs judge you on your work, not on what you wear.
Gradually, the pressures increased to smarten up. I found a review of a talk I gave a long time ago where I was lambasted for wearing a crumpled shirt. Heck did the reviewer know that was an upgrade? Looking back I can see some inverse sort of correlation between freedom to wear what I want & to write what I wanted and my move to do other things and an increasing sense of frustration and unhappiness. However that was suppressed at the time. Maybe weight gain was a symptom of that.
And so, going forward, whatever I do it has to be on the condition that I will be looking rather casual as I do it. I guess that rules out a career at Morgan Stanley. Drat. But my lifetime love affair with the T-shirt can once again come out of the closet.
4539 days ago
No, no ,no not one for the taxman and one for us! Just a day on two sets of books at the restaurant. First up is my library. The most valuable books are stored safely elsewhere but I still have well over a thousand books picked up over the years which are now being housed downstairs at the Real Man Pizza Company on Clerkenwell Road. If you have a spare afternoon and fancy a read over a coffee or just a book to digest as you digest a chocolate pizza – you now know where to go.
