The average voter wants low taxes, lavish public services, and golden elephants, but tough tits. Leadership, if it means anything at all, means telling people hard truths. (View Post)

Society would seem much more youthful (the median age was about 21 in his time, compared to 41 now), but yes, there would be greybeards, (View Post)

In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number. But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of chil… (View Post)

Sure. The Middle East was a war zone, fuelled by slave-raiding, well before Sykes Piquot. (View Post)

And, he provided weapons, training, and finance to PIRA. (View Post)