- “Why the clock is ticking to a cashless U.K.” – The long-term survival of paper notes and coins is more precarious than ever, warn Simon Foy and Madeleine Ross in the Telegraph.
- “Can we be sure Putin won’t press the red button?” – Almost every week since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion, his army of TV propagandists has threatened the use of nuclear weapons, warns Dominic Sandbrook in the Mail.
- “Keir Starmer clashes with Sadiq Khan over Ulez as he insists there are ‘other ways’ to cut pollution” – Keir Starmer stressed there are “other ways” of cutting pollution as he was grilled about the controversial Ulez policy on a visit to Scotland, says LBC.
- “Roger Hallam slams ‘urban middle-class neo-liberal Left’ behind Ulez” – The founder of Extinction Rebellion has taken aim at the “urban middle-class neo-liberal Left” supporters of the much-hated Ulez scheme, reports the Mail.
- “Writers’ boycott of Edinburgh book festival is self-harm” – No one, least of all writers, benefits from advocating boycotts that could silence book festivals for good, argues Jawad Iqbal in the Times.
- “Hating fossil fuels is such a luxury belief” – The eco-aristocracy has no idea of the horrors that would be unleashed by phasing out oil and coal, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “‘Climate change’ is turning our planet into hell on earth” – The minute the Government starts talking about a state of emergency, is the minute we can expect to start losing more of our freedoms, writes Karen Hunt in OffGuardian.
- “The WEF’s plan for a personal carbon allowance, connected to digital ID” – Wide Awake Media features a Dutch political commentator talking about the WEF’s plans to impose a personal carbon allowance, connected to digital ID, under the pretext of tackling the ‘global boiling crisis’.
- “Toilet politics needn’t be difficult” – The British sense of fair play has been tested by images of men self-identifying their way into women’s toilets, says Debbie Hayton in the Spectator.
- “‘Gender-neutral’ lavatories are an invasion of women’s privacy” – In the Telegraph, Kemi Badenoch makes the case for single-sex public lavatories.
- “Do the police think ‘lesbian’ is a term of abuse?” – Wokeness, far from being ‘kind’, is often just a shiny new way to bully people, writes Julie Burchill in the Spectator.
- “Men don’t belong at lesbian speed dating events” – There isn’t a person on the planet that truly believes it’s possible for a lesbian to have a penis, says Julie Bindel in the Spectator.
- “See no harm” – For a new transgender study, the devil is in the lack of details, writes Ian Kingsbury in City Journal.
- “Edit children’s books but leave the classics alone, says Jacqueline Wilson” – Author Jacqueline Wilson says editing children’s books to remove outdated language can sometimes be justified because young people do not have “a sense of history”, reports the Times.
- “Scottish MP calls for a U.K. ‘truth tsar’ that cracks down on social media platforms” – Scottish MP Owen Thompson is leading the charge for a U.K. ‘truth tsar’ to combat ‘disinformation’. What could possibly go wrong, asks Didi Rankovic in Reclaim The Net.
- “A new blasphemy battle is coming” – It seems almost certain that more blood will be spilled in the West over blasphemy, writes Liam Duffy in UnHerd.
- “Banning the AfD would be a brutal assault on democracy” – The clamour for a ban of the Right-wing populist AfD reveals the authoritarianism of the German elites, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
- “The not-so-strange death of Europe: Cultural sacrifice at the altar of Gaia” – In our ‘age of science’, the modern climate priesthood is figuratively offering the still-beating heart of Europe’s once-mighty civilisation to appease Mother Gaia, writes Tilak Doshi in Forbes.
- “The deadly consequences of cancel culture” – Rupa Subramanya speaks to Spiked’s Brendan O’Neil about the tragic case of highly respected Canadian school headteacher Richard Bilkszto, who committed suicide after being falsely accused of racism during a diversity, equity and inclusion course.
- “Julian Assange could get plea deal, hints U.S. Ambassador to Australia” – The American Ambassador to Australia has indicated that the U.S. may be open to a deal with Julian Assange whereby if he pleaded guilty he would be allowed to serve out the remainder of his prison term in Australian, reports the Times.
