Category history
The Angel Overhead
In his grief, he asked the angel hanging overhead,
his faceless confessor :
Why, Lord, do sinners’ ways so grossly prosper ?
How can you allow the Lie so fatly to preside ?
And the angel answered :
I invited you to my feast,
my laden tables… Continue reading The Angel Overhead
Naming the Beast of the Year
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… Continue reading Naming the Beast of the Year
Message to Andy
After the May election, I joined the Labour Party. Since then I have been inundated by messages from an extraordinary number of Labour representatives, each passionately keen to get virtually personal with me. These include each of the present Party Leader candidates, as well as candidates for the Deputy Leader, all of whom, of course… Continue reading Message to Andy
The Scottish Referendum : odd thoughts
The campaign has not just energised Scots and many more – it will surely have embittered many, too. How will Scotland fare once the decision is made and the “sides” stand back from the barricades, the losers looking at the winners in the eye ? Will they help each other put the barricades away ?… Continue reading The Scottish Referendum : odd thoughts
Our present democracies will not rescue us from ourselves.
For the young, it will already seem a long time ago that the Soviet Communist bloc effectively closed down, its remarkable leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing “Perestroika,” its various constituent states, including Russia itself, “giving way” to democracy in remarkably quick succession. A major symbol of that dramatic and
Fable 13 – Jason’s Sermon from a Ledge
This short piece examines the topic of ever-accelerating change which we as a race have brought upon ourselves with our science and ingenuity, creating whole new worlds in ever quicker succession. It questions whether this acceleration we have released is manageable, even survivable. A character called Jason is the speaker. He has appeared in some… Continue reading Fable 13 - Jason's Sermon from a Ledge
Cat vies with Hard Drive for my soul
A psychiatrist called Iain McGilchrist has written what in my opinion is an extraordinary and important book called “The Master and his Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” I feel instantly at home