Category: abuse of free speech
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If the People is Sovereign, Lying to the People is High Treason
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As 2016 comes to an end, I want to present an argument which I believe follows from the year’s events. Different elements of the argument have already been touched on here in recent posts. I must begin with language and those first words of St John’s Gospel. In the beginning was [and was always] the…
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Naming the Beast of the Year
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This beast has our country’s contours written all over it. It has leapt from out of the ruins of the city, those hollow squares, and from the great labrynth below ground where the thread got tangled, and from the wi-fi and the wires through which we do not speak but intone like digital toys…
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The Dance of the Emperor who Wears no Clothes
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The Brexit dance continues. And in London, a court case has just come to an end, in which lawyers have been debating whether or not Parliament should have influence over the Brexit process. We shall hear the result of that court case in the near future. But its implications are profoundly important and the discussion…
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Autumn UK 2016
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Today our skies evicted the swallow and the swift was banished weeks ago and in Dorset the house martin whose tiny mud globes once crammed the eaves was simply absent all year. And last week Putin, unrestrained, bombed hospitals in Aleppo and Trump continued his debasing of America and Theresa May declared the…
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Sayings
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Reaching for words is like searching the earth for stones and then shaping them one after another into a path. Your words took my breath away. They killed me with their song. They made my womb turn over. Sing to me again. The words I must speak will sentence me to death.…
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Post “Brexit” Blues and Bubbling Ferments
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Here I have collated various addresses I have come across or been sent during the past few weeks. They link to various initiatives and/or reflections which I find interesting and helpful, following the referendum decision and the course – “Brexit means Brexit” – which appears to have been set for our unknown destination on the…
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Democracy & the Lie: do they go hand in hand ?
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During July, two articles by Andreas Whittam Smith appeared in The Independent newspaper on successive days. Here are the links to them: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/broken-democracy-spin-doctors-destroyed-uk-politics-theresa-may-repair-it-a7135146.html ; http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/fix-broken-democracy-smash-political-class-two-simple-things-a7137131.html Whittam Smith co-founded The Independent and his two pieces are worth reading. They explore the Brexit campaign’s “victory” and contain proposals for starting a process of renewal of the UK’s…
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Six Truth Works Three Tattoos
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Here in the UK, recent elections and this Summer’s cataclysmic EU referendum have been opportunities for liars, demagogues and PR specialists to practice their skills on the population, in order to sway it to their will. The phenomenon is not unique to the UK, nor of course is it unprecedented. But the pervasive dishonesty, recklessness…