Your last point is, I think, spot on. More generally you can claim that technology in general seeks to remove the friction from life, but it's often in the friction that interesting things happe… (View Post)

I cannot hear the words "direct action" without implicitly adding the preceding words "non-violent" to them. It was always, always, always "non-violent direct action". (View Post)

On Henry VIII it surprised me as an adult to learn quite how long he was married to Catherine of Aragon - more than twenty years! Obviously he went through them with bloodthirsty pace afterwards, but… (View Post)

Yes. The dying days of every Prime Minister are filled with announcements of things that don't happen, and it will only be more so with Starmer. (View Post)

If people hadn't broken the law and refused to pay the poll tax we would still have it. Nobody is happy with its replacement, council tax, but it's survived because no-one has been willing … (View Post)