Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony for Russia's Navy Day in St Petersburg. (Photo: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images)

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the globe, there has been a lot of talk about the possible medical, economic and political fall-out, both for the immediate and for the more distant future. One aspect, however, has been less in evidence: implications for security and defence.
It is understandable that nations and alliances would want to minimise the harm and insist that, whatever happens, defence capability will be unimpaired — a part of defence, after all, is credibility. Even from published reports, however, it can be deduced that this is not quite true: there have been disruptions, some quite serious, to the plans and operations of many armed forces — and there may well be more to come.
Among the most vulnerable are maritime forces, which is logical, given that naval vessels share many characteristics with cruise ships, or “floating petri dishes” as they’ve been described. Crew live in close and often cramped quarters and use communal facilities for weeks on end.
An early alert was sounded in March, when the US Naval authorities faced a near-mutiny after the captain of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt went public with a warning that there were several hundred cases of coronavirus among the sailors on board and that there could be multiple deaths unless action was taken. The captain, Brett Crozier, was summarily dismissed, but has become something of a folk hero and could be reinstated following an ongoing inquiry. The aircraft carrier was evacuated and is docked at the US naval base in Guam. Of a crew of more than 4,000, more than 1,100 cases have been recorded.
The UK has taken precautions of its own. The new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth — one of two controversially commissioned by the Royal Navy — had to delay its first extensive sea trials for two weeks so that all the crew could be tested for coronavirus. It set sail from Portsmouth on 29 April, but only after securing the agreement of what were described as “senior leaders across Defence”, and its operations appear to have been adjusted, with the Navy saying that “as a further precaution” the carrier would “conduct a period of isolation at sea” before training begins, it would be operating in waters close to the UK coast, and the commanding officer had “the discretion to cease the training if it is deemed necessary”.
The French aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, is also smitten by the virus and currently quarantined at the port of Toulon, with a reported 600 cases. This means that of the 15 carriers (11 of them US) available to the Nato alliance, three are out of commission — 20% — and these are only the instances that have been reported.
Nor is it only navies that are affected. The UK is one of several countries that has not divulged the extent of the infection in the military, but there have been reports of unhappiness at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst with how social distancing and other precautions are, or are not, being observed. Sports and weekend leave have been cancelled, and suspected Coronavirus cases housed in separate accommodation.
Some army deployments have been reduced. The UK’s training mission in Iraq has been “paused”, with most of the UK’s 400-strong contingent there being recalled. Troops have also returned from Germany. And while the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, insists that the UK’s defence capability has not been harmed, there has been some evidence of increased Russian probing — by air and sea — in recent weeks, suggesting that Moscow is testing what it might see as a new vulnerability.
Russia, though, has its own problems with coronavirus. Although the country as a whole has not so far been as badly affected as major West European countries or the United States, outbreaks have been reported in several Russian military units and academies, and the Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, who said he had contracted the virus last month, is reported to be in hospital.
The virus has also dealt a big political blow to President Putin. He had planned a massive Victory Day parade to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War — known as the Great Fatherland War in Russia — on 9 May. He had also hoped for a big turn-out of international leaders to signal Russia’s return from the diplomatic cold, six years after its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
The spread of coronavirus, however, has put paid to all that. Putin waited until mid-April before finally conceding the inevitable. The anniversary commemoration has now been provisionally moved to September, but it will not have the same resonance then.
Perhaps the most significant consequence of the pandemic in the military sphere, however, is the effective cancellation of one of the North Atlantic alliance’s biggest sets of manoeuvres in Europe since the end of the Cold War. The exercises — named Defender-Europe 20 — were planned to last several weeks during April and May. They were due to involve 37,000 troops from 18 countries, including 20,000 from the United States, and to demonstrate not only the US’s ability to deploy rapidly across continents, but the continuing US commitment to the security of Europe.
The purpose was to practise deploying a Nato force sufficient to combat an (unspecified, but clearly Russian) attack on an ally (also unspecified, but clearly one of the Baltic States). As such, Defender-Europe 20 was conceived as an unambiguous signal to Russia to keep its hands off eastern and central Europe and to those more recent Nato members that Article 5 — an attack on one is treated as an attack on all — would, and could, be honoured. (The US President’s lukewarm attitude to Nato had sometimes placed that in doubt.)
