by Fergus Downie Owing to the incompetence of our statisticians our death toll is now projected to decline but there is limited comfort to be drawn all the same. It is easy now to see that the dead ends of the counterculture were an ideal preparation for the hysteria unleashed by a phantom plague. ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie I really don’t like to say it, but Jordan Peterson really bores me. Until recently I repressed the urge to say it out loud because these days anyone saying a man is not a woman is a prophet and when all is said and done, sometimes you just have to choose your sides.  I’ll ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie It turns out we were wrong. One of the consolations we might have expected from millions flooding into the desiccated humanities was the blessing of mass unemployment to its consumers. No fate would be more richly deserved by the spoiled brats erupting into ecstasies of rage ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie Ideas have consequences. Yup, especially bad ones. It’s a truism and also the title of a great book by an American reactionary who Ill deserves his oblivion, the more so as he possessed the Nietzschean gift of being able to skewer mob delusions with an acid phrase. Richard Weaver’s ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie At a time when Hollywood is obsessed with its own self importance it is odd that so few memorable films are being made, and that even the best have so few of the signature moments that make them immortal. Those of a particular vintage will know what I’m talking about. They were ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie I’m glad it was posted but an august journal having the good manners to air a discordant viewpoint doesn’t mean you’re entitled to have your views treated with breathless seriousness. A couple of points on ‘consciousness raising’ and and ‘Western appropriation of foreign cultures’. ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie It had to happen eventually I guess and in retrospect Dominic Raab, a serious man who I feared had dug his political grave, showed what a modest exertion of stubbornness could achieve. Johnson followed in a deft manoeuvre and soon even the ludicrous Starmer rose to the occasion ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie If the NHS has become an anaemic obsession amongst the British (and I do wonder how many with the capacity for an independent thought genuinely feel that inspired by one of the worst public health services in Europe) one can at least take solace in the fact that teachers have ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie At this pace we are probably not going back till after Christmas and on a rare visit to our deserted glass outpost I saw all the antiseptic precautions being laid out for our nervous return. Clipped bureaucratic instructions abound and the most interesting is the ‘two at a time’ ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie I have to admit, defunding the police makes a lot of sense. In the UK. Much like our other nationalised treasures they’ve been below par for a while, and their inefficiency cum politicisation is all the more galling when you consider their energetic pursuit of trivia. The obligatory ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie Guilt is a great aphrodisiac and to judge by the hysterical antics of those privileged white brats haunting Murphy Donovan ’s hood it’s a pick me up that just keeps giving. And why shouldn’t it?. To self-flaggelate for something you’ve actually done is an important indicator ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie The congestion is back. My brother reported on a recent tailback in Ashington in Northumbria, an unimposing former pit town where the colliery closed in the 80s and its hinterland descended soon after into drug addled oblivion. The cause? ‘‘MaccyDees’ had reopened and the local ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie Daniel Cohn-Bendit Ad hominems are rather bad form in ordinary times. As a rule one should play the ball, not the man, but when it comes to Pat Corcoran it is difficult not to linger on the sordid particulars. The postmodern left have played no small part in embracing the personal ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie I have always been a man of action, but almost 30 years ago I added memory loss to my list of virtues. I lived in Whitley Bay back then, and my parents owned a fine black Labrador unimaginatively named Ben who, like so many of his breed, was so stupid (or cunning) that he affected ...Read More...

by Fergus Downie ‘A Corbyn victory is a victory for working men everywhere’. - Letter to the Guardian newspaper November 2018 ‘The man’s a twat’ - Caretaker at Sunderland Leisure Centre December 2019, when consulted on voting intentions. Nowadays everyone saw the disaster coming, and as ...Read More...