https://www.donaldjenkins.com/Recent content on Donald Jenkins writes about politicsHugo -- gohugo.ioen-gbhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/necessity-not-schism-the-case-for-econe/Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:00:00 +0200The SSPX’s episcopal consecrations of 1st July, 2026 were canonically defensible — and Rome’s severity toward the Society sits uneasily beside its patience with bodies far less Catholic.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-strange-death-of-tory-england/Sat, 25 May 2024 16:32:10 +0000The Tory Party should use its likely long period in opposition to re-embrace traditional valueshttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/non-human-animal-rights-the-categorical-imperative-of-our-time/Tue, 29 Dec 2020 22:53:40 +0000I describe the cruelty of the modern factory farm, the framework legitimising dominion by man over non-humans, the evidence that animals have the ability to feel pain and pleasure, and suggest a philosophical framework to make them citizens.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/brexit-time-to-move-on/Fri, 13 Dec 2019 22:39:31 +0000The time has come for us as a country to plan our future in the new trading and political context for which the Government has received an unambiguous mandate, after four years of relentless and hysterical debate over the merits and demerits of Brexit.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/connecting-wordpress-lightroom-and-apple-photos/Mon, 27 May 2019 20:28:52 +0000How I integrate Apple Photos, Lightroom and WordPress by building on Lightroom's by sychronising the cloud-based Lightroom CC and the desktop-oriented Lightroom Classic CC and Meow Apps's WP/LR Sync plugin for WordPress.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/introducing-policymakr/Fri, 18 Jan 2019 10:53:38 +0000A quick introduction to Policymakr, the new start-up I've been planning since the dramatic events of 2016https://www.donaldjenkins.com/preparing-this-site-for-the-2020s/Thu, 29 Nov 2018 14:21:00 +0000The new design for this site is called Gramercy: I have used a framework for the design and simplified the content, with the biggest change being the merging of the Home page and the About pagehttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/googles-project-fi-a-flexible-and-truly-global-mobile-solution-for-international-travellers/Wed, 13 Jul 2016 23:45:20 +0000Google's Project Fi is an economical and powerful mobile phone plan for anyone who travels internationallyhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/brexit-would-be-constitutional-and-economic-suicide/Wed, 29 Jun 2016 14:09:50 +0000There is a way out of the unprecedented crisis in which the UK has been plunged by the Brexit referendum: constitutionally, the result does not bind the Government or Parliamenthttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-absurdity-of-brexit/Sun, 19 Jun 2016 11:50:32 +0000The Conservative case for Remain: from a British perspective, the case for continued membership of the European Union, with the numerous opt-outs secured by the UK, is overwhelminghttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/how-i-effortlessly-draft-and-maintain-squeaky-clean-css-with-sass-and-compass-app/Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:14:00 +0000How I effortlessly draft and maintain squeaky-clean CSS with SASS and Compass.apphttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/sixty-years-a-queen-with-unflinching-grace-and-steadfast-devotion-to-duty/Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:35:24 +0000HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee offers us an opportunity to reflect on a life devoted entirely to the service of her peoples both in the United Kingdom and in the Commonwealth.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/switching-from-a-dv-to-a-ve-server-on-media-temple/Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:06:01 +0000After completing the switch to html5, switching from .net to .com, accompanied by a new design, I wanted to update my server configuration, which hadn’t changed for three years.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/stuff-i-couldnt-do-without-in-2011/Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:08:00 +0000My regular annual list of material possessions with which I cannot dispense.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/sparrow-mail-the-most-elegant-powerful-and-minimalist-mac-email-client/Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:02:39 +0000Sparrow Mail, a new email client launches today on the Mac App Store. Designed with incredible attention to detail, it offers an uncluttered yet fantastically powerful and flexible interfacehttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/a-better-new-decade/Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:45:25 +0000I wish all who read this a very Happy New Year: I am certain I am not the only one hoping that this new decade will mark a new beginning.