There was an additional purpose, too. The crossing of borders by foreign military personnel and hardware — even within the European Union’s Schengen Zone and between Nato allies — remains a sensitive issue, with convoys requiring advance permission, which limits speed of deployment. Defender-Europe 20 was also in part intended to show that this difficulty could be surmounted.
Except that, as the Coronavirus swept through Europe and then reached the United States, everything proved too complicated. President Trump banned all travel to the US for European nationals, while the EU closed the Schengen Zone. In mid-March, the US European Command downgraded US participation and announced the recall of most of the thousands of troops, vehicles and equipment already dispatched. Those who stayed would be redeployed to help individual Nato countries combat the pandemic.
Officially, the exercises have only been scaled back. What remains, however, are little more than fragments of the original grand design that had spanned 10 countries, with the main action in Germany, Poland and the Baltic States.
The extent of Nato’s change of plan came across starkly from an unusually gnomic “special” media briefing given by General Tod Wolters, Commander of the US European Command and Nato Supreme Allied Commander Europe on 16 April. In it, he made almost no direct reference to the disintegration of Defender-Europe 20, insisting repeatedly that the alliance would be “laser-focused” on delivering “effective deterrence and defence” and that forces remained at the ready.
There was no need to read between the lines, though, to conclude that the Defender-Europe 20 was now a shadow of its former self. A separate, Baltic-based exercise planned for June-July would at best be “adjusted” in its scope and scale and, at worst, cancelled.
It was a comprehensive admission that the best of plans, laid over many months by the leader of the world’s foremost military power and the world’s most powerful military alliance, had been totally derailed — not by an enemy assault, but because of a disease.
It is clear that coronavirus is having a direct and widespread impact on military operations in many parts of the world. Of those countries reporting the incidence of infection in their militaries, France had confirmed 600 as of early April, Spain and Germany more than 200 each, and the United States more than 1,500.
But it is not just the debilitating threat that disease poses to human capital that militaries will need to confront in future. Disease has the potential to exacerbate other vulnerabilities. Morale is one. If crew who have spent months at sea have no opportunity on return to reconnect with family without delay, how effective will they be as a fighting force when they next go to sea? If, to the usual privations of service is added lockdown or quarantine, how will officers motivate their teams?
This was the dilemma that faced John Lewis, the commander of HMS Trenchant, one of the UK’s three nuclear-powered submarines last month. He ignored the advice of superiors to cancel an end-of-voyage party at the Devonport base at Plymouth — and paid for that decision with his command. It can be seen as an isolated incident, but similar dilemmas will arise all the time.
The other, not unrelated, concerns propaganda. The fear and uncertainty that surround illness make it natural material for enemy propaganda to make a bad situation worse. A recent example was a faked communication from Nato Secretary-General to the Defence Minister of Lithuania, saying that the US was withdrawing all its troops from May, because of the strain on capacity from Coronavirus. The context of the cancelled Nato manoeuvres made this all the more credible.
***
It is hard to see how there will not also be profound reviews in military and defence establishments around the world. Doubtless the potential threat from biological weapons will be subject to renewed scrutiny; but the debilitating effects of a new disease on military capability — a disease with as yet no cure and no vaccine — will soar up the hierarchy of official concerns.
In recent decades, the top brass across the world have set great store by procuring the last word in military technology, from ships to fighter planes to weaponry. One of the reasons some senior officers are so wary of the defence and foreign policy review announced by Boris Johnson after he won the December election is that it lumps military capability along with diplomacy and aid policy — it considers “soft” power as well as “hard”. They fear that that this could reduce the emphasis on prestigious state-of-the-art hardware that would be assumed in a defence-only review.
In fact, the emphasis of defence leaders was already shifting towards new technology, especially cyber capability and unmanned drones. Now, the more insidious threat from disease will have to be added. If humans are seen as more vulnerable than they were, could this accelerate moves towards conflict by remote control?
That is for the longer term, though. In the short-term, the pandemic may be having an effect not only on military capability but, because of that, also on actual wars. An attempt by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Gutterez, to call a global truce during the pandemic was blocked by the US and Russia. But the scaling back of Turkish operations in northern Syria and of Saudi-backed operations in Yemen have led to welcome lulls in the fighting. France has repatriated some troops from West Africa after they became infected with Coronavirus, and decided not to dispatch others. It is not impossible either that the spread of the pandemic in Libya and the emergencies declared in Russia and Ukraine could not only reduce the fighting in the Donbass, but force cooperation across battle-lines.
