While innocently playing billiards in a friend’s basement towards the later years of my school days, I was inexplicably forced to endure the latter portion of an episode of the HBO television series “Sex and the City”. The show centers on four middle-aged women who refuse to settle down and lead reasonable, ordered lives but instead involve themselves in ever more flippant affairs and commit ever greater sins against their own dignity. It would be a welcome warning to women were it not for the obvious fact that the show’s intent is to glorify the sad, pitiable existence lived out by the four main characters.

The show originated from a column of the same name in the New York Observer, and after the success of the television series, a cinematic continuation was filmed, followed by a more recent sequel.

Brendan O’Neill, a liberal atheist if ever there was one, has written a superb commentary on the second “Sex and the City” film, claiming that this “execrable” movie “offers an accidentally fascinating insight into the crisis of American values”. Click here to read O’Neill thoughts on the film and its sad reflection of today’s America, and say a little prayer that no-one really leads lives as self-centered, sad, and just plain pitiable as the characters involved.

At Stellenbosch, when the J.S. Gericke Biblioteek is full-up, students must use their ingenuity to find other suitable locations where they can study for their exams.

ORANJEZICHT IS ONE of my favourite parts of Cape Town, nestled in the bowl between Table Mountain and Signal Hill. Its name betrays it’s sloping location, which offers a view towards the Oranje bastion, one of the five of the Castle, which take their name from the titles of William, the Stadthouder of the United Provinces. The architecture is generally handsome, even if it often tends towards the Victorian. A few years ago, Cape Town Daily Photo featured a view (above) of the corner of Montrose Avenue and Bo-Oranjestraat in Oranjezicht. The late-autumn/early-winter street scene focusses on the Oranjezicht Carlucci’s, one of a small chain of delicatessens and wine shops founded in the mid-1990s.

The architecture of the shop is by no means in the strictest confines of the Cape Dutch style but is instead a more modern design influenced by the local architectural tradition of the Cape. While the Cape tradition is better known for larger country houses and wine-growing estates or small cottages, it’s just as useful a guide in the urban context. Dating the age of the building just by this photo would be tricky, as the region has some fairly convincing recent structures built in the old style (the dovecot at Alphen, for example), but I’d wager it’s 1900s-1910s construction that underwent a substantial renovation in the 1990s. (more…)

While the Westminster Parliament has a Speaker, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh has a “Presiding Officer” — a rather dull title if you ask me. The auld Estaits of Parliament abolished in 1707 were headed by the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, an office which fell into abeyance shortly after the Act of Union.

When the “Scottish Parliament” was refounded in 1997, the first man to hold the new job of Presiding Officer was Sir David Steel (the Rt. Hon. the Lord Steel of Aikwood), the despicable creature who as an MP introduced legal abortion to the United Kingdom in 1967, and who has inexplicably and disgracefully been created a Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, the highest honour in the land (the Scottish equivalent of England’s Garter).

Anyhow, the St Andrews Fund for Scots Heraldry decided to commemorate the hosting of the Heraldic & Genealogical Congress in Scotland by commissioning a ceremonial gown for the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, who lacked one at the time. This rather handsome creation was presented to George Reid, the holder of the office at that time, during 27th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences held at St Andrews in 2006. Unfortunately I can find no evidence that this well-executed gown has ever been used. (more…)

IAM MILDLY obsessed with newspaper design (in case you hadn’t noticed that already). But even those few newspapers that manage to either be attractive or worth reading (or indeed both) usually have websites that are astoundingly ugly. Check out the websites of The Scotsman, Le Monde, or the Times of India. They vary from awful to “meh”. The website of The Hindu is ugly, but is being replaced by a much more handsome design. Despite the over-sized ad on the index page, Die Zeit‘s website is on the handsome side of things, but that of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung is a mixed bag, some well-done details here, other poor ones there. I despise lefigaro.fr, especially since they started charging for their e-paper edition. The structure and flow of telegraph.co.uk is actually good, but the detailing isn’t and (like faz.net) it poorly reflects its newspaper’s personality.

Along then strolls the once-venerable Times (f. 1785), with a brand spanking new website at thetimes.co.uk. Clear, orderly, precise in its details, and just plain handsome in its overall design. There’s nothing particularly special or over-the-top about it; it’s just well done, but that is shockingly rare for newspapers today. (more…)

“My firm conviction is that we of the conservative camp must put ourselves entirely onto a democratic basis. After the collapse of the old conditions nothing else can provide us with a future and a justification except pure democracy. Even if democracy has a dark side it is preferable to the quasi-democratic aristocracy of the representative system.” — Philipp Anton von Segesser, 1866

The Franco-Yorkshireman Jerome di Costanzo has an interesting article at OurKingdom on “You the People” Conservatism, interesting for the most part in that it has introduced me to Philipp Anton von Segesser, whom I had never heard of. I question, however, whether Jerome is correct to imply that Herr von Segesser and Mr. Cameron are quite such birds of a feather. The brilliance of the Swiss model — which Jerome rightly extols — is its democratic localism. But the Prime Minister is now seeking to introduce legislation which would set minimum prices for alcohol to avoid the almighty glut of cheap drink which (along with 24-hour openings) has contributed to the transformation of many British town centres into no-go-zones of public inebriation.

Would not the Swiss solution, instead, have been to merely devolve power either to counties (which barely exist anymore, and whose borders are in a state of permanent revolution) or to local town councils, and to allow them to react to the situation on the ground in a manner they deem appropriate?

Also, as Paul Mallinder points out, the government is attempting to solve a problem with a law, when really the only solution is a virtue. Virtues, though, are society’s responsibility, not the government’s. If people continually look to the government to solve problems by passing legislation instead of transforming society themselves by inculcating and promoting virtue, they deserve the nightmarish state they will end up with.

Instagram: @andcusack

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