A stroll through Paris in search of a laptop charger gives Theodore Dalrymple a chance to reflect on the angry times we are unfortunate to live in.

Both hip-hop and the kind of subversion teachers of graffiti are likely to promote undermine the ability or willingness of people to practice the very virtues that are necessary for people to lead lives independent of the state. As for social expression, it is not any expression that is to be encouraged, but only that which reinforces or extends the power of the bureaucratic authorities to interfere in the life of its citizenry. By social expression is meant a perpetual propensity to grievance that requires the intervention of the government to ameliorate.