Which might just suggest a perverse side-effect from this otherwise destructive pandemic. Just as the lockdowns have brought unforeseen environmental benefits, could it be that, by reducing even slightly the capacity of armies to fight, the virus is offering some respite from conflict? Realism would dictate, however, that neither will last.
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Subscribei get the impression that the wine isn’t hitting the spot and it makes sense, then, to put a bit of a lid on it. But I hope, Giles, you’re still celebrating Christmas in other ways. January isn’t a time for abstinence and reflection, that’s Lent when it’s easier to do as well. I know Christmas now seems to start in mid October and ends around the 27 December, but for me it starts Christmas Eve and last until Candlemass. So I’m still rejoicing and celebrating, I hope you’re finding other ways of getting through these dark days. That’s what Christmas is for!
I agree wholeheartedly. Veganuary and dry January are wholly inappropriate for a cleric of traditionalist sympathies. Lent is the time for that sort of thing. I have decided to celebrate Christmas until candlemas this year in the old-fashioned manner.
They’re wholly inappropriate for anyone except vegans and teetotallers.
I suspect that “high-end Montrachet” is tautological. But if you know a source for low-end Montrachet, please advise.
The Swedish alcohol monopoly is the single largest buyer of wine in the world. They leverage their economy of scale into lower prices, especially for high-end wines. You can see their website at www systembolaget se (stick dots in between the words) and search for Montrachet. You may have to tell the site that you are over 20 years old ‘fylled 20 Ã¥r’ before anything will be displayed. I don’t know whether the prices there would count as ‘low-end’ but the might be less than you are used to paying. Of course, you will have to come visit to get any. They don’t deliver overseas.
I might join Giles’ congregation if he starts dishing out the high-end Montrachet during communion.
Dry January, Mr Fraser? You’re a priest! There’s a time in the Christian year for that kind of thing, and it’s called Lent.
If GF announced he was giving up drinking for Lent it wouldn’t bother anybody, Christian or non-Christian: “it’s what they do”. (“It’s what some of them do” would be more accurate, but hey-ho.)
By choosing Dry January (starting just as the Octave of Christmas ends), he is making the same faith/belief point, but has the chance of getting his message through to a few more people.
Bear in mind as well that Lent is longer than January, though, even with the Sundays of Lent off: same kudos, but four more dry days!
The octave of Christmas is not the end of Christmas! What about the traditional 12 days never mind the tradition that the whole period lasts until candlemas.
I started drinking to forget. Now, since I have long forgotten what it was I wanted to forget, I just drink because I like the taste.
So it worked!
Thanks Giles. Deep…I too, am attempting a dry January. More for weight than anything else. I drink too much, I know that, it’s not endangering my health but it’s a habit I want to control. Finish work, a little hungry before dinner, a glass of something will relax me and knock off the hunger pangs. Once the first one is downed then the evening won’t taste the same without a few glasses of…something. And with dinner? Of course! So, break the habit, cut out the first glass and, don’t you know, it’s all quite easy – so far! Well, aside from the fact I have discovered that: I’m not that interesting or amusing, I have too few hobbies, I don’t read enough, I’m not as intelligent as I thought I was, I watch too much TV, I don’t know what I want to do with my life and that avoiding stuff doesn’t make it go away.
Aside from that lot…Yeah…
Bring on February and my alcohol Instagram filter.
You’re not alone! Good luck with the weight loss, mine will be longer as it comes with a 2 stone target, but… I allow plonk Friday and Saturday.
I like a nice glass of red Wednesday to Sunday, only one mind, (Okay two…maybe three on a weekend…you know?) When young I liked to get legless – very often..too often, didn’t we all? – God alone knows with hindsight how I managed to avoid alcoholism but I did. (Thank’s God) Bar a self-forgivable slip last night in memory of a suddenly taken friend who also liked the odd red I’m going dry this month though I reckon it’ll de me more harm than good. Roll on February fellow virtuous people…. I’ll drink to that!
