This is a pre-publication draft of a piece that appeared under a lightly different title in a recent Byline Times supplement on Trump, available here.  In The Art of The Deal, Trump claimed that the decorative tiles in the children's room at his Mar-a-Lago resort were made by Walt Disney personally. When Trump's butler asked him if that was really true, Trump replied, “Who cares?” Trump is a bullshitter. Harry Frankfurt’s little classic On Bullshit points out that the liar and the honest person have at least something positive in common: a focus on the truth. The honest person says wh ..read more

A common Post Modern defence of unclarity in philosophy is that e.g. some boundaries are vague/unclear. 'If reality is vague and unclear, then we must be vague and unclear in talking about reality. Otherwise we are not being true to reality.' The analogy here is, perhaps, painting a picture. If a storm is something vague and fuzzy, then to be accurate your painting of it must be vague and fuzzy, like a Turner. Being clear is a mistake - it involves crudely pixelating what is in reality highly subtle. But this is to muddle clarification with simplification. A crude pixelated image is a s ..read more

(reposting of my 2017 article) I have recently been engaged in a very interesting discussion on Facebook about the Left's supposed antisemitism and Israel problem. It's widely supposed Labour has a major antisemitism problem that needs to be dealt with. Of course, there is antisemitism everywhere, but is there significantly more among Leftists? That's the suggestion. I don't see that the evidence supports the view that Labour has a major antisemitism problem. Labour has around half a million members. I noted that: (i) As of last summer, after various accusations were made in the Press and so ..read more

For what it’s worth, here’s my feeling about voting Labour next General Election:   1. Every time I vote Labour after they move rightwards, they just move further right, to the point where they are now probably right of where e.g. John Major’s party was. And then the Tories then go further right still. At some point, we have got to stop feeding this endless drift by making the Labour Party realise that it’s going to cost them votes. I can’t think of anything more important that halting this constant rightward drift. So I am no longer voting Labour. 2. If a new socialist party starts u ..read more

Submission on assisted dying   I believe that assisted dying should be legalised in the UK.   My own father died at home five years ago. He had cancer, and received excellent care, including live in assistance and daily nurse visits, and very powerful painkillers. Nevertheless, it was clear that, despite the best efforts of all those involved, that he suffered greatly and over an extended period of time.   If I in my father’s position a few weeks before his death, knowing what awaited me, I would certainly want to take my own life in a controlled situation, surrounded by my fami ..read more

Both these things *can* be true:1. Prejudice blindness. Not being the target of prejudice ourselves, we can easily miss it (so we should always listen). 2. Prejudice goggles. Considering ourselves or a minority a target, paranoia kicks in and we start 'seeing' prejudice where it isn't (and supposing those who can't see it must blind, or worse). E.g. some say anti-black racism against Meghan Markle is a figment of the woke imagination (and her own). Others say it's real, and we should listen and take seriously: those who can't see it are ignorant or worse. So which way do you lean on th ..read more

Tony Benn: is he stopped clock here (correct by lucky accident), or right on the money? If you are scratching your head wondering why we seem to be drifting scarily ever more rightwards, this is as plausible explanation as any I have come across. When I was last out canvassing for Labour, the message I got from a lot of voters was: 'I won't vote - they're all the same'. And they had a point: even under New Labour, inequality actually increased. They engaged in some positive tinkering around the edges, but there was no substantive change to the status quo. When the only real mechanism for si ..read more

If you believe inequality reduced under Labour, you've fallen for a myth. Sure, Labour redistributed, as the IFS confirm. But not nearly enough to reverse growing inequality. We're heading back to Victorian Britain under both parties, just at different speeds. See here. There was, recently, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to actually reverse this trend. It was destroyed by a coalition of forces that included most of the Parliamentary Labour Party (Labour MPs), using some of the most disgusting tactics ever seen in British politics (though, thanks to our MSM, most folk are largely i ..read more

After Part 1 of Al Jazeera's three part investigation 'The Labour Files'  into Labour Party dirty tricks and smears against the Left, Michael Crick Comments.  Crick is the only mainstream journalist who has even acknowledged the programme, to my knowledge. Part 2 is out Saturday. It is absolutely shocking what went on, but also absolutely shocking that the 'thugs, trots, and antisemites' narrative was never challenged *even slightly* by any mainstream media. There was no pushback *at all* when allegations were made. Not even from the Guardian and BBC, who just uncritically and ..read more

Here's a first draft article for THINK. Any errors, do let me know....  Ayer on Religious Language   Stephen Law   ABSTRACT: Here is a brief introduction to Ayer’s radical criticism of religious belief. According to Ayer, a sentence like ‘God exists’ doesn’t assert something false, rather, it fails to assert anything at all.   Religious belief is of course criticised on a variety of fronts. Critics often focus on the truth-claims of religions, such as that a God or gods exist, that Jesus rose from the dead, or that there is an afterlife. They insist these claims are unjust ..read more