Wessie du Toit
@wessiedutoit
Writer. Interested in design, aesthetics, history. Weekly essays at http://thepathosofthings.substack.com
Good on the "institutional rot" in the British governing class, especially the main parties and civil service. There are no longer the schools, the ambition, or even the knowledge to train a competent elite.
The horrific truth about British politics, on the anniversary of Keir Starmer’s landslide election victory, is that things are actually worse than they look, bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Google search was so amazing when it worked. You could explore the hidden corners of the internet
coming up on two generations of internet users who've never known a reliable search engine
I've never understood how progressives can be proud of appealing to teenagers. We all know that young people are idiots. I probably shouldn't have had the vote until I was 25. You should be embarrassed if your ideas are especially popular among students.
“Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that he has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.” Weber on the Protestant work ethic.
"We need to make sure we have that work ethic – people used to call it the Protestant work ethic." Kemi Badenoch there, quoting an inspiring phrase from Max Weber, the man who famously described capitalism as an "iron cage."
"We need to make sure we have that work ethic – people used to call it the Protestant work ethic." Kemi Badenoch there, quoting an inspiring phrase from Max Weber, the man who famously described capitalism as an "iron cage."
The famous Pomegranate Door of Casa Bellia in Turin, Italy
You have to hand it to the YIMBYs. Basically a group of Londoners that pressured the government to plaster English villages with housing estates, and somehow made the residents of those places feel selfish for complaining.
The new 10 Year Plan for the NHS presents Britain with a choice: take responsibility for social breakdown or submit to an ever-expanding nanny state. My essay for @unherd buff.ly/2VlidMS
My new Marxist-Leninist party will be focused on: - dictatorship of the proletariat - seize control of the means of production - world revolution - centrist policies everywhere else
America’s Party will be focused on: -reduce debt, responsible spending only -modernize military with ai/robotics -pro tech, accelerate to win in ai -less regulation across board but especially in energy -free speech -pro natalist -centrist policies everywhere else Are you…
Also hounding Italians in East Africa is a force of 1000 Ethiopian guerrillas led by a British Major, Orde Wingate, who wears a purse made from the scrotum of a dead Italian soldier.
I recently got stopped & ticketed by the City of London Police for, & I kid you not, “cycling no handed”. Even though it’s clearly not an offence, the officer said they were ticketing me under the Human Rights Act as I was infringing other people’s Article 2 ‘Right to Life’, in…
We've launched our summer campaign Safer City Streets. The campaign focuses on offences that matter to communities, like cyclists going through red lights. Nearly 300 cyclists have received fixed penalty notices for going through red lights so far this year.
Housing isn't the solution or antidote to societal breakdown. Housing is crucial. But without social trust and solidarity housing schemes will inevitably reflect wider social decay.
Live near here and it’s oppressive, unpleasant, lacks commercial spaces and breeds anti social behaviour, one of the worst bits of London — a catastrophe of urban planning
I am sincerely pleased that over the last 20 years London has built thousands of new homes along the Thames at Nine Elms and Vauxhall. I just wish we had built them in a way that edifies the city and its inhabitants rather than scarring and marring it.
This must have been what it felt like in late antiquity as the Roman empire fell apart and people gradually lost the ability to read classical texts
The government has effectively abandoned its flagship welfare reform - the overhaul of PIP disability benefits - entirely After so much political pain, all the arguments that this was a moral and economic necessity, it's gone. Just like that The only conclusion you can reach is…