In The Salisbury Review Dalrymple visits what we in the U.S. would call a sports bar, and it is no surprise that a man who has never owned a television did not find it to his liking:

It was in suburban Tudor style, and the first thing one noticed on entering were the flashing lights of fruit machines, closely followed by the numerous large flat screens disposed in such a way that it was almost impossible to escape them. It was if one had an absolute duty to watch, and as if a malign state had installed them with cameras in order to check that one was being amused.

In the Salisbury Review: A visit from a water quality inspector causes Dalrymple to marvel at modern technology – and the need for it.

Given Dalrymple’s well-known arguments about personal responsibility and Western (so-called) poverty, it is probably not well understood how tolerant he is of beggars, the homeless and the like. For example, as recounted in Taki’s Magazine, recently a former prisoner knocked on his door late at night claiming to be a door-to-door salesman.

Dalrymple’s response? He invited the man in:

I bought yet another feather duster that we did not need, but I did not tell him that we did not need it: I wanted him to think it would really come in useful, as perhaps it will in twenty years’ time, when all the others are worn out. I was fully aware, of course, of all the many ways in which this young man might have been cheating me; but the thought of turning away someone who was genuine, and who appeared to be a suffering human being, was many times more painful to me than the thought of being bilked of £9.99.

Analysis of some examples of appalling behavior leads to the question of which came first, the supply or the demand:

The relationship between supply and demand is no doubt dialectical. A created demand (for something which must have at least an initial appeal to pre-existing or potential human tastes) will eventually become spontaneous: which will not by itself make it right or good, of course.

Activate sarcasm detectors:

Facebook and the internet are certainly bringing the intrinsic decency and sense of fair play of the British into prominence, as well as their refined use of language.

To be fair, I think the behavior referenced is ubiquitous, leading to the question:

Did people have lovely sentiments such as the above before Facebook enabled them to be expressed anonymously in public, or did the possibility of expressing them in public anonymously call them forth?

A recent production of Hamlet that Dalrymple attended gave Benedict Cumberbatch yet another opportunity to express his belief in his moral superiority:

It was appropriate, in a way, that Hamlet should hold up his hands in the midst of the applause for him at the end of the performance to ask for quiet and to make an unctuous appeal to the audience on behalf of the children of Syria: or rather, on behalf of the Save the Children Fund’s appeal for the children of Syria, which is not quite the same thing.

But a look at the (supposed) charity’s finances leads to another conclusion:

It would have been more honest, then, if Cumberbatch had come forward to appeal for the Save the Aid Workers Fund, or alternatively to ask for voluntary contributions to the government’s efforts to keep unemployment down by means of pseudo-Keynesian policies.

In The Salisbury Review Dalrymple describes hearing a woman discuss her serious illness with friends and can only conclude: “An admirable spirit all round!”

A look at pro and anti articles in the New England Journal of Medicine seems to indicate no justification for the practice:

The annual medical is a kind of ceremonial or ritual which, according to its critics, is without rational foundation despite the fact that so many patients, and perhaps a majority of doctors, believe in it. This proves that superstition is not dead: but perhaps that is no fatal criticism of the annual medical after all, because superstition will never be dead. If it does not attach to one thing, it will attach to another.

The Guardian recently ran the absurd headline “US GOVERNMENT DEPORTING CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS TO THEIR DEATHS”, and Dalrymple has something to say about the paper’s tendentious presentation of statistics:

…the article’s real point (exemplified by calling the migrants “undocumented” rather than illegal) is rhetorical rather than informative: it wants to claim that the United States, or by extension any other country, including Britain, has no right to control who enters it to live there.