In vino veritas. I am not a latin scholar but thought this meant that truth is spoken when vino removes the inhibitions. Akin to ‘many a true word said in jest’ but slurred.
‘That’s the problem with so much professional wine tasting, and all that high minded talk of balance, length and complexity. Wine tasters spit it out.’
This is based on a misunderstanding. Obviously, at a professional tasting when one is assessing perhaps hundreds of wines, one spits. (And even then the alcohol seeps in to though the skin/capillaries). At our dinners and private tastings we do not spit, we enjoy the ‘balance, length and complexity’, not to mention the taste and alcoholic effects. Actually, I enjoyed them all rather too much last Saturday and, after a number of high quality champagnes, wines, whiskies, and calvados etc I fell (well, I was pushed0 to the ground while jumping up and down to ‘Borstal Breakout’ by Sham 69. A lot of blood from my nose but nothing broken. Anyway, I’m having a dry week.
I trust you were socially distancing as per the latest Fuhrer Directive:XIV?
I trust you were socially distancing as per the latest Fuhrer Directive:XIV?
I trust you were socially distancing as per the latest Fuhrer Directive:XIV?
If wine or alcohol is consumed in moderation there is no need for a dry month. And it is never wise to drink alcohol to numb feelings or thoughts. Wait until you have processed those before having a drink if the medication effects of wine are to be useful. When we do something to stop feelings we compromise our health.
Perhaps you may end up enjoying the company of your local Alcoholics Anonymous group, Giles. And although I wouldn’t wish the illness of alcoholism on anybody, I would recommend the fellowship and cheerful company of Alcoholics Anonymous to absolutely everybody, who wonders if their drinking is becoming a problem.
Not drinking at all is a great deal easier than drinking only a certain amount, or only on certain occasions. And if not drinking at all fills one with fear then it is time to take a fearless look the drinking and ask the question who is in charge? You, or alcohol?
Alcohol is only another mind and mood altering drug. For me, the moment of truth arrived when I asked myself why I found it so desirable to chemically alter my state of mind. I had no answer. So I stopped doing it, and my life became a great deal easier.
It runs contrary to the wisdom of our greatest Shakespeare hero:
“There’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so overcool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of malegreen-sickness, and then, when they marry, they get wenches.”
Has Giles any barons in his brood?
As Plato said:
“Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man. When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself”.
As Plato said:
“Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man. When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself”.
As Plato said, (for the second time thanks to rinky dink AI).
“Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man. When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself”.
Not surprised that Giles often needs to escape from himself, and also not surprised that he stands in awe of the dastardly duffer Roger Scruton.
Still, I’m prepared to offer my sympathies regarding his drink problem, which sadly is unlikely to be “cured” by a few weeks off the turps.
Me, I drink for pleasure rather than escape (I’m enjoying a pleasant chilled Oz white as we speak, on this warm Tasmanian afternoon) but it’s an occasional indulgence, not a daily medication.
What is the source of your antipathy towards Giles Fraser and Roger Scruton?
It’s a simple clash of ideology and personality. I’m a champion of rational philosophy, science, secular humanism, liberalism etc., whereas Giles sees himself as a holy crusader against such notions, and much the same applies to arch-conservative Scruton.
Although admittedly the latter was worse, often displaying a vicious streak of racism, homophobia and misogyny, so much so that he was even sacked by the Tories for such nastiness.
Colin I think if you applied the principles you say you champion you will find that Scruton lost his role with the Tories based on a social media storm created by a lying left wing activist journalist who later revelled at the dismissal. When the truth later came to light Scruton was reinstated. I write this not as a Scruton fan just as someone who is triggered by lies, nastiness and arrogance. Enjoy this afernoon’s wine.
The trouble is that lies always seem to masquerade as rational philosophy, science, secular humanism, liberalism etc.
I wasn’t aware that he was reinstated, thanks for the correction.
But I was aware that in his homophobic polemics, for example, Scruton advised that we should “instil in our children feelings of revulsion” towards homosexuality, presumably one of the reasons that Giles regards him as “great”.
But Wikipedia tells us: “Scruton told The Guardian in 2010 that he would no longer defend the view that revulsion against homosexuality can be justified.”
Aww, wasn’t that nice of him
On the other hand, I think we can forgive gays for insisting that revulsion against Gauleiter Scruton will always remain justified.
