Trump’s current behaviour is so bizarre that it has become the chief talking point at very meeting and every dinner party. His inopportune and cruel sacking of Jim Comey, head of the FBI, has had a dozen explanations, all contradictory, from the White House. So, for the benefit of non-American readers the following is a …
I like quoting bits from the Patriotic Millionaires press releases because people ought to know that every millionaire is not a selfish, greedy elitist monster. Aside from anything else it does help to encourage the downhearted. It is also Epicurean at heart. This is their latest message: President Trump spent his entire campaign criticizing Wall …
The other night we attended a concert given by two very well-known pianists, who played an unfinished piece by Mozart (fine), but, in addition two works by Stravinsky and Debussy, both relatively unknown and astonishing for their lack of imagination or a glimmer of melody,just endless loud noise. I put my earplugs in. We left …
Reflect upon the Walmart tax, the hidden levy American taxpayers pay to subsidize the always low wages America’s largest retailer pays out. These wages are so low that many Walmart workers have to depend on food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing to get by. U.S. taxpayers are paying $169.8 million annually for the public assistance …
Yesterday my wife and I joined the Climate Change march in Washington DC. Great cries of “shame” rang out ss we marched past the Trump Hotel in the 91 degree hèat, an all-time high for April 29th. A man dressed in a huge polar bear outfit had to be escorted away from the crowd after …
19% of employers have rejected a candidate for a job on account of their online activity. 56% would be put off hiring someone who used bad spelling and grammar on social media; 26% would be put off by signs of vanity, such as excessive displays of selfies. (YouGov) Am I the only person who is …
Continue reading ‘Using your common sense: applying for a job’ »
Upstanding conservatives believe that each of us must take personal responsibility for our actions – with one exception. Soldiers, it seems, can flout the law, because their job is so uniquely stressful. This was the argument put forward by lawyers for Sergeant Alexander Blackman, who in 2011 shot dead an injured, unarmed Taliban fighter, with …
In America we are pestered continually, sometimes two or three times a day, by companies who want to know “how they did”. I refer to opinion surveys, which proliferate everywhere. When I lived in England I used to slightly envy those who were asked their opinion about anything. Being extaordinarily opinionated myself it was irritating …
Bruce Gibney has written a book called “In a Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America” (I can comment on the account of the book and its review by Dana Milbank because I am not a boomer). The Boomers, Gibney says, are guilty of “generational plunder”. They are accused of “the mass, democratically-sanctioned …
from Martin Dean, Taunton Somerset: “We in Britain are a peculiar crowd; we like certainty, stability and equilibrium. In a few words, we like to know what will happen next. Unfortunately, that situation is far from the norm for most people outside the Westminster bubble, and I expect quite a few within it. As we …
Continue reading ‘An independent, spontaneous view of Brexit, April 3, 2017’ »
Below is a letter written in 1905 by President Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, in which he pleads with Bavarian Prince Luitpold not to deport him. According to the Associated Press, Trump’s grandfather immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager from Bavaria before he completed his required military service. After he acquired his fortune in the …
I had prepared a blog posting for today, but feel unable to post it after the atrosity committed in London yesterday. I would be inappropriate, and even uncaring. Such a savage attack had to be expected at some point. But I would prefer to be silent on this occasion in memory of the innocent foreign …
In Britain Conservatives, set on “reducing the size of government” have outsourced almost everything able to be outsourced, even many aspects of military life. A handful of huge private contractors undertake nearly all the tasks that used to be done by lower level government employees, including in healthcare, education, recruitment – the list goes on …
Continue reading ‘Outsourcing, responsible for low and stagnant wages’ »
There are around 70,000 British pensioners in Spain and 62 Spanish pensioners in Britain. (Prospect magazine, January 2017)
Al Jazeera reports that demolitions of Palestinian homes soared in 2016, with the Israeli authorities demolishing or seizing 1,089 Palestinian-owned structures throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, displacing 1,593 Palestinians. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stated that these are the highest demolition and displacement figures since they …
Continue reading ‘Israeli demolition of Arab properties reach a record’ »
