Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"One of the reasons for this was that every class in the school was a real community: you either joined in with everyone else or you were totally outside" - or at least, theoretically

"The moment she set eyes on the decor she knew at once what it was that, even more than her personal problems, had so oppressed her inside the walls of the fortress." - a house is not a home without your decor.

"Thank you, Vitay," the class chorused.
"May it do you good," Gina muttered.

Superb translation of "Egészségetekre!", but why 'mutter' for 'suttog'?

"The girls were forever complaining about being kept on a tight leash, but as soon as someone applied a lighter touch and allowed them a looser reign they showed how deeply the system was engrained in them by despising his kindness as weakness."

"[Thatcher's] speech [at Bruges] spooked the Oxford Tories. Ruling Britain was the prerogative of their caste. They didn't want outsiders in Brussels muscling in."

"'The thing about the Union was that you learned to speak'. Labour Club members never did learn."

"...for all the popular predjudice against politicians, it's a job in which likeability is an almost essential quality" - Orbán?

"Johnson even managed to forge an alliance with a Union hack from Ruskin College, and rallied its student body of mostly adult working-class trade unionists in his support" - anticipates his taking of the red wall in 2019.

"Johnson learned at school to defeat opponents whose arguments were better simply by ignoring their arguments. He discovered he could win elections and debates not by boring the audience with detail, but with carefully timed jokes, calculated lowerings of voice, and ad hominem jibes." - Cambridge footlights, the other elite?

"Johnson was an example of the coalition that makes up the British elite: the core of hereditaries is supplemented by upper-middle-class strivers and a few invitees from the lower orders" - supplemented, invitees?

"Boarding schools in particular helped create a toff caste, into which outsiders like Johnson - a child of the bohemian middle class - could be initiated by learning the codes and speech rules from age seven."

"If a student is capable of producing two well-written essays a week, with well structured arguments, they can kind of get away with not knowing much about their subjects. This may sound superficial, but comunicating is useful in life. Sometimes you need to convince people succintly, especially if you go into politics. Oxford will reward it."

"Having grown up outside of Britain...I also felt blessedly free of the class anxieties that most of the natives seemed to carry around with them." - does this work for my children too?

"One classics tutor at Oxford compares Johnson to the ghastly upper-class Athenians in Plato's Dialogues: they had been corrupted long before they came to study with Socrates."

Seems appropriate as Cameron is back.

"A prince, says Machiavelli, ought always to be a great asker and a patient hearer of truth about those things of which he has inquired, and he should be angry if he finds that anyone has scruples about the telling him the truth. What government needs is great askers." - what government gets through elections is the most effective liers, perhaps we should be sending people who they know are ignorant to parliament?

"Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to 'fourth rate' Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of History is inexorable."

"If this was 'arrogance of power' ... it was not so much the fatal hubris and over-extension that defeated Athens and Napoleon, ... Germany and Japan, as it was failure to understand that problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques or even American goodwill. Nation-building was the most presumptuous of the illusions." - pub. 1984

"Morale among the remaining American forces sank, with units avoiding or refusing combat, wide use of drugs, and - something new to the American Army - cases of 'fragging' or murder by hand granade of officers and NCOs."

"But since Use, which is the Supreme Law in the matter of Language" - from Horace, Art of Poetry apparently.

"That every man may enjoy the same Rights that are granted to others" - a declaration of universal Man rights, except for slaves, Catholics and Atheists.

"But Oppression raises Ferments, and makes Men struggle to cast off an uneasie and tyrannical Yoke." - I would say steady oppression works just fine, its unexpected change which 'raises ferments,'

"Every man has an immortal Soul, capable of Eternal Happiness or Misery; whose Happiness depending on his believing and doing those things in this Life, which are necessary to the obtaining of God's favour, and are prescribed by God to that end;" - spelt out like this, Christianity has always seemed a small selfish thing, it's hardly living to love others.

"Truth is not taught by Laws, nor have she any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men." - Locke unaware of human biases.

"And to believe this and that to be true, does not depend upon our Will." - unexpected thing for a devout Christian to say, isn't believing something that runs against our normal experience, an act of Faith. Isn't Faith itself beliving things that are not obviously true?

"[Christ], indeed, hath taught men how, by Faith and good Works, they may obtain Eternal Life. But he instituted no Commonwealth. He prescribed unto his Followers no new and peculiar form of Government; Nor put he the Sword into any Magstrate's hand, with Commission to make use of it in forcing men to forsake their former Religion, and receive his." - separation of Church and State.

"Then at last it appears what Zeal for the Church, joyned with the desire of Dominion, is capable to produce; and how easily the pretence of Religion, and of the care of Souls, serves for a cloak to Covetous, Rapine, and Ambition." - Hungary, 2010-

"The Publick Good is the Rule and Measure of all Law-making." - no analysis of the public good

test

"It was like when they brought out a figure of the Devil to frighten you on Christmas Eve, when you knew all along that it was really your father's batman in fancy dress."