Gay yourself I take it. Explains everything.
The context in which you use ‘alt-right’, ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘misogyny’ is now well known, literal meanings are ignored, but conveys a lot about you.
To quote another English embarrassingly pretentious and clueless chattering dastardly duffer, you are “hoist by your own petard”.
For your poetry inclinations-
‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:’
That power might be Unherd reader’s comments?
So Gordon, you agree with Gauleiter Scruton that it’s important to instil in children feelings of revulsion towards homosexuality?
Eh? what’s this got to do with the price of wine?
I must reply to your question, although I am not Gordon. It´s important to instill in children the knowledge that comes from the laws of Nature. Only men and women are born. The rest in between is confusion of the mind, therefore, cannot be considered as coming from Nature. Children must learn that homosexuals and lesbians are an anomaly, not to be encouraged.
Transgenders only exists because of modern pharmaceutics allow them to bend the natural laws. Without the daily fix of hormones and repressants people revert to Nature.
Let´s just teach our children the sad story of these poor confused people. No hatred of course, just knowledge.
Pretty much in line with the views of Gauleiter Scruton, one of Giles’s heroes.
Alas, Giles received some sort of award from a Tory gay group for his supposed “inclusiveness”, underlining his fundamental fraudulence.
You, at least, are an honest sort of bigot.
Any comments on my assertion about Nature and it´s laws being not followed by the confused people?
About the pharmaceutical dependance of the confused people?
Giles gets an award from a gay group affiliated to a political party which since it’s been in government has legalised gay marriage, and you cite his award as evidence of Giles’s homophobia. Something is very wrong with your logic. Google ‘non sequitur’.
I’ve no idea if Giles is homophobic – I suspect he adopts whatever view seems convenient when addressing this or that audience.
But in this piece he’s lauding the “great” Gauleiter Scruton, who was one of the worst English homophobes of the past generation or so, as even Stonewall would agree.
Homosexuals are 3% to 4% of the population. Trans people are .0003% of the whole. How their sexual decisions or nature dominate so much of public discourse is a puzzlement.
I have serious doubts of your statistic figures, but that is not the main issue here. Just think of this: every movie now ( Hollywood , BBC or Netflix) has an homosexual or lesbian as a main character in the plot. Every media outlet (paper or digital) has a column devoted to the homosexual or lesbian or transgender community.
Do you seriously believe that these global networks would be catering for the 3% of the population if this was the case?
The bottom line is that the “progressive” editors and producers are campaigning in an unprecedented scale to try and sale us the idea that homosexuality and lesbianism are natural human traits.
I think they are not, and to back my statement I can call Mother Nature to the witness booth. Mind you, I do not preach any violence against the confused people engaged in unnatural sex practices. All I am saying is that these practices are not natural, they have departed from the laws of Nature and therefore should not be portraited as safe characters in today´s film industry, nor as “progressive” columnists of the press.
The statistics are not important. The shameless campaiging is.
Sir Roger didn’t think that. Stop misrepresenting him.
From the Wikipedia article on Gauleiter Scruton:
“In an essay, “Sexual morality and the liberal consensus” (1990), Scruton wrote that homosexuality leads to the “de-sanctifying of the human body” because the body of the homosexual’s lover belongs to the same category as his own.[157] He further argued that gay people have no children and consequently no interest in creating a socially stable future. He therefore considered it justified to “instil in our children feelings of revulsion” towards homosexuality,[146] and in 2007 he challenged the idea that gay people should have the right to adopt.[158] Scruton told The Guardian in 2010 that he would no longer defend the view that revulsion against homosexuality can be justified.”
If you believe this is a misrepresentation of your hero, you’re free to edit Wikipedia, but I suspect those who wrote that entry might be more familiar with his scribblings than you appear to be.
You said that Sir Roger believed that “it’s important to instil in children feelings of revulsion towards homosexuality”.
None of your quotes shows that Sir Roger believed this. You are misrepresenting him.
….to expand on my “antipathy”:
Scruton – very much like Giles – had a remarkably detailed prescription for precisely the kind of individual that he regarded as socially acceptable and desirable, compared with all the kinds that he regarded as untermenschen.
I say “very much like Giles”, for that is all that Fraser’s contributions to any kind of debate usually amount to – condemnations of people who are not like Giles, and love poems to all the little Giles’s out there, especially those who defer to his “spiritual authority” as the Giles-in-chief.
