Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001) profile picture

A bumbling autodidact who stumbled into Oxford | Burkean Democratic socialist & Muggletonian marxist | Feelknight

London, England
Joined October 2019
Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)Photo by Gabriel Ward 🇬🇧 (@Gward_2001)
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"If a certain department of knowledge specially attracts a man, let him study that, and study it because it attracts him; and let him not fabricate excuses for that which requires no excuse." A.E. Housman's inaugural lecture, University Coll. London, 1892: antigonejournal.com/2024/10/…
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The most simple socialist revolution can be launched today. Start a company. Make the shares owned by the workers. Talk to customers, improve the product, promote it every day.
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Lord Glasman said “Putting parents at risk of prosecution for trying to protect their children is something no Labour government should even consider.”
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Love this. London at its best
London cabbies lined up on Westminster bridge ready to take veterans home, free of charge, from the Remembrance Sunday service in Whitehall. 👏👏👏
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Raymond Aron a passé sa vie à combattre, presque seul, ceux qui ont construit le socle intellectuel qu'on subit encore aujourd'hui. Rappelez-vous la bataille. D'un côté, Sartre. Celui qui rentre de Moscou en 1954 pour expliquer que la liberté de critique y est totale. Celui qui écrit que tout anticommuniste est un chien. Celui dont toute une génération répétait le slogan : mieux vaut avoir tort avec Sartre que raison avec Aron. Camus publie L'Homme révolté en 1951. Il ose dire qu'aucun lendemain qui chante ne justifie les camps et la terreur. Sartre le fait exécuter dans Les Temps modernes. Rupture définitive. Camus devient le paria de la gauche intellectuelle. Aron publie L'Opium des intellectuels en 1955. Il démonte la religion marxiste pièce par pièce. Il a raison sur l'URSS, raison sur Mao, raison sur le totalitarisme. Pendant trente ans, on le traite de laquais de la bourgeoisie. Puis Foucault prend le relais. Tout devient pouvoir, tout devient oppression, la vérité elle-même devient suspecte. En 1978, il part en Iran et s'enthousiasme pour la révolution de Khomeini. Et puis il y a le tabou ultime. Celui qu'ils préféreraient que vous oubliiez. Janvier 1977. Le Monde, puis Libération, publient une tribune pour défendre trois hommes poursuivis pour des relations sexuelles avec des mineurs de moins de 15 ans. Parmi les signataires cités : Sartre, Beauvoir, Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari, Glucksmann, Kouchner, Jack Lang. Foucault signe la pétition suivante, adressée au Parlement. Libération, le journal cofondé par Sartre, ouvre ses pages aux militants pédophiles, publie des petites annonces, et en 1979 une nouvelle pétition pour défendre un homme arrêté pour des relations avec des fillettes de 6 à 12 ans. Ce n'était pas une dérive marginale. C'était le cœur battant de l'intelligentsia. Refuser de signer, c'était risquer d'être exclu du club. Et aujourd'hui ? Un Jack Lang qui lâche que « c'était une connerie ». Un mea culpa de Libé tous les vingt ans. Un Matzneff qui racontait ses actes dans ses livres et paradait chez Pivot, protégé pendant des décennies par le milieu. Personne, ou presque, n'a jamais rendu de comptes. Voilà la génération qui a façonné l'école, l'université, les médias, la culture et une partie de la magistrature pendant cinquante ans. Relativisme, haine de soi, culte de la déconstruction, mépris du réel au nom du camp du bien. Ce qu'on est en train de vivre, c'est la phase de nécrose finale de cette génération d'intellectuels qui a tout détruit. L'édifice pourrit de l'intérieur parce qu'il n'a jamais reposé sur le réel. Et pendant que leur monde s'effondre, les vrais héros remontent à la surface. Camus. Aron. Ceux qui avaient raison trop tôt, seuls contre tous, et qui l'ont payé de leur réputation. Aron et Camus étaient des héros. Sartre et Foucault étaient des ordures. Il est temps de le dire.
On croirait qu’il parle d’aujourd’hui, cet effrayant fantôme de la vérité ; c’est tellement vrai ! Il faut l’écouter.
