English must be spoken in English… Finnish is spoken in Finland, Japanese in Japan and even Spainish(…until the Brit-pack take over their villas with new-life endeavours…)in Spain!!!

Is there any reason for us to be mocked ? I raise my glass to any country who unlike us enjoy local communication successes.

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What is it with the Teutonic philosophising that makes everyone wary of having an original thought of their own? Is it the belief that foreign made is best, because it is exotic? Is it because they were all emigres, ending up, as some did, as honoured citizens of English speaking countries.

The three , quoted universally ad nauseum, ; four, if you want to include Freud, are all of this genre: does it all come down, finally, to their having had an education, unsullied, and unaltered by the envious thoughts of the levellers; of the political Commissariat; anxious as ever to squeeze everyone , regardless of ability or bent, into the funnel of, ” all for one , and one for all”, comprehensive educational institutions, in the name of conservative Socialism?(New Labour),( It’s great how new tags get made up , isn’t it?)

” You will all fit the mould, if it kills us”, still seems to be the cry, even though, several MPs, of all parties are lobbying for the return of the Grammar Schools. Would this , in the eyes of the Government,be a retrograde step? Do we hanker for British born philosophers? Another Bertie Russell. ?

The love of truth is universal, excepting when it gets in the way of a Party Political Broadcast, or an explanation of why we went to war against Iraq.

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I try to stimulate rather than provoke.

You shouldn’t stay up so late old pal!

It was the dear old empire’s fault for leaving so quickly! That’s a bit patronising isn’t it. I thought Gandhi wanted them to go ASAP. Enlightenment please.

Neuroscience isn’t my strong point (what is come the cries) but I get the impression that a good deal is philosophical rather than scientific – and none the worse for that but be clear what we are dealing with.

It’s not clear what the various communist experiments have proved wrong except the general point that utopianism is a dangerous game. The shades of the millions of people who died as a direct result may wish know from the various apologists, including that old fraud Anthony Wedgewood Benn, more exactly what they died for.

Last time I looked the UK was an open society warts and all. We are curently embroiled in a discussion about whether we can deport people who hate our system, except for the excellent benefits component of course. We recently had an election where the governement might have changed. I didn’t like lots of Mrs T’s policies but I got to vote against her and eventually the conservatives were out. Sometimes Tony Blair makes me cringe but he has got some grasp of the plot. I think that you have to distinguish between freedom and having things just the way you want them.

I recall the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and finding 1000, 100 then 10 good people (apologies for spelling to Bertie Wooster and anyone else with a prize for Religious Knowledge). Your average trendy member of the ‘intelligentsia’ – e.g. the old fraud AWB – will find a few things wrong with an open society – e.g. litter, Big Brother (the TV show!) and chavs – to prove it evil beyond repair. Turning to the closed societies of left, Islamic and right fascism the same intellect will find a few things ‘nice’ about them – the absence of litter, wonderful tea ceremonies, trains that run on time – to demonstrate their superiority.

I suggest that the warts of the open societies are qualitatively different from the cancers of closed societies. This is of course no guarantee that an open society will not find its warts turning into cancers if its people are not careful.

Must go! Old frauds to unmask, axes to grind! And I need to see if my application to be a temporary heart surgeon for a very important upcoming operation has been successful!

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Blaming Gandhi for the communal violence following independence and partition of India + Pakistan (quite apart from what happened subsequently in Ceylon) – er those events wouldn’t have anything at all to do with the British Empire and its rapid disengagement from the colonies post-WWII would it, heaven forfend? Cheeky. D+ for history.

Karl Popper was particularly feted for formulating the criterion of falsifiablity in science, ie if the tenets of a theory are not susceptible to falsification by evidence, it ain’t proper science. (Psychoanalysis famously got it in the neck from KP’s followers, although neuroscience has recently become an unexpected – albeit critical – ally of Freud and his theories of the unconscious.)

Now I’m fully prepared to concede that Marxism, with its theory of dialectical materialism and the historical inevitability of the triumph of the proletariat over capitalism, has in fact been proved laughably wrong post-Soviet Russia’s collapse, despite its hermetic totalising narrative. I won’t bother to trot out the usual Trot excuse that Russia wasn’t actually socialist. Suffice it 2 say Marx was no Marxist.

The secular faith instituted by Lenin and his chum Stalin is even more toxic than its religious counter-parts. (Howard: please distinguish between dogmatic atheism and open-minded agnosticism.) Let it not be forgotten that, apart from Stalin’s appalling blood-soaked record, it was Communists who betrayed the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil and the student/worker alliance forged during the events of Paris 1968.

BUT this should not render liberal democrats smugly confident that Pooper’s Open Society is with us cos it very evidently ain’t. The authoritarian spasms of New Labour, so familiar to those of us who groaned through the ghastly Thatcherite 80s but with a Smiley Face this time round (Call Me Tony!). A pox on both their houses.

