Bob Fitzconner, at the Fitzconner place - always

Old times remembered...

Hillel the Elder summed the Torah up in twelve words. Unlike many, I see the entire Judeo-Christian system encapsulated in just one word - Chillax!

@magi_jay If you believe that believing in 'LGBTQ people' advances human flourishing... 🤔

It did feel awesome. With cause. We got healthcare. LGBTQ people could get married. Racial justice advanced. Climate change was being addressed. We almost had a 6-3 liberal Supreme Court. And then people decided to burn it all down because it wasn't exciting enough.

@miriam_cates Perhaps the really more fundamental error of judgement was not the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson to Washington but the preceding decision - to replace the Ambassador in post at the time.

Agree. The Mandelson saga is intriguing but ultimately a massive distraction. I want our political leaders to take risks - it’s the only way Britain is going to get fixed. Yet if we persist in trying to destroy them every time a risk backfires, we will continue to be led by unimaginative, uninspiring, fearful and indecisive politicians.

Tomatoes to tomatoes. Wisdom is knowing you're not a dog 🍅🌽🍅

@SamCoatesSky Perhaps the really more fundamental error of judgement was not the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson to Washington but the preceding decision - to replace the Ambassador in post at the time.

The full leaked quotes by the new UK ambassador to Washington Christian Turner to school kids are NUTS - and reckless? ❌It includes saying the PM's future looked "quite touch and go" in February ❌Keir Starmer is a "stubborn guy" ❌Speculating that Labour - if it does badly next week " will be able to go over that threshold (of 80 MPs) and remove him" ❌And on Mandelson affair speculated: "The vetting thing’s a bit of a red herring”. “The problem was he had a bunch of associations that were embarrassing to him and the government that had not been revealed. And, arguably, once they were uncovered, the prime minister moved to sack him.”

@SkyNews @BethRigby Regarding the 'national interest', is McSweeney a UK national?

"I don't regard Mandelson as a hero" Morgan McSweeney denies that he recommended Peter Mandelson as US ambassador in order to give a "great job" to one of his "heroes". He adds: "My motive was always in the national interest" Follow live: trib.al/HM1ecSH 📺 Sky 501

@JDVance @SBA_Kelly Taking care of the pennies is taking care of democracy.

@MaryERegan Kicking and screaming echo.

Airbnb register unlikely before summer amid Cabinet tensions independent.ie/irish-news/pol…

@karldeeter On first reading I thought that what Karl meant by 'what brought in the IMF' was the Second World War. Indeed, the post-WWII anti-democratic and feckless Keynesian economic and monetary regime still ripples.

If you were to add up the number of times we bailed out the public sector it would dwarf what brought in the IMF. Of course, nobody will *actually* do anything to cut the costs that lead to this.

I've long found it takes my body-mind a month to get used to the clock after going forward in Spring. This year I managed it by starting to get up earlier from the beginning of March. But the body has another adjustment to make - Seasonal Acclimatization. May be hackable too!

This is a huge win by @SBA_Kelly and the SBA to recoup potentially fraudulent dollars that went largely ignored under the Biden Admin. Cutting through the bureaucracy is part of the great work our task force continues to produce.

Could The Smiths be secretly working on a new version of their classic 'Reel Around the Fountain', aka 'Fifteen Minutes With You'? Codenamed the 4x4 version, this rumoured sequel could provisionally be titled 'Sixteen Minutes With You'.

@Reuters Well. Hasn't Iran been resolute in making peaceful living impossible for the peoples of the Levant down many decades.

Pope Leo says those who wage war are thieves stealing away our peaceful future reut.rs/4vTxumL reut.rs/4vTxumL

@Noahpinion It can also be an illusion.

Growth is a choice.

@nickycantaloupe They changed the catechism on this matter in 2018.

There’s universal agreement on this for at least four popes in a row now. Can we accept their prudential judgment, drop it? and move on?

@JohnCleese I guess the Islanders are still and will remain Bennys though.

Any chance we might ask the people who live there ?

@williamnhutton At best, that practice is to present dumbed but honest comprehensive analysis by presenting illustrative quotes as if pulled from vox pops. At worst, they could be selecting or inventing 'quotes' to present a loaded or slanted analysis and misrepresent it as being comprehensive.

Laura Kuenssberg and Chris Mason are good journalists in a great position of privilege. I don’t get why they feel the need to turn political journalism into a blood sport. Too many anonymous off the record quotes deployed on the BBC means they are conniving in a dark game.

@jzipple We changed the doctrine under Francis.

However, once Ratzinger was pope, he taught that the death penalty was an offense to human dignity—& as JP2 taught in Veritatis Splendor, “whatever is offensive to human dignity” is an intrinsic evil. So Francis & now Leo are essentially just connecting the dots of JP2 & B16.

@ChristineNiles1 Some might even argue that the model marriage envisaged by the Church's Sixth Commandment doctrine may be experienced as unjust and oppressive by many strongly committed Catholics.

Some were upset that Pope Leo said sexual sins are not as grave as other sins, like injustice and oppression. This is theologically sound, and accords with Aquinas. (Note that the pope did not say sexual sins are not important -- of course they are; they are mortal sins -- only that they are not as grave as certain other sins.) St. Thomas Aquinas says the worst sin of all is hatred of God. He also explains that, all things being equal, "Spiritual sins are of greater guilt than carnal sins." "[O]f the seven capital sins five are spiritual (pride, greed, wrath, envy, sloth), and two carnal (lust, gluttony)." The reason sexual sins are grave is not merely because they are illicit pleasure, or wrong use of the body; they are fundamentally grave because they use another person as an object for personal gratification. Each person is created in the image of God, with profound dignity, and is meant to be loved, not used. To use another person for one's own ends is a desecration of the human person, who bears the imago Dei. And that unlawful use can be applied towards many ends: lust, power, greed, etc. drbo.org/summa/question…

@Keyes Wouldn't it be easier - pleasingly retro, even - to just call them prefabs.

Why are modular homes in gardens good for the system? Offered my thoughts to the Sunday Times: