Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Ian Bell

From our UK edition

What is it about Ian Bell? By which I mean, why does the poor fellow arouse such animosity? No other player in the current England team sees his failures magnified and successes downplayed to such an extent. Even when he bats well, his critics use this as evidence that, damn it, he should be batting like this all the time. Perhaps today's splendid 199 against South Africa will quieten the critics. But if so, I suspect it will do so only temporarily. A friend suggests that Bell is the victim of the "Henman effect". That is to say, he's a nice, middle-class public schoolboy (Rugby in Bell's case) whose demeanour is the opposite of the swagger or blue-collar defiance that's more in vogue with the times.

Alex Massie

Win One for the Zither!

From our UK edition

Via Isaac Chotiner, I see The Times' movie critics have compiled a list of the "Top 20" movie endings of all time. Isaac is more enamoured than I am of the list, which concludes thusly:5.Chinatown4. E.T.3. Casablanca2. Butch Cassidy1. Carrie Well, fine. But what about, in no particular order: The Lavender Hill Mob, The Great Escape, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Brief Encounter and, last, but by no means least, the brilliant ending to the best (British) movie of them all, The Third Man. It don't get better than this: UPDATE: Andrew Stuttaford agrees with me.

Alex Massie

Jack Russell

From our UK edition

That's the wicket-keeper not the misanthropic terrier. In the light of my defence of Ian Bell, a reader asks if I could write something about Gloucestershire's Jack Russell. Certainly! Jack Russell was a blazing beacon of excellence. He was, in his pomp, the best wicket-keeper in the world. Obviously, he was traduced by England and the people who claimed to know what was best. For neither the first, nor the last, time they were wrong. In a better, more seinsible world Jack Russell would have spent a decade being the first name on an England team-sheet. For quite some part of that time - an uncomfortably large part in fact - he could reasonably have been considered England's sole realistic entry for a Pick Your World XI contest. (Adam Gilchrest would change this, of course.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Older? Wiser? Not so much…

From our UK edition

Good grief. Just to be clear, if you're the Prime Minister and some hack puts it to you, idiotically, that "Some women say you remind them of Heathcliff"... you do not reply, even jokingly, "Absolutely. Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff." Madness. Needless to say the papers are having some sport with this: Andrew McCarthy, the acting director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, told The Daily Telegraph: "Heathcliff is a man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, possibly murder, and digging up his dead lover. He is moody and unkind to animals. Is this really a good role model for a prime minister?" Gerald Warner weighs in: Are the other members of his government afflicted with similar delusions?

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Cameron’s Spiffing New Party?

From our UK edition

Reihan: If [David] Cameron embraced an agenda like the one outlined in Grand New Party, he would likely be accused of being a libertarian radical hellbent on destroying the most cherished parts of Britain’s welfare state. This, alas, is true. Too bad. Which reminds me that I've been lax in not blogging about Messrs Salam and Douthat's new book. Will rectify that shortly. But not today, as the city calls. All of which is to say: buy the book. It's excellent.

Alex Massie

Department of Free Markets Being Better than Black Markets

From our UK edition

A BBC Scotland documentary on organ sales is on TV tonight. The reporter discovers, shockingly, that: There is a black market in kidneys here in the UK. I secretly filmed people trying to sell me their kidneys, exploiting the vulnerability of someone who is desperate to help a family member. They are also trying to exploit the very law that has changed to allow me to make a 'stranger donation'. They wanted to fool the authorities - the first woman I met started with an asking price of £250,000, another man wanted the 'price of a Mercedes' - £60,000. I met them in cafes across the UK and their actions were shocking. They know they are doing something illegal and just don't seem to care.

Alex Massie

David Davis and Obama

From our UK edition

Matt Yglesias writes: the reality is that as long as Obama thinks he's going to be wielding executive authority, he's going to be useless as a check on out-of-control executive authority. This is entirely, even obviously, correct. In a British context, this is why David Davis's seemingly quixotic campaign is immensely valuable: his re-election and his determination to make liberty, justice and principle a major issue will, one hopes and trusts, make it rather harder for David Cameron to succumb to the worst temptations of office...

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Hello Readers!

From our UK edition

I don't know who you are and I have, bless, no idea how you ended up here but for some strange reason I am happy that this blog is where you come to when you Google "libertarian spiders". We're all armed arachnids here... I mean, what could be better than that? UPDATE: On the other hand, it's also super to be found by people searching for "fried pizza".

Alex Massie

Why do Americans love guns?

From our UK edition

I am puzzled. Puzzled that is, by the British attitude towards America's gun culture. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's (in my view) common sense ruling that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual, rather than a collective, right to bear arms, British commentators responded by, well, by throwing their hands up in the air and, yup, wondering at them there crazy Yanks. Thus Bryan Appleyard: I no longer try to understand the American acceptance of well over 30,000 gun-related deaths a year.  No other country comes close - though it should be noted that over half are suicides, in other countries people may just kill themselves in different ways so the total gun death figure may be misleading. Either way, the weird complacency remains...