Now where was I…

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Is being provocative, incendiary a good thing in itself? The BNP seem fairly provocative and incendiary. Perhaps there is no coincidence.

Being in ‘yer face’ just for the sake of it does seem a feature of would-be student radicals and the pretentious disaffected.

It is also very noteworthy that ‘provocative’ members of the ‘intelligentsia’ are very selective about who they provoke. The Jerry Springer show was very provocative but the vast majority of Christians, following their founder, turned the other cheek. On the other hand the BBC pulled Greenmantle because it might upset some folk, possibly folk who subscribe less to the values of the ‘ideally to be destroyed’ West and believe in good old fashioned values like killing the kaffir. We await the new comical series “Iman Ali” and “The life of Tariq” with interest.

That old fraud Anthony Wedgewood Benn once quoted a quip by that other old fraud Mahatma Gandhi, who when asked what he thought about Western civilisation opined that it would be a ‘good idea’. This was at a time when widows were still being burned on their husband’s pyres in India. Gandhi of course was a contributor to the form of Indian independence that saw a million or more people die in partition. He was big on little spinning machines and so on. A measure of just how bad (British) Western civilisation was, is that Gandhi himself said that passive resistance would never have worked against the Japanese.

So there you have! Provoke away but choose wisely whom you provoke! Sometimes you might get an eye for an eye with interest.

Kevin, take a break from excitable, bewhiskered German philsophers of the 19th century! They are not good for your blood pressure. I don’t have gurus and prophets so may I recommend Karl Popper’s Open Society and its Enemies for a **critical** read? Apart from anything else it can cure even the most aggravated cases of their need for prophets and gurus. (No, KP is not a guru or a prophet as he was often the first to say. And yes I am aware that he was the original Grumpy Old Man. Argue with his ideas).

Have a nice weekend everyone!

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A “lover of wisdom”, he described women as the most dangerous of male playthings.( The opposite might be true, I suspect)

Some of his stuff might make sense,I suppose, if we lived in a near perfect world. But it’s not for me.

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Mac: May I recommend The Portable Nietzsche as a good introduction through chunks. He is one of the most provocative incendiary writers, valuable precisely because it’s unlikely that you will agree with much (indeed any) of what he says but it till makes sense. People sometimes affect to dismiss him as mere fodder for would-be student radicals and the pretentious disaffected.

More fool them. As Fred might have said, I don’t want to be subversive – I just want to destroy Western Civilization as we know it…

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I would have loved to see that loser, Winner’s face. ( What a drop from lofty director to lowly mouse!)

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Apropos Bozza’s excellent piece on 24 hr drinking I’m reminded of the Pythons’ Philosophers’ Drinking song:

“There’s nothing Nieztche couldn’t teach ya ’bout the raising of the wrist/ Socrates himself was permanently pissed…”

I will revert to you in due course with full scholarly references (sadly in translation but my German’s not so much rusty as wholly non-existent). Right now I cannot be arsed, my dears.

(Incidentally I had the pleasure of recently telling that fine auteur Mr Michael Winner to Calm Down Dear. His withering look was a thing to behold.)

No wage slavery for me today (that Simchat Torah schtick worked a treat). Huzzah!

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> Field: we seem to have a crazy system where we import hundreds of thousands of people to do low skill jobs while meanwhile we postively encourage young people born here to lounge around watching daytime TV on benefits.

Thank God (forgive me, you athiests) the atmosphere has shifted to the point where we can talk about these things without being instantly condemned as racist / reactionary / bigoted.

(I’m not getting drawn into any more religious arguments except to say terms like “godless society” and “godforsaken place” – pretty powerful imagery – were invented for a reason.)

One thing that’s missing from so much political thought and debate these days is common sense. In recent surveys of what makes us British, common sense crops up time and again as one of the enduring characteristics of Britishness. It is a precious commodity, yet it seems to play a dwindling role in the way we conduct public affairs. That is why I think so many people admire Boris – he talks a lot of common sense (let’s not forget this is his website!).

It does not make sense to abolish CoE schools any more than it does to allow, let alone encourage, the growth of state-funded minority faith schools.

If you had a lodger who refused to conform to house rules, criticised the facilities you provide and the way you ran the house, and refused to pay any rent, common sense dictates that he should go.

Our wonderful country is like our house, only larger. Why should’t a troublemaker be booted out in exactly the same way? And what would be ‘unfair’ about letting another lodger who does pull his weight and observe the house rules, stay on? It is plain common sense.

It is not common sense when Gordon Brown slaps a tax on insurance premiums (quite the opposite in fact – how many more will now be driving around uninsured?) or when a council insists on fining a resident

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