zmkccommonplace

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All that can ever really be said for war is that sometimes, as we saw 18 months ago, the conditions for peace are blown apart by acts of deep evil.

Juliet Samuel

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Wind farms aren’t power stations.

They’re totems.

Someone on Twitter, criticising the UK's Net Zero policy under the current UK government

Full text:

Ed Miliband, the man who taxed your heating and calls it progress.

"Clean homegrown power," he croaks while British steel dies, coal lies buried, and gas is banned like contraband.

Wind farms aren’t power stations.

They’re totems.

Green cathedrals built by global investors, subsidised by you, delivering nothing when it’s calm and nothing when it’s dark.

This isn’t energy independence.

It’s foreign built turbines spinning on Chinese rare earths, funded by taxpayer subsidies, to power woke data centres and DEI departments while your nan switches off her kettle at 4pm.

Ask the pensioner if her bill is falling.

Ask the builder how “secure” his job is when the grid fails.

Ask the fisherman whose waters are now a blade forest.

It’s religious fanaticism.

When the lights go out, remember this post.

And remember the name Ed Miliband.

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If I can't trust you not to put a boy in my daughter's locker room, why would I talk to you about taxation policy?

44.36 minutes in here

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To survive, a civilisation needs a certain amount of forward movement. But not as much as it needs to keep up basic standards.

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The liberal is convinced that if you don’t get what you want, instead of accepting that, you should rearrange heaven and earth to get it. Whatever your desire is, you deserve it. Those of us who are grown up know this is not the path to a good life.

Response to the NYT article posted here yesterday:

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Throughout the year and a half or so that we saw each other, he continued to gesture to his incapacity to commit as if it were a separate being, an unfortunate child who followed and relied upon him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

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China produces 32pc of the world’s manufacturing goods but accounts for 13pc of world consumption. The rest of us have to absorb this surplus.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/25/europe-economic-war-two-fronts-china-greater-danger/

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There is no mistake as great as thinking you’re incapable of making one.

Camilla Tominey, UK journalist on a serious blunder by a UK radio commentator with a high opinion of himself.

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For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.

Stefan Zweig

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The scale and array of risks to the UK fiscal outlook remains daunting.

UK Office of Budget Responsibility, July 2025

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For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Diary

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There were a great many things to be said against Mrs Thatcher but she was at least straight. You never had any cause to think she was being devious.

Ferdinand Mount, formerly Head of Thatcher's Policy Unit, latterly fascinated by liars

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Being a woman of a certain age is a kind of superpower.

Patricia Nicol on BBC radio's Sue Mitchell, who is in her sixties

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When you hear people condemn "escapism", ask yourself who hates the concept of "escape" the most? The answer is: jailers.

Peter Kreeft, Doors in the Walls of the World

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I write because I wake up, I fall short, I sleep, I wake. I write because the world and all I love in it is forcing itself upon my attention and to pay attention is everything ... I write because I'm not dead yet. And I seem not to want to be ... I want to attest to the goodness of life and I want to share something. If it isn't a life — well, then, let it be a sentence.

Candia McWilliam

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Any company is all about the people that it employs, and the danger with big business and multinationals is that they lose that touch, that connection, with people who work there.

Simon Boyd, Managing Director, REIDsteel, speaking to Liam Halligan on the podcast Planet Normal

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/red-eds-kamikaze-net-zero-policies-and-the-most/id1514949294?i=1000717591756&r=2581

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From Substack