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/reeder-for-mac-a-stunning-implementation-of-minimalism-elegant-design-and-practicality-in-one-rss-client/Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:19:52 +0000Reeder for Mac is a stunning implementation of minimalism, elegant design and practicality in one RSS client, achieved despite the quirks and general unreliability of the Google Reader APIhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/benedict-xvi-a-traditionalist-yet-more-in-tune-with-the-realities-of-this-age-than-his-predecessor/Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:25:00 +0000The Pope's recent comments on the justification of using contraception are nothing more than the reaffirmation of traditional Christian doctrinehttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/backing-up-a-mac-to-amazon-s3-with-arq-the-easiest-safest-and-most-accurate-solution/Sun, 21 Nov 2010 05:44:09 +0000Using Amazon S3, in combination with Arq, provides a much more reliable alternative to backup and restore from a Mac.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/pooling-anglo-french-defence-a-sign-of-progress-or-of-decline/Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:10:11 +0000Pooling Anglo-French defence: a sign of progress, or of decline?https://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-new-macbook-air-with-its-first-rate-gpu-and-ssd-its-real-life-performance-belies-the-paper-specs/Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:32:10 +0000The new MacBook Air's superior GPU and SSD drive give it snappier performance than other machines in the range with better statshttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/itunes-and-steve-jobss-walled-garden-a-major-strategic-blunder-for-apple/Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:06:41 +0000iTunes and Steve Jobs’s walled garden: a major strategic blunder for Apple: If Apple persists in its strategy of pretending the cloud doesn’t exist, it could end on the path as Microsoft when it turned its back on the Internet in the 1990shttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/can-the-fifth-republic-survive-m-sarkozy/Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:49:26 +0000The dangerous path on which France's once admirable institutions have been taken over the past few years has just reached a new low with even the existence of Cabinet solidarity apparently forgotten by the current administration.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/whats-open-anyway-walled-gardens-will-never-stifle-innovation-and-shouldnt-be-confused-with-net-neutrality/Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:38:54 +0000Walled gardens will never stifle innovation and shouldn’t be confused with Net neutrality: few IT companies have shown growth without resorting to economic models perceived as ‘closed’https://www.donaldjenkins.com/what-should-a-tory-government-stand-for-in-2010/Tue, 11 May 2010 13:58:10 +0000Following the General Election the important question will be what a Tory government will actually stand for. There would a lot to be said for it refocusing on its traditional valueshttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/did-you-even-know-facebook-has-unilaterally-decided-to-share-all-your-data-with-anyone-it-pleases/Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:57:44 +0000A change in policy announced last week allows Facebook to share all your date with anyone they pleases, though it's still possible to opt out of thishttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-welcome-trend-away-from-anonymous-posting-on-the-internet/Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:16:07 +0000Content quality, on balance is improved immeasurably if people are prepared to stand up for they are saying. Does this mean people will comment less? Probably. Does it matter all that much? I don’t think so.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/stuff-i-couldnt-live-without-in-2010/Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:50:17 +0000I’ve succumbed to the trend. Here’s the list of stuff I couldn’t possibly do without.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/a-plea-in-support-of-mr-obamas-perfectible-health-care-bill/Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:29:08 +0000I'm in no doubt that America needs universal health care for the same reasons that Europe needed it in 1945.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/improve-your-wordpress-blog-with-marsedit-amazon-cloudfront-and-markdown/Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:37:02 +0000How I use MarsEdit for editing posts on my desktop, in combination with WriteRoom and TextMate. I explain how I've started using Amazon Cloudfront to store my imageshttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/does-being-for-the-liberty-of-england-still-mean-being-for-the-protestant-religion/Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:49:55 +0000The Settlement Act enacted in 1701 is likely to be consigned to the dustbin of History at some point between now and the next Proclamationhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/reorganising-this-blog/Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:03:21 +0000The time has come to consolidate all the posts I’ve written since 2005 in a variety of guises, in one language and one site.