Francis Davies argues with himself in public about writing, books, and more.
Levelling up – is it an option?
Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda? He aims to turn the national economy towards a high skill high pay focus, an intention that appears outright progressive in some ways. Following hot on the heels of the government’s arguably non-conservative methods of handling the pandemic, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, inciting the ire of the conservative back bench in the process, the political shift towards this progress centric attitude may reflect Johnson’s libertarian baseline more than might be immediately suspected.
Can You Do Whatever You Want with Genre Fiction?
Just because the impossible does happen in fiction, this doesn’t mean that anyone is entitled to do anything at any time, and what’s more, genre has nothing to do with it. The ‘genre fiction handwaves god-modding’ argument doesn’t work because the issue being argued is about suspension of disbelief and narrative cohesion – two elements of a story that are somewhat more fundamental than the broad characteristics that identify a work as belonging to a genre category.
Self-righteous like-farming doesn’t allow you to redefine words: Why it would be stupid to categorise incels as terrorists
In the same way that the incels think they should be assigned government-mandated sex slaves, the social justice warriors seem to think the government should regulate thought patterns. What exactly is the state supposed to do about people failing to manage their own egos? Even such a thing could be done, is there a way in which it could be done without sacrificing autonomy or what little privacy anybody has left to external interests, and are people willing to do that? Are the people in favour of categorising incels as terrorists also in favour of snooper’s charters? Have we really sunk to the point where we want a state that acts as a primary school teacher, cleaning our messes and breaking up playground squabbles over who gets to play with the yo-yo?
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