The New Conservative

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Gareth Southgate

Sir Gareth Southgate?

I have a love-hate relationship with football. I love watching a midfield player curve the ball into the penalty box so that it lands with missile accuracy on the head of a forward who then nods it into the goal. I love too the great amount of charity work that clubs do, which is underreported.

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Happy new year

The Year in Review

The strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT Me being one of my favourite topics, I am always fascinated to see how many hits I get searching for myself on Google (it’s hundreds), or how often my Wikipedia page has been read recently (157 in the past 30 days; which makes at least seven by other people).

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York Minster

Empty Words

According to Peter Rohde’s biography of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the great Danish philosopher recorded in his journal how a highly educated preacher was once invited to the King’s opulent court to speak to the richest and most powerful people in the land, and he chose to talk about how God chooses the humble and rejected.

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Old Books

Off With Mice and Men 

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men has been removed from the school curriculum across the United Kingdom, marking the end of its long-standing role as a staple of English literature education. The Welsh exam board (WJEC) was the last to offer the novella as part of its English Literature GCSE syllabus, but it has now

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The Offended Jihadi

Terrorists and Taverns

A convicted Islamic terrorist has taken offence at the name of a pub, one of the many pubs in the UK called The Saracen’s Head (in Glasgow, always referred to as ‘The Sarrie Hied’). The terrorist in question, one Khalid Baqa, is suing the landlord for £1835 and plans to extend his campaign to another

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Wind turbines

Net Zero Nuts (Part II)

Some of our post 1992 new universities, already powerhouses of mediocrity, have decided to make the prospects of their doomed students even worse. In yet another example of corporate virtue-signalling, about twenty of them have banished fossil fuel companies from attending recruitment fairs on their campuses. Whether this drive towards such empty gestures is being

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Christmas tree

Christmas Cancelled

I thought it was just me, but it transpires there are fewer Christmas decorations in Hong Kong this year than in previous years. A colleague confirmed, under orders from China, Hong Kong had been instructed to tone down the outward manifestations of the Christmas festivities this year. I often find myself in Hong Kong in

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White lives matter

No Whites Please, We’re British

The next James Bond is increasingly unlikely to be representative of the British Isles, thanks to the intelligence services (MI5, MI6, and GCHQ) who are offering final-year university students a 2025 summer internship, provided they have the good taste not to be ‘White British’: ‘For the 2024/25 academic year, if you’re in your final or

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