There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences.

For a plain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks. The home is the one place where he can put the carpet on the ceiling or the slates on the floor if he wants to. When a man spends every night staggering from bar to bar or from music-hall to music-hall, we say that he is living an irregular life. But he is not; he is living a highly regular life, under the dull, and often oppressive, laws of such places. Some times he is not allowed even to sit down in the bars; and frequently he is not allowed to sing in the music-halls. Hotels may be defined as places where you are forced to dress; and theaters may be defined as places where you are forbidden to smoke. A man can only picnic at home.

G. Sarto - I have to agree with you about Chesterton. As a journalist he is up there with Orwell in my opinion. His observations on the then current racial theories, eugenics, Socialism and Prussianism during the Teens and Twenties are downright spooky considering what happened in the Thirties. And his critique of big government and big business in the 'History Of Hudge And Gudge' from 'What's Wrong With The World' is still relevant today.

Underpinning the absurd doctrine of humanitarian intervention is the idea that everybody wants to be a 'right on' liberated man or woman with a fag hanging out of one hand and a bottle swinging in the other. The world isn't like that, people want different things and we need to recognise that. David Starkey

Safe to say, I just don't get it and it's easy to blame that on youth. If you're me and not close with an editor or a phenom in and of yourself, then you're not yet to this stage in life- the middle ground between college and real life, where you do need a place (in the neighborhood of the moment) and to pay your rent, but you can go out every night because you don't have real responsibilities (god forbid).

Iraqi men tattoo IDs on their bodies

A couple of years ago, I was standing on my balcony in Dalston having a beer. I overlook alot of the terrible, terrible clubs and bars we have 'round here. You know, a car stalls at the lights and someone with a truckload of no-name french lager pulls up, puts on a compilation album and calls it a bar, probably called "Car Superstore, or some crap." Then a bus of rejected applicants from Central Saint Martins rocks up and barfs on it, while pretending to be gay so they can get in.
Anyhoo, on this particular night, it's early and I see three people - a blonde girl and two guys, badly dressed in winterwear, although it's June, and they look out of place. Kind of posh for round here. Like shoplifters at Westfield. And they look guilty, like they are up to something. Next thing I know, one of them runs up to my front door (they can't see me) and puts something on it. A couple hours later, I am out of beer, so I go downstairs and have a look, and it is a sticker for a band called NDubz.
They still owe me 20 quid for the sticker removal stuff I had to buy. And they're raised in St. John's Wood, coming 'round here graffing up my ghetto..

Political alliegence is somewhat like the same alliegences we have Boat Race day. Either or, for life. 98% of us never actually being either, as a student ,but the alliegence is for life.
Well this Easter we saw a boat race so similar to the political realities of life in Britain. A crazy in the water Galloway perhaps . and high priced equipment not fit for purpose Banks perhaps . And the better team losing. Postal vote fraud perhaps I'm an Oxford man . After all my Father was.
The problem being next year the same alliegences will be unchanged. Thats our big problem in the real arena as well. So I believe Hitchens ideas of waiting for a vacancy is wrong. The vacancy must be helped along or else these fools will continue to vote OUT rather than IN. the one the press deem unsuitable ,next time around.

It is interesting that if you point out to people in modern Britain that they are breaking a law, they will usually ask if you are a policeman, as if they were serfs in a country where the law belonged to the state, and not to the people, and you needed a man in uniform to make you obey it, rather than your own conscience. (Don’t they realise how lucky they are to live in a country where the people make, observe and enforce their own laws? Obviously not). Or they begin a lengthy, if ill-informed, study of your personality and its failings. The fact that they are in the wrong is instantly forgotten. Indeed, it doesn’t count. Laws only matter if you’re caught by the cops.

Then I see the Campbell’s steamer like a seaborne charabanc loading up for Lundy, Ifracombe, Porthcawl…. the kiss me quick hats and sticky rock and welsh vomit in the gunnels, the warm slap of beer in the belly in the Marisco Tavern, then cresting the swell past Steepholm and home to Mumbles pier…………..zzzzzz