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/does-french-tech-have-any-future-at-all/Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:33:22 +0000France, historically a cradle of cutting-edge technology, has gradually departed from that stance and has increasingly turned into a sort of cultural but irrelevant Disneylandhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/whither-frances-institutions-the-tragic-and-unlamented-end-of-a-thirty-year-golden-age/Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:34:13 +0000From 1962 to 1992, the system put in place by de Gaulle was highly successful. This has now given way to a period of instability, governmental weakness and disillusionmenthttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/social-networking-going-towards-an-oligopolistic-closed-shop-system/Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:24:56 +0000Social networking has matured. Three years ago, a vast number of start-ups were competing in the field, and few people other than geeks actually bothered to use them. Today the sector is much more concentratedhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/turn-of-the-decade-tribulations/Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:57:51 +0000My difficult start to a new decade, and the tribulations of the French healthcare system, which is still probably the world's besthttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/of-the-virtues-of-representative-democracy/Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:37:43 +0000In this short post I argue in favour of a system that strikes a balance between the danger of bad governance posed by populism and the obvious drawbacks of dictatorship.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/a-time-to-gather-stones-together/Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:48:03 +0000A short post written at a challenging time. Yet one of the many the beautiful things about hardship, when it strikes, is that spiritual comfort is always there when one needs it.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/why-does-literature-seek-to-give-meaning-to-the-yearning-for-death/Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:03:10 +0000French letters since the eighteenth century are strongly coloured by death and, more particularly, by death wishes. In this post I look at a subject that most will regard as unnecessarily stern in an age where happiness has been erected into a moral imperative.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/why-i-have-finally-decided-to-blog-in-my-own-name/Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:34:13 +0000The time has come to draw the process to a logical conclusion and make donaldjenkins.com my only home on the web.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/will-mr-obama-bring-the-united-states-any-closer-to-abolishing-the-death-penalty/Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:10:39 +0000Standards of decency, which have already shifted sufficiently to provoke debate on the constitutionality of lethal injection and put an end to the execution of minors, are now evolving towards complete abolition.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/is-nancy-mitford-no-longer-understood/Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:39:04 +0000It is pretty standard, nowadays, to denigrate Nancy Mitford as frivolous and out of touch, but I’ve always had a sneaking liking for someone who was easily the loveliest of the Mitford sistershttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-four-traditionalist-bishops-were-they-ever-validly-excommunicated/Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:38:26 +0000There are sound theological reasons to believe that the four traditionalist SSPX bishops were never validly excommunicated in the first placehttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/yvonne-princesse-de-bourgogne-gerard-mortier-shuts-his-bolt-pretty-triumphantly/Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:56:19 +0000Over the past four years, Gerard Mortier has presided over a quiet revolution in style, matched by a major shift in the audience of that venerable Parisian institutionhttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/blogging-sequentially-using-writeroom-textmate-and-ecto-or-marsedit/Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:14:33 +0000In this post we will be looking at ways to get TextMate, MarsEdit or ecto and WriteRoom to work seamlessly together so that you can concentrate on each stage of producing a blog post without being distracted and automate most of the coding and uploading processes.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-man-who-dreamt-of-a-modern-rich-democratic-peaceful-iran/Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:00:28 +0000On January 18, 1979, thirty years ago today, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the man who dreamt of, and then started building, a non-nuclear, peaceful, modern Iran, was forced into exile by his former Western allies, allowing the country to descend into chaos.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/feminists-and-homophobes-have-destroyed-a-unique-four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old-english-compromise/Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:46:57 +0000Virulent feminism and assertive homophobic prejudice have destroyed a quintessentially English compromise: Anglicanism. Yet the issues that have caused the most rancour are actually trivial and non-doctrinal.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/i-guess-a-moratorium-if-we-get-one-is-better-than-nothing/Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:15:23 +0000There is growing realisation that, in execution by lethal injection, a condemned prisoner’s suffering is real in many cases, but concealed by the protocol used. The Supreme Court, unfortunately, has yet to acknowledge this.