Category: Articles & Essays

Free will and Brexit

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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More equal than others

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

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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Thinking inside the box

Articles & Essays

Many have emphasised the importance of certain institutions, such as parliaments and courts of justice, but exactly how they should be built has generally been seen as a matter of irrelevant detail. As is often the case, theoreticians ignore what practitioners know to be important…

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