'Go cuddle up to your mouldy old papers,' she shouted at him. 'See how warm they'll keep you.' She slammed the door and made to walk off.

The emergency regulations ordinance, created by British authorities to break up port strikes in 1922, had not been used for over half a century, and never since the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.

The world is increasingly becoming a Single Central Europe with its Kafkaesque anonymity, Musilesque human-traits-free individuality, or the divided individual without individuality and indivisibility, Orwellesque Newspeak and total control, if not manufacturing, of history.

I joke all the time that the reason for my success as a television pundette is not that I have run campaigns or taught law for twenty years, and thus might actually know what I am talking about, but that I have blonde hair and legs almost as good as those of the twenty- and thirty-something blondes […]