Monthly Archives: May 2009
The Confidence Trick
Expensive I’ve stayed relatively clear of the commentariat’s dive into the Torygraph’s shark pool. Obviously, people needed to comment: for example, when the they smeared MPs someone needed to be telling them off.
JQP in Brief
38 Degrees: Avalanche != Landslide These guys deserve to be high-lighted. I’m interested in what they want to do; we’ve seen that this kind of project can succeed, but we’ve also all seen them fail. Don’t hold their domain name … Continue reading
Pause for thought
Dropping off-line altogether for four days has left me very seriously short on my reading and thinking. Bank-holiday weekends put on a lot of pressure at work even when I haven’t been away from my post for half of a … Continue reading
The Great Machine VI: The Best Lack All Conviction
Because it was There The success of statist/hierarchical capitalism over all other models is due to its effectiveness at defeating problems of scale in a low-bandwidth, low-tech civilisation. It is, if you want to look at it from the opposite … Continue reading
Clegg-iscite
JQP will undergo a brief hiatus as I’m away from the keyboard doing some Ack-Ting. I leave you with Andy May’s summary of the downfall of Speaker Martin.
Point of Order!
It looks like he’s going. [ Edit: 14:37 ] And he’s gone. Well, maybe. In a month. Then Parliament can start sorting out the mess. Oo, I wonder what’ll happen between then and now? Oh yes. The 4th June election … Continue reading
The Great Machine V: Full of Passionate Intensity
Our story so far: in a thrilling series of bold acquisitions and mergers, occasional plague- or famine-related downsizing and aggressive management restructuring rounds, the human race has managed to invent, in approximate sequence: banditry, tax, cities, bureaucracy, capital wealth, relative … Continue reading
Reflections on the current economic climate
My articles average 1200 words or so. Using the basic exchange rate of 1(picture) = 1000(words), I believe this submission from Andy May to be worth at least 1175.
The Great Machine IV: The Centre Cannot Hold
Relative Wealth At the end of our last episode, our proto-capitalist tax baron has collected enough food from enough places to build an urban settlement, and has in the process created a situation of wealth imbalance: he has more than … Continue reading
JQP in Brief
Courting Public Opinion II: “Nyer nyer nah ner ner” “I told you so!” I did warn you, Ms. Harman. This, what you see around you? The slavering hacks of Wapping dragging all the senior members of your government through the … Continue reading
The Great Machine III: The Widening Gyre
[ Editor's Note: 8.6.09:- I have only just got around to answering questions by Eithin, posed below, about where my source data and civilisation models come from. I have replied in two parts below, but want to include the basic … Continue reading
Idiotology
Studying Idiots I have expressed before my frustration with ideologies. As I understand the term it is a functional equivalent in politics to the expression ‘dogma’ in religion; a group of ideas that someone famous held which hereinafter must be … Continue reading
Culpability VII: Bootnote
Liberal Democrat [ MP. --Ed ] Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards. Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind … Continue reading
Little Brother
JQP note: This article re-appears here by kind permission of the editors (one of whom is the Head Research Otter) over at PSUK, for whom it was originally written. I urge anyone concerned about the balance between citizen autonomy and … Continue reading
Serve and Protect
This is a phrase famously associated with police officers in certain high-profile cities in America but it’s also a phrase I associate with the job of landlord. It’s a pun first made to me by the landlord at my local … Continue reading
