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Saturday, 4 October 2025

Drink, lunacy and practical joking are barred as explanations



Green Party membership overtakes Liberal Democrats under new leader


Rachel Millward, the party's deputy leader, announced the achievement to members on the second day of the party's annual conference in Bournemouth this morning.

It's believed to be only the second time this has happened, with the last time being more than a decade ago - in January 2015.

The Greens have revealed they now have more than 83,500 members, to the Lib Dems 83,174.



I don’t like games that make me feel a congenital idiot. But there was one that rather amused me. You invented a preposterous situation and the point was to explain naturally how it came about. Drink, lunacy and practical joking were barred as explanations.

John Buchan - The Runagates Club (1928)

7 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

Stupidity has a lot of explanatory power.

dearieme said...

Many modern follies can be explained by infantilisation, feminisation, or secular religions.

A K Haart said...

DJ - yes it does, and behind it there seems to be a pressure to believe, to enter a comfort zone of like-minded people. Outsource some of the difficult aspects of growing up and making sense of things.

dearieme - I agree, much of it is refusal to go beyond the teenager while still supported by the fascination of secular religions which don't work.

DiscoveredJoys said...

@AKH - The village idiot seeks to create a village of idiots so that they feel more comfortable.

A K Haart said...

DJ - that's a good way of putting it, there is a village-like atmosphere to certain shared political beliefs.

dearieme said...

My favourite blog commenter pseudonym is Assistant Village Idiot.

A K Haart said...

dearieme - a fine pseudonym, I'd forgotten about him even though I'm sure I once had a link somewhere. Too many links, that's my problem.