Pensions. We will all live in penury - Will Huttton - here.

03/01/2012 - more on pensions - here.

HMRC handles big companies with kid-gloves. Here. Let's see how this one plays out . They can't both be right.

2012. What a year. Here.

'Disadvantaged' children do not study history. Here.

I am distraught. Kin Jon-Ill has died. Here. Lying in state here & here.

Life in North Koreas - film - here. More - here.

Christopher Hitchins dies. Here.

Today the USA troops leave Iraq after almost nine years. A former official at the Pentagon and chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, an author of the invasion talks here. I find his arguments unconvincing - yes, we made some mistakes but we are not to blame. These are precisely the sort of (massive) mistakes people like that are paid not to make - else give the job to a random eighteen year old with good intentions.

2977 victims died on 9/11. Why add to that tally all the thousands more who died as a result of this war?

Brains continue to develop until early twenties - here - which should influence the definition of 'age of responsibility'. The author of the report (Nicholas Mackintosh - Cambridge) here. I like his debating style.

Two decades to the day, after the Maastricht Treaty, a turning point in Britain's relation to Europe. It, like 'Black Wednesday' or Lehman's collapse, becomes one of those iconic reference points which we return to so often in order to understand 'how we got here'.

This is what happened.

Lord David Owen (his blog is here) ( a veteran European commentator) reacts here.

A Eurosceptic MP reacts here.

David Miliband, on Twitter, says:  'UK jumped into rowing boat with Hungary next to 25 nation supertanker. That is weakness not strength'.  And the truth, is, that, not even Hungary joins Britain in this boat.

There is a lot of water to run past the ruins of the bridge Cameron has just destroyed.

Text of new, European accord here.

De we 'genuinely' appreciate 'authentic' art or do we enjoy it because we know what it is? Martin Kemp (emeritus of Oxford) suggests we enjoy what we are told to enjoy. Article here & interview here.