The Oxford vaccine looks promising, though you’ll need two doses a month apart. (The Russian vaccine is much easier. Just one quick jab with an umbrella.) But conspiracy theorists are saying that the government plans to inject us with toxic chemicals. (Crazy idea: they’ll just put them in the water.) Personally, I just avoid the virus by chewing two cloves of garlic a day. That keeps everyone at a safe distance. (Certainly works as far as I’m concerned — Ed.)

A big rise in unemployment is causing anguish. (A friend of mine lost his job in the Evo-Stik factory and just fell apart.) So we’re all drinking more to ease our lockdown woes (though I’m sure my old Chemistry teacher told me that alcohol was a solution). We’re also shopping much more online. (I just ordered a chicken and an egg on Amazon. I’ll let you know.) And communicating online too. (I downloaded something called WhatSap but it just seems to identify tree resins.)

At least the gyms will be reopening. I’ve a friend who intends to be in the gym every day—but then he’s the janitor. Anyway, I’ve been keeping in shape at home. (Unfortunately the shape is potato — Ed.)

Riding high this week is Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is so slick he could be on the stage. (If he did a levitation course he’d be at the top of the class. Might be a different story if he took a book-balancing course, though.) Sinking low is Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who’s had to let Jeremy Corbyn back into the Party. (Yes, sometimes you meet someone and you know from the very first moment that you want to spend your whole life without them.)

I digress…

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Have you ever noticed how all the scientific instruments that look for intelligent life are pointed away from the earth? Well, there is intelligent life around, even on the Internet.
 

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Ministers should confine themselves to steering the ship of state and leave Captain Parliament to set the course, says ASI Senior Fellow Tim Ambler. “The trouble with power is that it is addictive,” he says. “Instead of sticking to steering, the party in power fiddles with legislation and tries to manage things best left to others.” You can see that in the huge rise of 'Statutory Instruments’ — thousands of pages of ministerial orders that are simply nodded through Parliament each year without MPs even having the time to read them, never mind understand them. And don’t blame the EU for all this regulation: the vast bulk of it is home-grown. And too often, says Ambler, mere ministerial ‘advice’ is dressed up to look like commands. As Michael Gove once said, “the machinery of government is no longer equal to the challenges of today.” Well, quite. Ambler offers some solutions.
 

Looks like Edmund Burke, and maybe Kropotkin (How do you know all this stuff? — Ed.) had it right, says super-blogger Tim Worstall. We’ve seen a huge boom in volunteering — people delivering food and medicines, checking on vulnerable people and much else. The ‘little platoons’ have taken over where the state is absent or unreliable. “Community self help,” says Worstall, is actually the “appropriate technology for so many of life’s activities and problems: the voluntary association of those concerned to deal with what is in front of them. What’s not to like?" But a dark, dark cloud is forming. The government commissioned Tory MP Danny Kruger to explore how to make all this community spirit “sustainable” over the long term. In other words, “we’ve just found out that certain parts of life are better run without politics, so politics must be reintroduced to them.” Aaaargh!
 

And check out too:

• If only Owen Jones understood the meerest smidgeon of economics
   
• Blinding us with nonscience
   
• It’s possible to have entirely too much safety

 

Not our blog but almost just as good!
 

Why academics hold Thatcher and Trump in such contempt. Philip Patrick tells the Spectator that the pointy-heads get very nervous about people who aren’t qualified by their standards, and ask pointed questions about their treasured institutions, but still manage to improve things.

How slick radicals feed socialism to school kids. Tony Parsons explains how teachers in Australia are being fed free but one-sided content that they lazily dish up to the kids.

Much debate about how Margaret Thatcher is depicted in the Netflix (they’re a bigger content producer than the BBC, you know) series The Crown this week. (No debate needed. The series started as a drama documentary and has now splodged into soap opera — Ed.) So here’s something suitably evocative of the real thing — a message for some of her successors, perhaps?

 

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self esteem and personal satisfaction."

 

Bye,

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