Snippings

The cry should go up in Europe: more babies, please

Of all the bogeys you might have thought well and truly nailed in the past decade or so, the population control movement seemed most obviously to have a stake through its heart. At a time when we – I mean, anyone over 35 – are all horribly conscious that there won’t be enough taxpayers to support us in gin and cigarettes in our old age, the very last thing we need to worry about is excess population growth. On the contrary: as seen from the dinner party circuit, the real crisis is the difficulty for female graduates in getting anyone to breed with. Forty per cent of women graduates don’t have a single baby at the age of 35…..more, Times

Are we a free country any more?

“In his first statement to Parliament as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said: “Britain is rightly proud to be the pioneer of the modern liberties of the individual.” Little noticed among the cascade of pronouncements about constitutional reform, was a promise to reconsider the ban on unlicensed political protest in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster. Mr Brown implied that when it came to balancing the need for public order with the right to public dissent, this was a law too far…… more Times