@MeathGuerilla@avrilbradley23 Not just the left. There has always been a Whiggish strand of thinking on the centre/right (held by Churchill among others) that Cromwell was a necessary link in the chain of events which led to a parliamentary democracy.
@FraserNelson@James_Hellyer The point he is making, I think, is to question whether it is a good idea to hand out passports (hundreds of thousands of them) to individuals who cannot support themselves and are a net fiscal cost. Do you have an opinion on this?
@AyoCaesar Hari’s was and his reputation was destroyed. O’Reilly was an utterly obscure academic, unlike Arday, who chose to make himself a public figure. What is your next best point?
@residentadviser@ajwillshire We were assured that the purpose of the VAT is that it would raise money for the state sector. If it does not do that (and it appears not to be doing that) but is continued anyway, it must have sole other purpose, no?
@PeteB93287297@commontruth_@DAaronovitch I don’t know of any public schoolboys who have been made professor at 37 and paid (allegedly) £1.4m for their (largely confected) memoir in their early 40s. Besides, public schools tend to provide a rigorous education: very few are attracted to the social pseudosciences.
@crouchendspur@JasonLawlor1003@sinnfeinireland@davidcullinane Hostile, yes, murderous, on occasion yes but not consistently so, genocidal, no. The latest biography by Ronald Hutton (no hagiographer) contains a careful and unprejudiced review of the evidence.
@DAaronovitch@toadmeister Things that don’t bother David: the abuse and murder of women by fake asylum seekers. Things that do bother David: people pointing this out.
@AngusColwell It’s a great pub, with a gloriously eccentric crowd of day drinking regulars. (The retired clergyman’s response to the retiree journo’s post-Brexit crowing about his Irish passport: “Why don’t you fuck off to Romania then?”) Never seen Keir in there.