*Compulsory worship of national symbols is the sure sign of a culture in decline.*

The latest lifelong UK resident to be denied a UK passport is, ironically, a member of British nobility.

With his position, he won't suffer much difficulty — unlike the people who were forced to live in Jamaica for lack of records of living in Britain as children.

The Tories have made private corruption of the state's work into normal practice.

Various aspects of the response to Covid-19 were contracted out to companies that didn't have the capacity to do the job at all. Almost everything that the UK government tried to do, failed. Vaccine production was the exception because the Tories didn't have the choice to hire unknown companies to make pharmaceuticals.

Putin plans to criminalize support for Navalny's opposition movement by arbitrarily designating it an "extremist group".

I've denounced for years the US practice of designating organizations as "terrorist" without holding a trial to prove it. When the US shows contempt for human rights, other countries are quick to follow the same path.

In Brazil, Covid-19 is killing lots of young, vigorous, formerly healthy people. It could be that the Brazilian variant is the explanation.