In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: Democracy

  • Lying to the People is a Crime of High Treason

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    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 principles are…

  • The Tory Family Row

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    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…

  • The History of the United Kingdom

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    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 to keep up,…

  • Lament at UK Election time 2017

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      I cannot just argue or disagree when my own country decides to throw itself into the sea.   If Britain is an oak tree centuries old, then I am a leaf somewhere to one side, barely visible and increasingly wrinkled.   But the great tree’s nature still courses through me and my short life…

  • The Flotsam of Frantic Dreams

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      We don’t know any more where our lives belong or even where to hide. The walls of home hold nothing up or out and the door hangs slack on the hinge.   Where have our lives gone ?   I consult the news and the world ended several days ago. Today it’s ending all…

  • That Child Alone in the Tower and Out on the Golf Course

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    … continue reading

  • High Noon this Easter

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    Let’s recall the film “High Noon,” that great Western. The outlaw and his hoodlum cronies are riding into town. They want revenge on the sheriff, the keeper of the law. The sheriff scours the town looking for support, a posse of townspeople who will help him defend their community from the outlaws. The townspeople know…

  • The Rule of the Rough Beast

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      The “Rough Beast” is a phrase from “The Second Coming” by YB Yeats. Written in 1919, it is a poem that becomes more topical with each passing day. The last three lines of the poem above are a deliberate reference to TS Eliot’s lines from “Four Quartets” – “Humankind/Cannot bear very much reality.” And…