Category brexit
Mere Words
Forced to witness and live, day after day, this nation’s fraught and inept and demented progress towards Brexit – the unforgiveable false step, waste and wanton irrelevance of it, the tedium, obsessive delinquency, delusion, shame, the sheer disgraceful wrong and disaster of it – I retreat into words, not just for some slight relief, but… Continue reading Mere Words
I Came Running
When Theresa May, the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister, called an election for June 2017, her manifesto included an opportunity to repeal New Labour’s ban on fox hunting. The Conservatives had expected to increase their majority, which would have eased May’s ability to push through Brexit. Instead… Continue reading I Came Running
Dust
The poem I’m publishing here foresees the end of the world. The false god Me n’ Mine has too many worshippers to be withstood. Besides Greed, the angel which serves Me n’ Mine most faithfully is the Lie and it is the Lie by which the false god rules and will destroy us all… Continue reading Dust
Poet on the Cliff
Let’s look again at St Aldhelm’s chapel, a small square Norman building on a cliff-edge. It stands at the very tip of a promontory on the Dorset coast called – a bit confusingly – St Alban’s Head.
The chapel is… Continue reading Poet on the Cliff
Lying to the People is a High Crime
All Westminster MP’s are required to swear to tell the truth. I have been told this on the good authority of my own MP. She told me that new MP’s must swear to abide by the seven Nolan principles. The sixth of these states that holders of public office should be truthful.
But the Nolan… Continue reading Lying to the People is a High Crime
The Tory Family Row
The Tory ex-minister Nicky Morgan recently described the Tory party as being like her family. Presumably she meant that, for her, the party is more than just “work,” or even just “politics” : her fellow-Tories are people of her own kind and she feels at home among them and perhaps spends most of her time… Continue reading The Tory Family Row
I Send Greetings from this Place
I send greetings from this place
to my neighbours across the water
I bid them welcome to my mind
I bid them welcome to our future
and I grieve that in the present… Continue reading I Send Greetings from this Place
The History of the United Kingdom
Click here for a summary of this piece, consisting of just over 700 words.
Are You Sitting Comfortably ?
The history of the United Kingdom (whose every seam is under terrible stretch and strain just now) continues so fast, so scattered, so hurt, so incoherent, so unguided and ill-advised, that it is hard… Continue reading The History of the United Kingdom