This week's issue of #BritanniQ has landed in people's email inboxes. Didn't receive it? Follow the link below to get it every Monday free of charge. What did you miss out on this week? We started, of course, with #BorisJohnson's resignation... [1/n]
...@TomMcTague argued that #Johnson might suffer from Phaeton Complex, and ultimately achieved nothing apart from one big thing. The achievement of nothing infuriated @arisroussinos, who argued in a brilliant essay that this, rather than his sleaze, was his main...[2/n]
...crime. Finally @sullydish said Johnson was useless, but, far from being the avatar for a right wing racist takeover (as many on the hysterical left argue), he actually prevented one. #BritanniQ also guided people to a brilliant @unherd podcast, with @freddiesayers... [3/n]
...@Fox_Claire, @Will___lloyd and @arisroussinos discussed not the gossip surrounding the #BorisOut moment, but its place in the mega geopolitical, economic and social trends shaking the nation.
@BDSixsmith pleaded with God to save us from Tom Tugendhat, and a certain... [4/n]
...@admcollingwood argued that leadership elections play a crucial role in blocking the creation of a genuinely conservative political voice in Britain while running a disdainful eye over the contenders.
We also asked, is Britain defended? The answer, from @simonakam... [5/n]
...@James_P_Snell, @RUSI_org and @WarOnTheRocks was, given the changes in the nature of warfare and the specifics of the British Armed Forces, probably not.
We recommended a wonderful essay by Paul Kingsnorth for @unherd about how the left and big businesses ended up...[6/n]
...in bed together, and then looked at the late Shinzo Abe's legacy with two of the most capacious minds in the public intellectual sphere today, @adam_tooze and @ELuttwak. Both offered invaluable detail, breath and context to the former Japanese PM's politics.
Moving...[7/n]
...on, we took a dispiriting look at education with essays from @Im1776_ and @LD_Sceptics. We then suggested an interesting, low cost solution, based on @ATabarrok's review of a Kenyan study for @MargRev. No doubt the teaching unions would hate it. We rounded off the week...[8/n]
...with a wonderfully curmudgeonly (and uncomfortably correct) essay from @cjsnowdon about his hatred of WhatsApp, and a look at why medieval cities hired musicians as first responders, armed guards and essential workers with @tedgioia.
Finally, we had a little...[9/n]
...chicken soup for the patriot's soul.
BritanniQ has received wonderful feedback so far; every week, people have taken the time to write emails saying how much they enjoy it. If you would like it, free of charge, every Monday, follow the link below.
🧵The Tories face perhaps the most important #LeadershipContest in almost half a century. The candidates are either second rate avatars for the triple liberal consensus (in social, economic and foreign policies) that has led us down a catastrophic cul-de-sac, or are...[1/n]
...verging on certifiably insane in one important area of policy and are therefore unfit to lead the country. I think the exception is @KemiBadenoch. I'm not sure she can change anything, given the paucity of talent in the party and a Civil Service that is both unfit for...[2/n]
...purpose and implacably opposed to any policy that veers outside that aforementioned disastrous consensus. Nevertheless, #KemiForPM would be the only *chance* of changing course. Here's why. 1/ Britain doesn't have problems to solve: it has an existential omnicrisis. [3/n]
I think I'm going to take a break from commenting on the war in Ukraine for some time. Unfortunately, I feel I'm being drawn into defending something I don't want to defend because, alas, we are being asked to view a highly complicated subject as black and.. 1/n
...white, goodies and baddies tale. An example of this is the representation of the Russian thermobaric arsenal as a new horror weapon that they uniquely have. It's implied rather than said, and it has that effect. Thermobaric weapons were developed in the 1970s, are in the UK...
...and US arsenals, and were used by the latter in the urban combat of the Battle of Fallujah as far back as 2004. Yet, the moment I pointed that out, it was represented as an excuse for its use. Same goes for some of the more lurid statements from Ben Wallace, the British...
Matt Archer has interviewed Dr. Joseph Renzulli, Peter Hitchens, Prof. Johnathan Rose and David Goodhart on education. On this week's Saturday Night Spaces, you can ask him about:
🗣️Selective education
🗣️Why IQ is falling
🗣️Vocational Education
🗣️Gifted education
🗣️Expectations
🧵 Happy Sunday THREAD about the fragility of modern civilisation.
I've been feeling shivery and feverish since Friday night (better now) so I decided to watch Band of Brothers again. It's a wonderfully produced, directed, scripted and acted series, and it's must watch for...1/n
...anybody who hasn't seen it. I had to turn it off, though. It wasn't the horror of the battle scenes -- the death, the jaws ripped open by shrapnel, or the amputations by 105mm mortar round -- that got me. It was the liberation of Eindhoven. It shows in that scene the...2/n
...rank moral degeneration war causes on all sides, much of which is tragically necessary for military operations, but a lot of which is forced on populations who must survive through it. In Western Europe, we have been lucky for the last 80 years that we haven't seen any...3/n
🗣️#SueGrayDay
🗣️Peter Hitchens supports Johnson shock
🗣️The #Saville Attack
🗣️DEBATE: We should NOT #DefundTheBBC
🗣️DEBATE: Reassessing Appeasement and Neville Chamberlain
Do join -- but bring your debating chops. Last week, after our weekly politics chat, we had quite the debate on abolishing the police. I wonder if @calvinrobinson would like to explain why we should defund the BBC (and then likely crush my conservative argument for keeping it)?