Entries by Mark Gullick

The Peasants’ Revolt 2.0

On June 1, 1381, thousands of English rural laborers descended on the capital of London, the first martial event in what would come to be known as the Peasants Revolt. Over 650 years later, a somewhat less bloody rebellion showed itself in the same city, these latter-day peasants facing similar fiscal provocation to their 14th-century […]

What is a high-trust society?

“What do they know of England who only England know?” Rudyard Kipling’s famous question, a line from his poem The English Flag, was actually written in defense of Empire, but is still worth asking by Englishmen in these post-imperial times. Enoch Powell, however, found the phrase sadly outdated. In a speech given on St. George’s […]

The Politics of the UK Riots

August is traditionally a quiet month in the United Kingdom. The British go on their summer holidays, perversely leaving the country during the hottest month of the year to seek sunshine in foreign climes. Parliament goes into recess, and so no new laws are passed. Even the media take a break, the lack of newsworthy […]

What are “British Values”?

Pre-election Britain is currently going through a self-evaluation in such a way that, were it retail goods brought over a shop counter, there could be an action brought under the UK’s Trade Descriptions Act of 1968. This piece of legislation replaced the Merchandise Marks Act of 1887 with “fresh provisions prohibiting misdescriptions of goods, services, […]

Britain’s technocrats: The economics of truth

Economics is tailor-made for technocrats. It revolves around systems, and systems are everything for our current hyper-managerial class of social engineers. Once a system is in place, whether it works or not takes second place to its complicated maintenance. The subsequent problem for the technocrat task force is how that system is presented to non-specialists, […]