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A mother in Huddersfield was so desperate to save her daughter from a rape gang that she wrote to the Prime Minister. She had already begged the police and social services to intervene. Her daughter was beaten and abandoned on the moors above Oldham, covered in blood. Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have all led Kirklees Council. None secured a full council vote demanding a statutory investigation into the failures that allowed these girls to be exploited. Now Reform UK is in charge. They promised to expose the cover-up. Yet their leader, Sarah Wood, has done little more than write a letter asking for Kirklees to be considered for the National Inquiry. Five councillors can requisition an extraordinary council meeting. Reform has twenty-nine. The previous administrations failed to secure that demand. Reform now has the opportunity to put it to a vote. It refuses to do so. Why? I have a simple question. How many political parties must run Kirklees Council before one of them is prepared to put the demand for a statutory investigation to a vote? Read my latest here. redwallandtherabble.co.uk/wh… Raja Miah MBE
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A. N. Wilson in today's Times: "whenever we hear [the King] speak, demonstrating that he is well-informed and well-read, it is an uncomfortable reminder that almost none of the cabinet or the shadow cabinet are capable of expressing themselves without cliché...
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I was searching the Socialist Worker archive earlier today (don't ask!) and happened upon this piece from 1971 by Peter Hitchens (who has always been commendably honest about his former Trotskyist politics). An interesting read!
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“The reset talks are a national shame, an exercise in collective humiliation. The Government is not going into them with a series of demands to be traded against EU demands. Rather, it is going in determined to expiate the sin of the 2016 referendum, to atone, to agree to whatever is put in front of it, and then to claim that such agreement was its own plan all along. Eurocrats have clocked it. They smell our negotiators’ misery, their embarrassment, their longing for absolution. They have understandably upped their own demands in response, ordering Britain to hand over cash, fish, sovereignty and self-respect.” Paywall down. telegraph.co.uk/gift/0fa19b6…
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The tedious inevitability of cleaning up local parks and greenspaces after fireworks. Here loads of fireworks were let off, the big bits easy to clean it's the dreary small round plastic and card bits the lumps of solid ash/burnt plastic spread all over the field. So annoying
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Douglas Murray reacts to the US midterms
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Delighted that John Gray, the world’s foremost chronicler of the decay of the liberal order, will now be writing regular essays exclusively for @UnHerd In his first, he looks ahead after the midterm GOP rout to the world after Trump. The post-Trump age, he argues, will be post-American 👇👇👇 unherd.com/2026/11/the-world…
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Just completed a very strange and confused survey by @britishlibrary intended to inform its future strategy. Seems to be chiefly aimed at justifying selling off reading rooms. I'd urge everyone to complete it (open until 17 Nov): tinyurl.com/3v89mb3s
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Could I please inform the thousands of Tolkien fans who have complained about the @nytimes headline accompanying the review of my book about him by Adam Mars-Jones (‘Tolkien’s unexciting life’) that it is nothing to do with me and you should read the book before judging.
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I attended the funeral of Chris Wickham today. He was the greatest medieval historian since Marc Bloch. He was a man of enormous kindness and generosity, without whose support I would never have had an academic job or published anything. I was not his student. He owed me nothing. My doctoral viva was pretty brutal because I was being a bit too controversial for my examiners, but he had heard of my thesis, read it, and said how much he liked it and volunteered to write for me for jobs. I am still here thanks to Chris (for good or ill).
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Another great video from Chris. It’s great to hear from a KC, Noel Magee, who breaks down why the prosecution’s “elimination” argument in Lucy Letby’s trial fails legally: simply put, if you are going to claim murder by ruling out alternative causes of death, you have to actually investigate and rule out ALL plausible causes! There is no way this can be claimed in this case. The obstetric notes, maternal health, and birth complications were barely part of the prosecution case, and the maternity notes were denied to the defence. Dewi Evans wasn’t even fully aware of the Pseudomonas infection, and he didn’t really consider the substandard unit conditions in his hypothesis. Significantly, Judge Goss stated at the start of the trial that exogenous insulin had been administered when, in fact, this was far from established. Magee argues that failing to even address, let alone eliminate, more obvious and likely explanations simply leaves the case unproven and unsafe. youtu.be/Cgw2lIY53Co?is=GGAr…
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Ultimately, was it necessary to send Brand to prison- couldn't we have just given him a pamphlet?
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We referred a Green Party official's claim that mosques backed candidates "undercover" to regulators. But no action will be taken, despite guidelines that charities must not support political parties or candidates. secularism.org.uk/news/2026/…
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"If the white working class were to seriously kick off… the state is completely unprepared." @baylissbaghdad on which disorder the British state really fears, and how it responds.
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