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/oh-so-the-pope-abolished-limbo-did-he/Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:13:41 +0000Although belief in Limbo is common, the Roman Catholic church has never formally proclaimed its existence as a dogma in which its membership must believehttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/an-amazing-mixture-of-roland-petit-the-corps-de-ballet-and-proust/Sat, 03 Mar 2007 12:47:34 +0000A review of RolandPetit's impressive ballet Proust ou les intermittences du coeur_ : « Les enfers de Monsieur de Charlus ».https://www.donaldjenkins.com/should-france-change-her-national-anthem/Mon, 05 Feb 2007 03:05:41 +0000A modest, and rather frivolous, contribution to the debate that sometimes recurs about the words of France's national anthem.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/i-have-been-known-to-enjoy-rosenkavalier-sometimes/Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:35:34 +0000A review of Gerard Mortier's lovely production of Strauss's Rosenkavalier at the Paris Bastille Opera.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/and-the-word-was-made-flesh-got-that/Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:50:32 +0000Quite simply put, the most important words ever written: a recollection for Christmas.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/idomeneo-a-lyrical-turning-point/Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:33:22 +0000A short review of Mozart's Idomeneo, truly a revolutionary musical piece at the time it was composed, directed by Luc Bondy at the Palais Garnier in Paris.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/when-in-france-dont-ever-wear-brown-shoes-after-6-pm/Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:46:16 +0000Never, ever, ever wear brown shoes in Paris after 6 p.m.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/jonathan-littell-is-no-match-for-julien-green/Tue, 21 Nov 2006 02:12:38 +0000A review of American-born Jonathan Littel's rather heavy-handed novel, *Les Bienveillantes*. One inevitably comes to the conclusion that he is not is the same league as the other, more famous American writer who wrote in French, Julien Green.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/benjamin-millepied-takes-paris-by-storm/Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:51:07 +0000A review of Benjamin Millepied's ballet *Amoveo*, which was attended by a huge concourse of people from Paris and New York.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/the-french-themselves-dont-realise-how-beautifully-french-les-troyens-is/Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:55:21 +0000A quick review of *Les Troyens*, arguably France's most beautiful opera, and rather inexplicably quite misunderstood. Gerard Mortier, director of the Paris Opera, has rightly gone against this trend by making it the highlight of the year's season.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/chopin-such-appropriate-music-for-a-ballet/Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:05:39 +0000A review of *La Dame aux camellias* directed by Neumaier, Americas most European choreographer.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/cheap-monday-or-how-to-be-thin-poor-and-fashionable/Sat, 26 Aug 2006 23:53:37 +0000If you want to be fashionable, you can never be too thin (that bit hasn’t changed), or too poor.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/la-dame-aux-camelias-crusty-old-fogeys-jumping-for-joy/Fri, 23 Jun 2006 00:28:32 +0000A review of Neumeier's *La Dame aux camellias*. I wonder why it took so long for this wonderful ballet piece, created in 1978, to be included in the Opera’s *répertoire*.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/capote-and-the-death-penalty-turning-the-clock-back-to-1967/Sun, 26 Mar 2006 22:39:31 +0000A review of the film about Truman, Capote, in which one deliberately veers somewhat off-topic, focusing more on the curious way in which he approached the death penalty on the occasion of his trip to Kansas.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/dont-let-the-french-president-get-elected-by-chance/Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:18:40 +0000A quick look at the result of the French 2002 presidential election: the two-ballot winner-takes-all system could potentially again result in one of the two mainstream candidates not making it to the second ballot. Yet nobody seems to care.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/would-the-social-register-types-in-new-york-hate-haneke-too/Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:15:31 +0000A review of Heneke's *Don Giovanni* at the Palais Garnier, which received an absolutely awful welcome from the pretentious Parisian public.https://www.donaldjenkins.com/abomination-in-iran/Fri, 12 Aug 2005 21:34:14 +0000My first real blog post was about an abomination. I have not been able to get the devastating news about the mollah regime in power in Iran's hanging of two innocent teenagers, for the sole reason that they were in a relationshiphttps://www.donaldjenkins.com/why-ive-decided-to-keep-a-blog/Sun, 03 Jul 2005 10:19:28 +0000In this initial post, one explains why one has succumbed the trend for keeping a blog