Articles & Essays – Page 71

A day to celebrate paying tax

August 1, 2016 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays

31 July should have been a day of great civic celebration. For the first 212 days of the year, every penny you’ve earned you’ve kept for yourself. In the meantime, you’ve been enjoying and helping others enjoy the health service, public education, kerbside waste collection, policing, defence, pensions, roads and welfare payments, all for free. Only since Sunday have you started to contribute your share to all these and many more benefits of a modern, developed state.

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Free will and Brexit

July 26, 2016 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays

Among all the disagreements over Brexit, one thing at least might appear to be uncontroversial: the decision was a free choice taken by the British people. Brexiteers would say that it was in fact a double victory for freedom, in that the result is a freer country, unshackled from the constraints of the European Union. If this summary seems self-evident it is only because the very idea of freedom has been debased. Brexit is not a paradigmatic instance of freedom at work, but of freedom being confused with something much less valuable: choice.

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Corbyn’s populism is no good for our democracy

July 25, 2016 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays

Think of populism and you’ll likely think of the nasty rightwing nationalism of Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders or Nigel Farage. But if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected as Labour leader, it will be a mild-mannered socialist who will have led the most successful populist campaign in Britain in decades.

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More equal than others

July 21, 2016 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Food

Ben Bramble makes a somewhat speculative suggestion that eating meat might cause us unconscious psychological suffering. What he doesn’t consider, though, is that it might be good that there is something troubling in consuming flesh. This isn’t Disneyland and living authentically, as an adult, requires us to embrace fully the bitter-sweet nature of many of our most profound pleasures.

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Clean eating and dirty burgers

July 19, 2016 Julian Baggini Articles & Essays, Best of, Food

For as long as we can remember, the British have associated delicious food with depraved indulgence. Anything that tastes good has got to be bad for your body, soul or both. The marketing department of Magnum knew this when it called its 2002 limited edition range the Seven Deadly Sins. Nothing makes a product more enticing than its being naughty, or even better, wicked.

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