I used to try and combat the amazing ignorance of international-law-hating self-styled libertarians too, but eventually I decided it was bad for my blood pressure. And Mr Gray does it far better than I.

Incidentally, I’d be delighted to see a World Government. Not because I think it’d be any better than anything we’ve got now (although there’s no particular reason, based on the examples of the EU and the UN, to believe that it would be appreciably worse), but because it would really, really, really annoy most of the people I despise.

Good call, Brazilian AIDS programme director Pedro Chequer: anyone promoting ‘faith-based’ anything should always be told to fuck right off, and that goes doubly for faith-based sex education.

But does this opposition to the Emperor’s Schemes of Truth and Light mean that Brazil is now not a democracy?

Yup, the bastards at Associated Newspapers have rounded up some Usual Suspects from the City to pretend that the economy’s in trouble. Did someone say "lying in order to sway London marginals"?

"Vote for the Lib Dems on Thursday and you could be signing a young person’s death warrant." – The Sun’s editorial, today (part 1).

"The sacrifice made by squaddie Anthony Wakefield [killed by Tony Blair’s war in Iraq aged 24] will never be forgotten." – The Sun’s editorial, today (part 2).

The first Sun op-ed appears merely to be ignorant: the idea that decriminalising drug users (not dealers, not importers) will harm them more than the current system simply makes no sense to anyone who knows more than nothing about the current system.

However, the juxtaposition of the two articles makes me think that whoever writes the leader column is just a brilliant pisstaker. "Vote Lib Dem, and young people will die for no discernible cause. Not like under Labour…"

Regular readers may be aware of my less-than-glowing views on the Adam Smith Institute. However, creditably, they support Labour’s plans for a national road pricing system.

So they should. Road tax is a regressive system that does nothing to ease congestion; petrol tax is better than road tax on both measures but still not brilliantly targeted (and is far too low to have a significant effect).

The only dodgy recommendation from the ASI is that they suggest the money should be used for road improvements. Bollocks to that: [cut taxes/improve government services] (depending on your ideological persuasion), and let the selfish twats who needlessly drive around in cities suffer.

Apparently I’ve now got a LiveJournal feed. So if you use LiveJournal, you can, err, I don’t know, do something or other with it.

As usual, Fafnir has a good point. Or alternatively,

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours,

But I think that God’s got a lame sense of humour,

And if he saw Two Pints of Lager And a Packet of Crisps,

I’d expect to find him laughing.

While on that subject, I recommend that anyone with a Europe vs America intellectual superiority complex watches at least five minutes of Two Pints of Lager And a Packet of Crisps. This will provide unequivocal evidence that they are hopelessly, tragically wrong. Genuinely the worst comedy ever made, anywhere.

"[H]e’s a complete and total idiot, who… only got to be where he was on the good graces of his father…a pathetic example of American political nepotism" – now, can you guess which US 2000 presidential election candidate an LGFer is referring to?

The terror hawks really do live on another planet, don’t they?

As well as making you boring, sobriety makes you poor ("nearly 50% of upper-middle class and upper-class adults are frequent drinkers, compared to 30% of the rest of the population").

Via (danger, high swiveleyedloonery)

Update: don’t vote Labour (with apologies to Harry Hutton).