The snake that ate the cat
I’m widening the remit of this blog to include examples of high-quality journalism that students might not come across in the course of their studies (i.e., things that aren’t in the Guardian…)
OK, OK…I’m really doing this because of a brilliant Rod Liddle piece in this week’s Spectator which really deserves noising abroad.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/5258993/lets-hear-it-for-the-python-that-had-the-civic-good-sense-to-eat-wilbur-the-cat.thtml
It’s about a snake that ate a cat.
There is a wider point, though. Brief summary:
Cat from house A wanders into garden of house B.
Snake from house B eats cat from House A.
Owners of late cat demand new law restricting pet snakes, backed (well, it wouldn’t be a show without Punch) by the RSPCA.
Jaw jaw is better than law law
And there’s the point. There’s a mindset in the UK that assumes the government can fix everything (despite all evidence to the contrary). So every time something goes wrong, the chorus goes up: there ought to be a law agin it.
No there oughtn’t. As the late, great and underrated Calvin Coolidge put it:
‘The people cannot look to legislation generally for success…’
It’s not as pithy as some his utterances. But it is true.
I’m widening the remit of this blog to include examples of high-quality journalism that students might not come across in the course of their studies (i.e., things that aren’t in the Guardian…)
OK, OK…I’m really doing this because of a brilliant Rod Liddle piece in this week’s Spectator which deserves noising abroad.
It’s about a snake that ate a cat.
There is a wider point, though. Brief summary:
- Cat from house A wanders into garden of house B.
- Snake from house B eats cat from House A.
- Owners of late cat demand new law restricting pet snakes, backed (well, it wouldn’t be a show without Punch) by the RSPCA.
Jaw jaw is better than law law
And there’s the point. There’s a mindset in the UK that assumes the government can fix everything (despite all evidence to the contrary). So every time something goes wrong, the chorus goes up: there ought to be a law agin it.
No, there oughtn’t. As the late, great and underrated Calvin Coolidge put it:
‘The people cannot look to legislation generally for success…”
It’s not as pithy as some of his utterances. But it is true.