tomo,
I'm a little leery of history. Journalists like to describe their craft as the first draft of history. Their output is often of low enough quality that it would justify lots of revisions, but IMO the historian's revision process doesn't always improve accuracy. For my money, the most important thing is that first draft.

You're right on the election of public officials. And if the American setup necessarily politicises the offices, it's not like the permanent bureaucracy is guaranteed to be impartial. Once appointed, a partisan can be very hard to shift.

In the end, we need some systemic way to eject officials who work against the interests of the nation. Bit tricky I think: parallel to auto-immune diseases.

MikeHig, tomo,
Yeah, we often hear about "insulin resistance" before diabetes. I wonder if the road racers all suffer from "adrenaline resistance". I still think about Vinales bailing in Austria at 200+ kph when the brakes failed at the end of the straight. Huge courage. Huge presence of mind. And that was in relatively tame MotoGP. Superbikes are a bit nuttier, and IoM is for madmen.

I did race motocross a few decades ago. Didn't like when they introduced the "trick jumps" (doubles, quads, etc.). I was (mostly) able to do them, but they were Russian roulette. A small mistake on the leadup could lead to catastrophe. More spectacular for the spectators though.

Brendan O'Neill interviewing Matt Ridley (FYI). Didn't strike me as great, but my mind was wandering. Might listen again to see if I missed anything.

Similarly, EconTalk with Megan McArdle mostly drifted past me, except at one point where Russ was on a bit of a rant, and said something *very* true, which hadn't struck me before. Here's his key point:

You cannot create an unbiased search engine. Almost by definition, searching, if it's to be useful, is discriminatory.

Which gets us back to Sirius Cybernetics Corp. scanning your mind to work out what you're after.

tomo; I suspect the separation is what are known as "Oh Sh1t" moments!

I find the IoM stuff almost unwatchable - but thoroughly enjoy MotoGP, even if only highlights.

Wrt the exploits of Beatrice Shilling, a chum and I visited Brooklands last week and took the opportunity to look round the historic motorbike collection. Sure enough, there was a pic of the good lady alongside an identical Norton to the one she rode. My chum and I took one look and decided that we weren't anywhere near that brave!

tomo,
Certainly not going to contest what you say about Park and Leigh-Mallory. It's good to learn from history, and no harm musing on how it might have played out differently. It's not like you're insisting on black arm bands and tearing down statues.

Steyn's talk with Conrad Black was worthwhile listening. I wasn't a close observer at the time, but I thought Black's conviction was a bit on the nose. Stinking to high heaven seems closer.

We constantly complain about our comfortably tenured bureaucrats (as per that Ridley tweet), but I wonder if the Amercan setup — voting for your sheriff, fire chief, district attorney, even judges (in some states) — isn't even worse. It more or less guarantees that the job will be political. And so we see umpteen prosecutors chasing after Trump, etc. It's cuckoo.

.,
That's only a little bit of Melbourne, and a particularly deluded little bit at that. Victorians are at least rid of Daniel Andrews, but I must admit they didn't cover themselves in glory by repeatedly electing him.

Apparently today's the day Scotland's new anti-hate-speech laws come into effect. Here's my key quote from the article:

Police Scotland's Chief Constable Jo Farrell has said the new law will be applied proportionately, upholding people's freedom of expression.

Once again, it's Lord Moulton's warning about the law being a terrible way to enforce good manners.

Melbourne is lost