For ten years of my early life I went to compulsory chapel every day of the week while at school. This is what I learned about Christianity, as preached buy the moderate Church of England: Christianity means love your neighbour, forgive your enemies, help the old, the hurt and the sick, be unkind to no …
Indian-administered Kashmir remains under an unprecedented lockdown, subject to a curfew and without phone and internet links. It followed the announcement that India’s only Muslim-majority state would lose its autonomous status. Article 370 of India’s constitution, in force since 1949, guaranteed Jammu and Kashmir the right to make its own laws in all internal matters, …
The Guardian, on 7 August, ran an interesting article on the “border” between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The hard border is not currently there because of the terms of the Good Friday agreement, underpinned by the fact that both the UK and Ireland are EU states. If Britain leaves the EU with no …
From the New York Times: Many of the people who have worked for President Trump have ended up “diminished” or humiliated in some way. To that long list we can now add a new name: John Bolton. Trump’s national security adviser won the role by impressing the president with his regular bellicose contributions to Fox …
Continue reading ‘A humiliating way to treat an old warmonger’ »
To The Times Nick King is right to point out that “small and family businesses make up 99% of the UK’s business population and create over three-quarters of new jobs”. Moreover, most of these businesses are also domestic-only and therefore do not trade with the EU, yet are still bound by its restrictive regulatory regime. …
Unless there is a sudden and unexpected outbreak of patriotism and seriousness, today’s the day Boris Johnson will assume the title of Prime Minister of the UK. There have been some pretty terrible rulers of the country, but you have to go back to King John, Edward II, Henry VI or Charles I to find …
Senior members of the United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative party are so concerned about the country leaving the European Union without a deal that they are planning to go over the head of the new Prime Minister and appeal directly to the Queen. Fears are growing among politicians that if and when Boris Johnson becomes PM …
Continue reading ‘Dragging the Queen into the Brexit farce?’ »
The shoddy, shabby treatment of the. British Ambassador to Washington raises the immediate question: who leaked his very accurate assessment of Trump? My favourite explanation is that the Foreign Office computer system was hacked by an insider with a view of getting Darroch replaced – by Nigel Farrage. Who would want this and why? Principally, Boris Johnson (an …
Continue reading ‘Ambassador Darroch’s unresolved resignation’ »
“Jesters and satirists have always been valued for speaking truth to power. But now they’re winning office themselves. When comedian Beppe Grillo joked his way into Italian politics a decade ago, he seemed a one-off. Turns out, he was a “harbinger of things to come”. Since then, Tiririca – an actual clown – has become …
“In Britain and the US a deep crisis of conservatism has been building since the end of the Reagan and Thatcher governments. It is a crisis of competence, of intellectual energy and coherence, of electoral effectiveness, and – perhaps most serious of all – of social relevance.”. (The Guardian, 28 May 2019). If this is …
I don’t want to bore non-Brits with too many comments on Brexit, existential though it is. But I would like to tell a short story. My wife and I were recently walking round an ancient Greek temple in Sicily when a man, who I had never seen before in my life, approached me, and, with his …
Epicurus counseled us to avoid politics and politicians, and watching the antics of politicians in the US, the UK (and, come to think of it the majority of other nations ) he was right. But we are experiencing another attack of world-wide irrational rage and lust for careless and cruel destruction last seen in the …
Support for remaining in the EU is above 80% in most EU countries. Asked how they would vote in an in-out referendum, 94% of people in Luxembourg said “in”, as did 92% of people in Portugal, and 91% in Ireland and the Netherlands. In the UK, the poll found that 55% want to remain, making …
Continue reading ‘As we await the results of the EU Parliamentary elections…..’ »
More than 87,000 properties in England and Wales, worth £100bn in total, are owned by anonymous companies registered in tax havens. (The Week, 23 March 2019) If you think this is sleazy, wait until Britain is out of the EU. Given the main cheerleaders of Brexit one has to conclude that one motivation of the …
Continue reading ‘Britain is the bolthole for crooked money from all over the world’ »
If we really want the parties to reconnect with voters, we should import – from Australia, say, or Brazil – a far more important innovation: compulsory voting. Obliging people to cast a ballot may sound illiberal: but it has the huge advantage of forcing political parties “to reach beyond their comfort zone”. Labour could no …
The U.S Attorney general, William Barr has excused the wild behavior of the President by explaining, without a hint of humour or irony, that the President gets “emotional”. Wow! One of the frequent Republican accusations against women in charge of anything is that they are too “emotional” to be able to run whole countries or …
When asked which of the main British political parties they felt an affinity with, 19% of voters said the Tories, 15% Labour, and 3% the Lib Dems; 54% said none. (Lord Ashcroft Polls/The Mail on Sunday, April 2019). The political class has betrayed the country, and the country knows it. No wonder Epicurus disliked …
Back in 2001, when George W. Bush came to power, he and the neocons could see nothing standing in their way. There was a weakened and impoverished Russia (still with its nuclear arsenal more or less intact). There was a Communist-gone-capitalist China focused on its own growth and little else. And there were a set …
We are now well into the third version of the German European empire. Startling claim? Only if you haven’t studied history. German Empire, Mark 1 (if you exclude the medieval “Holy Roman” version): the strikingly stupid German Kaiser, sitting astride a belligerent Prussian- dominated army and a burgeoning industrial economy, jealous of the British and …
Continue reading ‘Where the British went wrong. (a bit long, but something to debate)’ »
So the Mueller Report has cleared Trump and his staff from conspiring with Putin and Russia to win the election. Phew!!!! Thank goodness. The thought that one’s own Head of State was a traitor would have been intolerable. For the sake of peace of mind this is great news. Mueller is a good man and …
Continue reading ‘Good news! We can stop worrying about treachery!’ »
