Author: Mark Gullick

Vikki Spit and her fiancée. Spit has become the first person in the UK to receive compensation from the government for a death — her fiancée’s — resulting from the Covid-19 vaccine.

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Beware the Ides of June

Under British parliamentary rules, a vote of no confidence in a Prime Minister is similar to a recall vote in the United States, but it is the members of the incumbent PM’s parliamentary party — 359 Conservative MPs, in this case — who vote, and not the people. The peons only get to vote in general elections, where their choice is essentially between two brands of the same soap powder. (more…)

Steve Laws, a Briton and a citizen journalist who was arrested by the UK’s Border Force for documenting the ongoing migrant crisis along Britain’s Channel coast.

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It is a political axiom in contemporary Britain that there is no problem that Boris Johnson’s government can’t make worse. The supplementary lemma is: How much of it is intentional? Last week’s farcical events involving supposed flights of illegal immigrants from Britain to Rwanda for asylum application processing look at first glance like government idiocy. I suspect not. (more…)

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I read a lot and always have, but there is only one book I have ever finished and immediately gone from its last line straight back to page one and started reading it again. It was Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The movie version featured Johnny Depp with Benicio del Toro as his lawyer (and I guess Depp has met his fill of lawyers just recently, although hopefully not on acid). But it wasn’t at all bad, I thought. Thompson’s famous gonzo style of writing (much better than precursor H. L. Mencken, who I have to say I could never stand) put a fishhook in my upper lip I could not shake free of. (more…)

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English original here

Vyzývám k okamžitému zákazu filmu Gravitace – ukazuje totiž „Zemi“ jako objekt kulovitého tvaru, což je proti Koránu a tím pádem urážka muslimů – dr. Zakir Naik.

Robert R. Reilly: The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis
Wilimington, Del: ISI Books, 2010

Vzpomínám si na úsměv, který mi na tváři vykouzlila výše citovaná slova, když se dotyčný film skoro před deseti lety objevil v kinech. (more…)

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When I first heard The Fall, I thought the music was annoying and incomprehensible. Then that was what became fascinating. — Stewart Lee, English comedian

Everyone who works for The Fall, you know, they’re just regular people. I wouldn’t pick them otherwise. I don’t want Fall fans in the band. — Mark E. Smith, lead singer of The Fall

Music has always played a big role in my life, as I am sure it has in yours. Recently, though, it has dropped off the scene a little. (more…)

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Christopher Booker
The Real Global Warming Disaster
New York/London: Continuum, 2009

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was never in any meaningful sense a scientific body, nor was it intended to be. It was essentially a political organization, using the prestige of science to promote the purposes of those who ran it. — Christopher Booker, The Real Global Warming Disaster (more…)

British MP Jeremy Hunt, whose surname is as perfect an example of Cockney rhyming slang as you could find.

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A bad month for the Iron Lady and the suffragette

There is never a good time to be a statue in England. You are out in all weathers, for a start, and on the rare days the Sun does shine pigeons seize the opportunity to take a dump on your head. But you do usually get to hang around on your pedestal or plinth for a few decades, or even centuries, before you are abused by humans. That, like much in the old country, is changing, and 2020 shall henceforth be known as the year of the great toppling. But the last month has seen attacks on statues of two famous English women, proving equality is alive and well. (more…)

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The United Kingdom has two world-famous institutions traditionally close to its heart, like a pair of old and beloved relatives. The first is the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), often referred to as “Auntie.” The second is the National Health Service (NHS), often referred to as “on the brink,” “under increasing pressure,” and “close to collapse.” (more…)

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To regard the immorality of the will as an imperfection of it would be a fundamentally false point of view. — Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (more…)

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Anacharsis wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life, and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: (more…)

Self-described Nazi Thomas Leech, who was recently convicted in the UK on terrorism charges, shows that today’s Nazis don’t really live up to their more fashionable predecessors.

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A rose by any other name

When I was growing up, or at least getting bigger, my parents were fairly liberal about swearing in the house. “Cussing” is, I believe, an American equivalent. This was not an injunction for or against swearing an oath on the Bible. But rules are rules, and there was always one word banned in our house: the dread C-word. How nice to be reminded of this childhood memory by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), still wasting money after all these years. They have indeed banned the C-word. (more…)

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Today we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery [the press] that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. — Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (more…)