Read Scruton’s works and you get a finely honed view of exactly what characteristics he admires in a man, woman, boy or girl, and if those elements aren’t there, they should be rejected from society pretty much entirely. And this was a critter who laughably “deplored” the communists and other totalitarians for their intolerance and anti-individualism.
In truth, Scruton cashed in on an era when being aggressively “conservative” was eccentric enough to be regarded as individualist, when in fact all the doctrines he promoted were stridently collectivist and conformist. Giles, a champion of collectivism and conformism, especially under the yoke of supernaturalist autocracy, is very much his soul-mate.
Please stop quoting verbatim from “How To Be Perfect Liberal” copyright 1970 without attribution. You may be sued for plagiarism.
I too see myself as, if not anything as grandiose as a champion, at least as a servant of rational philosophy. I even have a PhD in it, just like Sir Roger, albeit his was in aesthetics whereas mine was in modality. So quite where you get the idea that Sir Roger rejects rational philosophy, I’m not sure. I’ve read some of his works, in particular Conservatism. From memory, what he rejects is pure rationalism, espousing something close to the Humean dictum that reason is the servant of the passions, although I think that a word better serving the Scrutonian outlook would be ‘values’. To me this sounds right, but I will listen politely to reasoned arguments against Hume’s insight. However I really don’t understand why you should be so angry with Sir Roger for being Humean about the relationship between reason and values.
I’m also very much in favour of science. Moreover, I’m broadly in favour of secular humanism, although
(i) as a conservative, and
(ii) despite my personal atheism,
I defend a continuing role for religion in public life.
I even as a conservative support many aspects of liberalism; I tend to be sympathetic to the classical liberal advocacy of personal freedom, and am as keen as anyone to defend liberalism from the encroachments of wokeness.
As to your accusations of Sir Roger, I presume you are referring to the disgraceful treatment meted out to him at the instigation of George Eaton. I won’t dignify your accusations with an answer, as Sir Roger’s exoneration is a matter of public record. Suffice to say that you have disgraced yourself. This is no way to talk a man who is no longer alive to defend himself, but who as well as being a distinguished philosopher, also at great personal risk distributed samizdat literature behind the Iron Curtain. I can only suggest that you have a long hard think about things.
Resentment/jealousy/bitterness/anger/grudge/self loathing whatever other natural inbred left leaning emotion I missed out? Perhaps he’s just one of those people that can’t abide anyone to have anything that they don’t?
Ha, same to you sweetheart
As with Quillette, this site was doomed to quickly become just another alt-right ghetto below the line, no matter what material they publish above it.
Is Colin new here?
Anyone who describes Scruton as a ‘dastardly duffer’ is not to be taken seriously. Funnily enough, I am currently reading another of his excellent books on the philosophy and understanding of music. He ranges from the classics and jazz to rap and pop etc. He was, without doubt, one of the most civilised men that Britain ever produced, and was from a working class background, I think. He was only ‘sacked’ by the Tories because those revolting people at the New Statesman stitched him up. Never forget just how nasty the left always has been and always will be.
He was, without doubt, one of the most embarrassingly pretentious and clueless duffers the English have yet produced, and that’s a significant achievement for a nation crawling with such chattering posers.
Well Colin, you are a wonder. Please advise your most wonderful books we can purchase on “rational philosophy, science, secular humanism, liberalism etc” so we can purchase and improve ourselves asap. Q laughter….
I haven’t written such books, not being an essayist or public intellectual, or indeed following the example of Giles or Scruton, a chattering poser, peddler of superstition etc.
I do write a little poetry, but I very much doubt that you’d like it
please share the poetry
I don’t know if it’s done the same to you, but since I downvoted it the pathetic little creature has gone through all my posts and downvoted all of them! Hilarious – but indicative of a very sad person indeed.
Come on, “Wonderful Colin” – here’s another one!
:.
What the hell is going on at UnHerd?
Why do you keep repeating everything!
Sack that AI Moron and a get a species of African Ape to sort this out, pronto.
Aha, the bliss of holding a glass of U-boat fuel, sitting next to that great roaring fire in the Cradle Mountain Lodge!
An experience not to be missed.