Tom 's Library tagged ethics →  View Popular

I also sensed an unspoken question on everyone’s mind: “Ted, what do you think is the Big One?”

His answer surprised us all. In effect, he said, it’s none of the above. Then, in three key words, he nailed the concern we’d all been circling around. “If you look at all of these issues,” he said “and ask what’s common to them all, it’s lousy decision making.”

In Unended Quest Popper observed bluntly that "there
is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation" [UNQ 51].
Although this appears to rule out the possibility of objectivity,
that was not Popper's intention. Rather, again following Kant
perhaps, he thought the basis for objectivity lay elsewhere:
"the objectivity of scientific statements lies in the
fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested" [LSCD
44]. He later restated this slightly differently: "it is the
public character of science... which preserves the objectivity of
science" [POH 155-6].

Many participants said religion divided society, fuelled intolerance and
spawned “irrational” educational and other policies.

One said: “Faith in supernatural phenomena inspires hatred and prejudice
throughout the world, and is commonly used as justification for persecution
of women, gays and people who do not have faith.”

The findings contrast with Rowntree’s “scourges of humanity”, which included
poverty, war, slavery, intemperance, the opium trade, impurity and gambling.

Poverty and drugs remain, but are joined by issues such as family breakdown,
young people’s behaviour and fears over immigration.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he
was “extremely pleased”.

“Britain has had it with religion,” he said.

It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.

The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.

Even at established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the house.

One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news. They are in a vicious 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal new products and expose corporate gaffes.

To the victor go the ego points, and, potentially, the advertising. Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.

Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.

“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.

What the modern clergy can't stand is the powerful evocation of England. When they see the word "England" they don't hear the music of ancient Albion. They see patriotism and national pride, which to them are the next worse things to fascism and expansionary imperialism.

But, as Chesterton said, if a man won't love his country, it is difficult to believe he loves anything. Blake's hymn was a prelude to Milton, and he knew that Paradise Lost, the Fall of Man, happens down the Old Kent Road as definitely as anywhere else.

Odd, the trendy clergy's preference for abstractions and internationalism when it was abstracted international communism under Stalin and Mao which slaughtered millions more even than the über-nationalists in the Third Reich.

There is nothing abstract or theoretical about Blake's hymn. He wasn't writing a report for the General Synod. As a poet of genius, he knew that the way to convey spiritual realities is to incarnate them in things: swords, chariots, clouded hills, mountains green.

In Squandered, the author's analysis has moved on. There is no doubt over who's to blame for the mess we are in. Brown is not a victim; he is the culprit.

Not only has money been blown on an eye-popping scale, the Government operates a relentless programme of deception to cover up blunders.

In 10 years, Labour has spent about £1trillion - that's £1,000,000,000,000 - more than would have been the case, inflation adjusted, if government spending had been held at 1997-98 levels. That's about £50,000 for every household. Education has received an extra £185bn, health an additional £269bn and welfare, ie, social security benefits, £343bn more.

And what do we have to show for it? A state-school system that is so poor, there is a stampede into private education, and our best universities are being bullied by Ed Balls and his henchmen to abandon the quest for excellence in order to accommodate pupils from under-performing comprehensives.

Mr Grynberg told The Daily Telegraph he was bringing the case because he did not want to be pursued by the Department of Justice (DoJ) on bribery charges.

"Unless I assert that I was an unwilling participant in this, my neck could be on the line. I'm too old to go to prison," said 76-year-old Mr Grynberg, who believes the minimum federal sentence in such a situation would be five years and a $1m fine.

This is the second such case filed by Mr Grynberg against BP in recent weeks. BP and Lord Browne were named in a suit alleging bribery of government officials in Grenada.