Quotations

"Objectivity went out the window in Yugoslavia and that's very much with us today. So much of what, if you look back at Yugoslavia, both the tone and the substance so much of this evokes what's happening now in Ukraine, again the disparaging of negotiations - you don't negotiate with evil men you pulverise them through military force. There's also a personalisation. In the cold war it was never personalized. It was communism we were fighting. Even under Stalin it was never 'We're fighting Joseph Stalin'. That wasn't done, that wasn't said. But with the end of the cold war you had incredible simplification of analysis. Why do we have problems in the world? They're evil men out there with names like Milosevic or Gaddafi or Putin, because you have these evil men who come just out of nowhere, out of pure evil, no social context, no depth of analysis, nothing. Evil men. It's amazing people educated people would talk this way but of course they did and do on a regular basis today." Professor David Gibbs talking to Pascal Lottaz. How odd it is that people call Putin or Hamas or Al Qaeda as evil with no pause to analyse their motivations. It's linked to the contemporary obsession, 80 years on, with Hitler.

"The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd." - African Proverb quoted by Eric Kraus, who thinks Europe is the sheep, Russia the wolf and the USA the shepherd. I don't know about that but the US indirectly destroyed the British empire, and did themselves much harm, by persuading us not to renew our alliance with Japan in 1923. They then ate the British empire, in a sense.

"The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in." Paris Hilton. I try to live by these two rules.

"Much time is lost in regretting the time which had been lost before." Dr. Johnson

"Some MPs have called for the former prime minister to return to the Commons to revive the fortunes of the Conservative Party, which is being beaten in the polls by Reform. Mr Johnson said that while he felt “a deep sense of regret” that he was “not able to be useful”, he could not afford to return to politics because he had to pay for his wife Carrie’s new kitchen." Daily Telegraph news item yesterday. What a terrible Prime Minister he was, except for improving Theresa May's Brexit deal.

“People must stop imagining anyone in authority sees mass immigration as a problem to be solved. It's a project being enthusiastically pursued.” Neil Oliver. He could have had Boris Johnson in mind.