As the World Turns

Well, it’s been a whole month since the last gabfest and, frankly, the whole news cycle seems to be SSED (Same Sh-t, Every Day …you can buy your own vowel). Every day, Donnie Doofus spews some more of his bloviating bushwah and every day China’s syncophantic bureaucracy spews more fatuous figures than the day before. And the world stumbles on … Read More

The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free

I wish that I could say that these words were facetious or, seeing as they aren’t, that I had said them first. Unfortunately, neither is true – the quote is from Current Affairs on August 8th and it pithily crystallizes the current conundrum….fake news abounds and it’s free – Breitbart, Fox, Q’Anon…as are all the conspiracy mongerers not fit to … Read More

Figures Don’t Lie, Liars Figure!

Good day, all – I hope that you are all well and doing everything possible to stay safe. The saying, “Figures don’t lie but liars figure”, was first told to me by my father-in-law, the late Louis Orenstein, QC z”l, a brilliant lawyer and a real down-to-earth principled man. The statement itself has been attributed both to a brilliant statistician … Read More

The World’s Gone Quackers!

On June 30th, 2020, the Nikkei Asian Review’s headline was succinct, “China retreats from 50-year pledge of Hong Kong’s autonomy”. The next day, July 1st, the National Security Law went into effect, giving the police the right to break into premises and to also monitor phones and computers, all without a warrant. It is now against the law to criticize … Read More

Sad, Very Sad, Yugely Sad

Well, it’s been 3 days since my last rant and, judging by the amount of immediately favourable responses, maybe I should give up on reporting the news and stick to rants and raves LOL All joking aside, though, there is a lot of news out there and it is often difficult for the well-intentioned person to find it amongst the … Read More

“V” Stands For?

Hi – I hope that all are well, wearing their masks, and washing their hands. I had already spent about 10 hours making and arranging notes for this column but then decided to instead write free-style about something that affects all of us. Remember when people used to declaim about “the good old days”? Generally they were ‘old’ ie. 60+. … Read More

Lapse

It’s been 2 months since my last …… submission (for those of you who thought that I was going to say, “confession”, I confess that I am not Catholic, except in some of my tastes ?. And for those of you who always complained that, “life is boring, always same old same old,” I guess that the Good Lord heard … Read More

FOS

I am sorry to say that it seems to me that almost the entire cast of characters leading the world’s countries seem to be cut from the same sorry bolt of defective cloth – to wit in no particular order: As you can easily surmise, given a cast of characters exhibiting such a deficiency of smarts (except where their own … Read More

OY–OI-AIIIAH

That long-standing question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, could be paraphrased by asking, “Which came first, incompetent government or mistrust of government?” Regretfully, I don’t claim to have the answer to either question but, as to the latter, I can state without fear of recrimination that incompetency in government and mistrust of government are at sky-high … Read More

Coincidence

One of the major tests of how well the UK is going to fare on its own is how well it adjusts to and accommodates its trading partners – after all, trade is, in its most basic format, an accommodation …I’ll give you 3 of this if you give me 3 of that. It appears that, instead of being able … Read More