When people suggest to me that it would be best if politics were left out of the railways, I always point out that the two are joined at the hip. Throughout the near 200-year existence of the railways, there has never been a time when they have been free of political interference.

Salvianus Massiliensis[…]saith, that amongst French-men, to lie and forsweare is no vice but a manner of speach. He that would endeare [translating encherir] this Testimonie, might say, it is now rather deemed a vertue among them.

In this old Silk Road city in western China, a state security campaign involving the detention of vast numbers of people has moved to its next stage: demolishing their neighborhoods and purging their culture.

Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it was so.