David Friedman on the death penalty

Very glad this chap is blogging, always did find him interesting.

Ted's songs of the year

These are the new songs that I have most enjoyed this year (I don't have the patience for long players, so there will be no album equivalent); I'm not sure that strictly speaking they were all released in 2005, but hey. They are of course in order, to do anything else would be a cop out.

Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright
I predict a riot - Kaiser Chiefs
Apply some pressure - Maximo park
Army of Lovers - Lee Ryan
Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts - Arctic Monkeys
Be yourself - Audioslave
Factory - Martha Wainwright
Banquet - Bloc Party
2 More Years - Bloc Party
Juicebox - The Strokes
Trouble - Ray LaMontagne
Wake Up - The Arcade Fire
Hope There's Someone - Anthony and the Johnsons
Somewhere else - Razorlight

Looking back on my list I am disappointed it is not cooler, but I have resisted the urge to remove songs that truly belong here on the basis they were recorded by Audioslave, or to alter it so I look less like an NME reading teenager, which I really am not.

David Friedman

David Friedman has a new blog, which I've added to our list of blogs. I was a fan of his ideas as a student; a few years older and I've decided he might be nuts, but that certainly doesn't exclude anyone from our blogroll.

Waste of space

Excellent post on the Lib Dems leadership from Stephen Pollard.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the bookies’ favourite, is a typically British construct: a man respected not because of what he says but how he says it. He might appear to have gravitas, but on every issue of substance he is away with the fairies

Which works as a spot on discription of Tony Benn too.

A life less ordinary

The start and end of the Telegraph's obituary for :

Richard Pryor, the American actor and stand-up comedian who died on Saturday aged 65, was one of the funniest, and most foul-mouthed, men in the world. . . . . . . . . . . Richard Pryor was married seven times, to five women; he had seven children.

Long, bendy, and built to enforce the new order.

The day of the Routemaster bus is over, and across the media words have been spilled like motorcyclist's blood over how attached those darned Londoners are to their silly red and shiny buses.

The Routemaster was a bus for a different time. It was a bus that assumed that your ankles weren’t going to snap if you tried jumping off at a traffic light. It was a bus for people who felt like screaming "Habeas Corpus" when trapped on board - next to the screaming pushchair - ½ a mile past where they'd wanted to get off, just because it wasn't a designated stop. Yes, the Routemaster was an anachronism in our modern world.

Britain is old, and old people pen letters to their councillors, and stroll down, on their permanent leave of absence from employment, to their ballot box at 10 am. So, in the name of the disabled, efforts were made at the highest of levels to appease our growing elder generation. Steam is building under the “more public toilets” debate. We can't have our seniors wetting themselves in public, can we? The engine is beginning to roar on anti-social behaviour, and gradually the legal obligation to send pictures of grandchildren every three months will become punishable with imprisonment.

I, for one, welcome our new geriatric overlords. Would you like some more tea, Marjorie?

Samizdata quote of the day

The Samizdata quote of the day, though a reasonable few lines, is a quote from one of the members of Samizdata, possibly even coined during one of his Samizdata posts or comments. Perhaps we can look forward to Samizdata sweeping the board in the next 'Samizdata blog of the year' awards.

David Cameron

Those who've been waiting to hear my take on the new Conservative Party leader need wait no more. I like the cut of his jib, as indeed I like the cut of David Davis's jib, though I like Cameron's more as it is shiny and went to a good school.

Latest football silliness

Just liked the picture.