The Medal Of Freedom

Define 'irony'.

The late Nicholas Ridley was a right-wing aristocrat whose primary achievement in life seemed to be that he was a right-wing aristocrat. As Secretary of Sate for the Environment, he helped relax the planning laws. The subsequent growth in out-of-town retailing has had the result that every British high street now seems to contain a McDonalds, a Starbucks, a few pubs, a Barnardos and a betting shop. Thanks to Lord Ridley, your can now tell how prosperous you are likely to be just by looking at your town's main street; the more prosperous have a higher proportion of McDonalds and Starbucks, the less prosperous a higher proportion of Barnardos and betting shops. To paraphrase Tacitus, he made a desert and called it prosperity.

His nephew Matt Ridley seems to have been one of the few members of his family to have achieved distinction for being something other than a right-wing aristocrat paid from the public purse. Matt Ridley is a world famous scientist and populariser of science, a much more difficult trick to pull off than practicing science itself. Yet for some reason or another he allowed himself to be talked into assuming the chairmanship of Northern Rock, and was at its helm as it crashed into the evolutionary dead end of nationalisation. His late uncle would be appalled.

Another definition of irony - in office, Tony Blair used to say that he was 'a pretty straight kind of guy'. His principal achievement in office was the destruction of public confidence in government through spin, warmongering, sustained attempts to destroy the United Kingdom's demographic balance through mass immigration, sustained attempts to impoverish the United Kingdom's working and lower middle classes through mass immigration, sustained attempts to destroy the British constitution, his radical expansion of the state and his outright, total war on British civil liberties. He has since repented, and converted to Catholicism. Good. To paraphrase George Shultz, Lord preserve us from such pretty straight kind of guys.

Blair is being awarded the US Medal of Freedom. Irony is dead.