- “If we give indigenous Australians special rights, how about indigenous Germans?” – Does being the first to reach a piece of land give you special rights? And are those rights collective and inherited? That is the question Australians are gearing up to answer in a referendum, writes Dan Hannan in the Washington Examiner.
- “Progressive profit: How identity politics captured capitalism” – In a Conservative Reader Substack post, Henry George argues that conservatives must use political power to push back against the networks, institutions and structures of woke capital.
- “Sam Harris has dumped the ‘intellectual dark web’” – Sam Harris’s shift from being a supporter of the ‘intellectual dark web’ to a critic highlights how intellectual stances can evolve and how public opinion can change, writes Oliver Bateman in UnHerd.
- “Klaus Schwab: You must get used to a total erosion of privacy” – Wide Awake Media has an alarming video of the head of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, saying people will just “have to get used to” a total erosion of privacy.
- “Sometimes, only satire does the job” – Busting Anti-Vax Myths! Seriously Expert Arguments for the Covid-Deniers in Your Life is a slim, wickedly funny satire, says Ramesh Thakur in Brownstone Institute.
- “‘Time to move on’: Zuckerberg says Musk ‘isn’t serious’ about cage fight” – Mark Zuckerberg is questioning Elon Musk’s commitment to a promised cage match, saying it appears the Tesla CEO isn’t taking it seriously, according to the Epoch Times.
- “Member of the LGBTQ+ community tries to corner Vivek Ramaswamy” – Vivek Ramaswamy expertly counters a ‘gotcha’ question from a member of the LGBTQ+ community at the Iowa State Fair, warning against foisting ideologies onto children and the “tyranny of the minority”.
WATCH: A “pan-sexual” reporter tries to bait Vivek Ramaswamy at the Iowa State Fair
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 14, 2023
Instead, he delivers a masterclass on how to instantly turn the tables
Watch his masterful warning against activists grooming children, and their “tyranny of the minority”pic.twitter.com/ONS3YPbuaQ
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I’m glad you’ve closed down London Calling. Because your interlocutor has gradually transformed from a reasonable right wing dandy into some species of cultic fruitcake, complete with thin skin, it became impossible to sustain discussion. In the first place he responded with peevish insults to the first suggestion of disagreement; and worse, his “theories”, for want of a better word, boil down to a childish belief in a tribe of all powerful bogeymen. I stopped listening months ago for just this reason. Not only did JD reject the perfectly obvious point that there will never be a single explanation for all things; not only did he dismiss the role that accident plays in life, he wouldn’t even accept the perfectly proper point that in “woke” we are dealing with a tide of intellectual fashion among the whole educated class. No, for him it was bogeymen. At this point I have just heard the typically moderate and generous Young-point that JD is not mad, he’s just evangelical. Well, that sort of Christianity verges on madness in any case, does it not? Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox faith allows for science and reason – free-floating, late-comer’s amateur Protestantism amounts to a belief in UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster. It also explains his appalling sympathy for Islam – among the deadliest enemies freedom has ever had. Finally, to Mr Dixon, no it is not an insult to be called an ethnic nationalist. Ethnic nationalism is there in the belief systems of Churchill and de Gaulle and is wholly distinct from the beliefs of their famous German antagonist.
Clearly there are at least twenty-six religious nuts who worship at the shrine of Little Jim and his fight against the all-powerful Bogeymen. They can’t seem to muster an argument between them. What a surprise!
Like all religious fruitcakes, anything that it is beyond his intellect to understand is ascribed to a god or gods.
This is true of religious fruitcakes but not true of the more rationally religious, for example Dr Johnson, who had little truck with efforts at “theodicy” and dismissed all certainty as to the particular intentions or interventions of God.
And he would certainly not have ascribed all our misfortunes to some ongoing cabal of human agents as it seems the “born again” James is happy to do.
Indeed, with his obsessive focus on particular individuals he is close to viewing them as supernatural powers; and worse, he sees them as involved in a conspiracy over centuries.
