Andrew Brown

Cathy Newman's nothingburger One last dig into the details of the Smyth scandal

Yet more thoughts on abuse in the c of e open.substack.com/pub/andrewbr...

Patrick Cockburn · Diary: Interviewing Hitler In August 1937, three German journalists were expelled from Britain for suspected espionage. Retaliation was a...

‘Winston Churchill had no difficulty distinguishing between the Times, which has “consistently been an apologist of Germany” and Ebbutt, who “has never twisted the facts”.’

Patrick Cockburn on the journalist expelled from Germany for exposing the Nazi threat: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I may make a song and dance about rabbits, but I do always come back in the end.

Thanks to @charlesarthur.bsky.social 's indispensable Overspill I've discovered why so many news sites now respond to a login request by emailing you a code, rather than accepting a valid password. It's to prevent AI theft and repurposing of stories.

Doesn't "101 Things I Don't Want To Do" sound like a book title?

It would even be a book I'd want to read!

Unfortunately, it's a to do list.

I gather that the German car industry will step in to fix any problems with the EU if we were to leave the ECHR.

I hate when papers compile a "the best 10 books" or "50 most notable films" and it's clear it's just the 10 books or films they happen to have come across.

If you're going to propose "10 best novels of 2025" I think you need to have considered the merits of, what, 100 books? So a 10% ratio?

I was invited to go on the wireless to speculate who will be the new Archbishop of Canterbury (which I rightly declined) However, if I had gone on I would have noted that the security around the announcement has been so excellent (well done former head of 5!) that I think it could be Taylor Swift …

Congratulations to the Archbishop of York, who I suspect is the happiest man in the Church of England right now…

No experience? Nonsense. How about ‘seizing the chance to defraud the government of £122m during a pandemic’?

Got referred to hospital in August. Phone appointment finally scheduled for March. Waiting times aren’t getting any better.

Good thread, this. (Tho IE hits on the answer in the replies: what Labour think the immigration system for is getting people to shut up and stop talking about immigration)

This is quite bad and is going to make things measurably worse for people I know already in the pipeline

And where it's not bad, it's silly or no different from the status quo

Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether Britain thinks we are at war with Russia if Moscow already considers itself at war with us, which it does. We either acknowledge the reality of it or bury our heads in the sand, in either scenario, the war for Europe has already begun.

Further to this, all the characteristics mentioned by Mahmood already have to be met to get ILR (salary, English, life in UK test, clean criminal record, no welfare benefits) other than this weird Duke of Edinburgh style volunteering thing that they cannot possibly implement.

A friend writes:

I saw someone's post somewhere that talked about how their
nine-year-old and all his friends have started using "That's AI"
instead of "I don't believe you."

Mom: "We're having dinosaur meat for dinner tonight."
Kid: "That's AI."

What is ONT? (Another satisfied Zen customer asks)

This remains an awful and unfair proposal. For one thing, a lot of people genuinely struggle to find time to volunteer, and for another and more importantly, it’s not volunteering if you’re being compelled to do it!

I remember when the Fabians used to hang out at our school gates in Luton. Handing out Bertrand Russell articles and trying to lure us onto the hard stuff: HG Wells.

Apropos nothing at all, this is from Romps, Tots and Boffins.

I wrote something about a prescient but almost entirely forgotten Vonnegut novel t.co/inHvb2vu4p

the booker prize judges make a lot of fuss about having to read 153 books. but assuming an average weight of 750g per book, that comes in at 115kg of literature - or just under the weight of a single adult male ostrich

AI Overview: "Dental realism"refers to the philosophical debate about whether teeth exist independently of human perception, a concept rooted in metaphysical realism. While realism asserts an objective reality for teeth, idealist philosophies contend that teeth's existence is tied to our consciousness and perception. Philosophers use this idea, for example, to discuss the ethics of tooth extraction, examining whether a procedure impacts a real entity or merely a subjective experience.

When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions

Worth remembering many people will be unfamiliar with terms like "indefinite leave to remain" and "settlement". People know what immigration is + citizenship, but settlement is less intuitive

So its important for those countering the proposals to put in schoolgate language what is being proposed

This is beautiful and fitting, Hen. And you're so right about production functions, sacrifice and self-interest, collective spaces, all of it. x

Sam is right to say that the correct argument is that a Reform government CAN & probably would attempt things that are ethically reprehensible + currently unlawful + broadly unpopular if they commit to using majority power in the UK political system to repeal all judicial limits on govt + parliament

Elegant and true, from Nick Spencer in the Spectator:

"Auguste Comte, surely the man with the greatest claim to being the most influential philosopher no one today has read"

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart.
Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point.
Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

It was obvious when EU citizens had the terms of their settlement here retrospectively revoked that a precedent was being set and that, in time, the argument would move on to other categories of migrant, always tending towards a purity test of who is ‘indigenous’. Unless resisted.