We try, within the limits of our resources, to report and comment on what’s happening in Wessex. That’s to say, what’s actually happening and not what we or anyone else would like to be happening. Political correctness has been described as a war on noticing. The blinkers were well and truly on in Oxfordshire recently,ContinueContinue reading “Wilful Neglect”
Tag Archives: Crime
Kleptocracy UK
The MP for Maidenhead made a very interesting speech this weekend. Theresa May set out what some observers perceive to be her stall in a future contest for the Tory leadership. (Sad isn’t it, that the chatter is about what British politics can do for her career and not what she can do for British politics?)ContinueContinue reading “Kleptocracy UK”
The New Menu
“the merchant’s function… is to provide for the nation. It is no more his function to get profit for himself out of that provision than it is a clergyman’s function to get his stipend. This stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the object of his life, if he be a true clergyman,ContinueContinue reading “The New Menu”
The Sack of Wessex
Pressure is being piled on MPs to toughen scrap-metal legislation in a bid to stop thieves stripping out our infrastructure in search of a quick profit.There was a time when metal theft was more or less restricted to opportunist pilfering from building sites and removing lead from the roofs of abandoned churches. Not any more.ContinueContinue reading “The Sack of Wessex”
Urban Harvesting
Much has already been written about the unrest that has struck Banbury, Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Reading, Southampton and other places since the weekend. Over a long, hot summer, many more words will appear, whether or not the events themselves recur. After the political debate, the weighty inquiry will ponder and pontificate. Recommendations will be insubstantialContinueContinue reading “Urban Harvesting”
Good Works, Bad Shouldn’t
“Þæt is nu hraðost to secganne, þæt ic wilnode weorðfullice to libbanne þa hwile þe ic lifede, and æfter minum life þæm monnum to læfanne þe æfter me wæren min gemyndig on godum weorcum.””I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to the men who should comeContinueContinue reading “Good Works, Bad Shouldn’t”
The People’s Ponzi
We’ve been hearing quite a lot recently about Ponzi schemes, as the financial chickens come home to roost. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam that promises investors a high rate of return but in fact is paying earlier entrants out of the money collected from later entrants. Eventually, for whatever reason, the scheme willContinueContinue reading “The People’s Ponzi”
A Smaller World, Please
Think globally, act locally. The sentiment is sound but the first instruction requires a lot less effort than the second. A lot less effort, because successive centralist governments at Westminster have made the second instruction well nigh impossible to carry out.Take the example of planning, where local discretion has now been all but abolished. WhenContinueContinue reading “A Smaller World, Please”
Wessex Regionalists 