Here we meet the ultimate nonsense which mutters darkly about secret societies, Freemasons et al – really, little better than taking Dan Brown seriously. And this, I fear, is why he reacted in such a prickly fashion – or so I understand – to some phantom accusation of anti-Semitism, for that is the really nasty creature which lurks at the end of so many such “rabbit-holes” – and he knows it.
Happily, he is clearly resisting that particular temptation; but one wonders how long it will take to overcome his resistance? After all, a once rational individual now rejects opposition, ascribes every evil to a thousand year conspiracy, denies evolution, palaeontology, the routine precautions of due scepticism and in their place relies on childish, fairy-tale explanations with horrible antecedents and horrifying possibilities. In claiming to be down this “rabbit hole” he evinces a last, uncomfortable sense that he is losing touch with truth; is, perhaps, giving out a final distress signal in hopes that someone might rescue him.
This, ultimately, is why I stopped tuning in. He needs help.
I stopped listening to London Calling simply because the show notes told me in too great a detail who thought what about which topic, so there was no need to listen.
I continued listening to hear Toby calmly and logically dealing with the ever more extreme Delingpole outbursts. I quite like JD and although I tend to dismiss his theories, I found it interesting to listen to them.
Interesting? Surely it was embarrassing? Like listening in on a private session between shrink and fruitcake. As for liking the poor fruitcake, well – he was once likeable, in his downright, right-wing hedonist days. Now that he’s a particularly aggressive member of some sort of pensioners’ Christian Union, complete with American Bible-bashing, he must be quite ghastly to meet.
Like all religious fruitcakes, anything that it is beyond his intellect to understand is ascribed to a god or gods.
Richmond was the capital of the Southern states in the Civil War. The men North of Richmond are yankees and bankers etc
Anthony wasn’t saying he lived there – he’s in NC I think
Good listen and good restaurant dish!! I used to listen to London Calling from the beginning, so will miss friends trying to work stuff out but there was getting less discussion about what might be happening.
I feel more optimistic after listening thank you but I wonder if one of you could listen to JDs latest podcast with the nice Irish guy about covid but worrying if he is right !?
Tuning in next week !
The ad-lib of “Re-wolving the Guardian” was so good that you must make the film. Toby drooling over the Moonbot trans-wolf going through Owen Jones like butter shows Toby’s inner psychopath, the more sinister for his veneer of urbanity.
I might add that I walked my dogs for years among leafy NJ suburbs less than an hour from NYC, happily co-existing with occasional bears and coyotes. Coyotes are half-wolf in the Eastern US and the ones I saw looked as big as wolves. Picking ticks off the dogs was more trouble.
It is hardly surprising that the podcast failed. It is one thing to punctuate something compelling by advertisements but times have moved on and there is no pretending that things are normal anymore. Such a conceit runs contrary to evryone’s lived experience and so such a podcast just gets consigned to background noise like a dog barking in the back garden. I don’t give advice except to say that God hates a coward most of all.
La Proudman is a wank-stain on the fabric of humanity
I was thinking skid mark. Even a wankstain had a degree of potential at some point in its existence.
Sadly I have reached a point with several sets of friends with regard to views on issues like leaving the EU, Covid, Lockdowns, Masks, “Vaccines”, Net Zero, DIE (yes there are HR managers among my friends). With one group we have had to agree not to discuss political issues. Another group (predominantly career long public sector employees) I have let go because we cannot talk about anything much any more due to their deep immersion in their narrative, which is infuriating.
It’s nuclear Toby, just say new-clear, not Dubya’s mangled nu-cu-lar. And regarding the crazy plane lady Nick, you should probably watch this, it may be helpful:
https://youtu.be/pInk1rV2VEg
NEW PODCAST OUT FROM THE REAL NORMAL PODCAST!
We’re back on the airwaves talking about the ‘Bibby Stockholm’ and her massive hull…plus we’re picking the bones out of light fingered museum curators. We cover the awful story of Lucy Letby, whilst also chatting about the usual madness that swirls around the woke, namely Graham Linehan.
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1268768/13442825-ep-53-get-your-big-bibby-stockholm-s-out
PLUS SILLY SONGS you unfortunate proles!