Alex Massie

Department of Correction | 8 July 2008

From our UK edition

I may have been too harsh recently. I scoffed at the idea of a lettuce "bolting" and made merry with the New York Times leader writer who suggested that, now that summer is (allegedly) here, lettuces were prone to do this. Now, rather inconveniently, my sister, who in addition to being a very fine artist whose paintings any sensible chap of means would buy, is also a budding horticulturalist, pipes up with this: "Bolting" is the term used by all gardeners on this, and seemingly that, side of the Atlantic for a plant that is running to seed (which generally means it's past being useful for eating). Lettuces are quite notorious for this. Spinach too. My leeks bolted last month. This is not therefore a desperate writer grasping for dramatic effect.

Alex Massie

What we have lost…

From our UK edition

One's not supposed to say this, but by god it's boring since Hillary was beaten... (Ditto, though in a minor key, Romney's defeat. He was at least, like Hillary, properly and rightly hateable...

Monday

Alex Massie

Facebookery

From our UK edition

Apparently Facebook has a new "blog network" facility. To what end, I know not. That's not the point, surely? Anyway it's obvious that good things must come of this somehow, somewhere down the line. So, there you have it: join the Debatable Land network here. You know it makes sense.

Alex Massie

Annals of Leader Writing

From our UK edition

Newspapers are comfortable places to work. True, you find yourself working with a disturbing number of misfits and socially inadequate neurotics. But there are compensations. For instance, there are few more comfortable berths in any trade than settling down to life in a newspaper leader writing office. Other pleasing stations - foreign editor, golf correspondent, restaurant critic - suddenly seem unpleasantly bustling, tarnished by contact with the great unwashed and the world outside the office. Granted, there are times when, as the old saw has it, the editorial writers wait until the battle's over before slinking down form the hills to stab the wounded. It is not often a position that demands much courage. There is comfort, too, in anonymity. Most editorials are easy to write too.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Your American Right

From our UK edition

Words fail me: re: Civics  [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn't George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher? Wouldn't it be something if his post-presidential life would up being that kind of post-service service? How's that for a model? Who needs Harvard visiting chairs and high-end lectures? How about Crawford High? (Or wherever?) Reach out and touch the young before they are jaded, or break them of the cynicism pop culture and possibly their parents have passed down to them. Whatever you think of President Bush, he's a likable guy in love with his country with some history and experience to share. "Awesome" is pretty much the right word, no?

Saturday

Alex Massie

M is for PBH May

From our UK edition

It's that time again folks so here is the M XI, to follow those led by Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine, Dexter,  Edrich,  Fry, Gower,  Hutton,  Imran , Jardine, Kapil. and Lloyd 1. Arthur Morris (AUS) 2. Vijay Merchant (IND)3. Charles Macartney (AUS)4. PBH May (ENG) (Capt)5. Stan McCabe (AUS)6. Keith Miller (AUS)7. 8. Rod Marsh (AUS) (Wkt) 9. Malcolm Marshall (WI)10. Muttiah Muralitharan (SL)11. Glenn McGrath (AUS) Country representation so far [before the M XI is counted!!!!!!!!!]: England 45, Australia 27, West Indies 17, India 12, Pakistan 11, South Africa 11, New Zealand 5, Sri Lanka 2, Zimbabwe 1, USA 1. If Neville Cardus were selecting this side, Archie Maclaren would be the first name on the team-sheet.

Friday

Alex Massie

Jesse Helms is Dead

From our UK edition

Colour me unmoved. I notice that, so far at any rate, all the contributors at The Corner are too busy hailing the former Senator's service and lauding his fervent anti-communism to note that these convictions led him to embrace some, shall we say, distasteful allies? From a British point of view, Helms' most significant, or at any rate telling, moment may have been his embrace of the Argentine military junta after it invaded the Falkland Islands. Helms believed that Washington should support Galtieri's vile regime since to do otherwise would "destroy the coalition we must have if we are to prevent a Communist takeover of Central America." It's always good to know who your friends are, isn't it?

Alex Massie

Could you become an American?

From our UK edition

Via Clive, here are some of the "more difficult" questions from the new US naturalisation test given to all would-be Yanks. Foolishly, I forgot the first words of the US constitution but, happily and much to my relief, got the other 19 correct. I suspect y'all would pass too...

Alex Massie

Bob Geldof: My Sort of Wanker!

From our UK edition

Heaven knows, Bob Geldof is a bore these days. But one of the splendid, indeed agreeable, elements of David Davis's civil liberties campaign is that it forces one to question some of one's own prejudices. It compels us to think again and remember that allies can be found in unlikely places. Thus it was that Geldof went to Haltemprice and Howden today to campaign for Davis and deliver a speech in which he said: So what great existential threat does this country now face that did not face our forefathers of the past 1000 years.

Thursday

Alex Massie

The centre has, it seems, fallen. Again.

From our UK edition

Henry Farrell has a new paper on blogs, blog readers and political polarisation (Pdf here). Finding: First – blog readers seem to exhibit strong homophily. That is to say, they overwhelmingly choose blogs that are written by people who are roughly in accordance with their political views. Left wingers read left wing blogs, right wingers read right wing blogs, and very few people read both left wing and right wing blogs. Those few people who read both left wing and right wing blogs are considerably more likely to be left wing themselves; interpret this as you like. Furthermore, blog readers are politically very polarized.