In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: Political Leadership

  • The Establishing of Ground

    Posted:

    The reference here is to a book and an image I keep referring to. It is called “I and Thou” and is by Martin Buber. Buber compares two essential ways of reaching out beyond the Self to meet the world : one is I – It (my object) and the other I – Thou (my…

  • Songs from our Seclusion (congratulations, Keir Starmer)

    Posted:

    What can poetry offer our enforced Corvid-19 seclusion, this locked-in time of question, tension, upset and loss, this desert time ? In some eras and cultures, poetry has played and still plays a major role in the community’s life. In others, barely any. And only partly does that depend on how good the poets are.…

  • Britain’s Return to Health

    Posted:

      I want to talk about the British Labour Party which – despite everything – still occupies the ground I look to for the beginning of this nation’s regeneration and return to health. But “ground” is one thing ; the withered and stunted vegetation I see presently over-running and littering that ground, is another. To…

  • Cat Vies with Hard Drive for my Soul

    Posted:

    Our race has re-made the world to be a reflection of our own chaotic inner lives and processes. We’ve fashioned our environment in such a way that it has become our self-portrait (if we dare to look). Perhaps we see ourselves for the first time, when we look out on the world we have made.…

  • What does “Advisor” mean in Toadland ?

    Posted:

    Semantics – the study of words and their meanings – is an important subject, after all. I used to hang back from it as being peripheral, academic, finickity, pedantic. But now, especially in this era when the Lie is so greatly in the ascendant, I see more clearly that being alert to how words are…

  • Where the Hoodlums Are

    Posted:

    The stanza was written and uploaded on the day the UK left the EU, January 31st, 2020. The picture is of a tower built in Victorian times in belated tribute to the great William Tyndale. It stands on the edge of  the Cotswold escarpment, overlooking the Severn estuary. The lovely photograph was taken by Derek…

  • High Noon is Nearly Upon Us. Where’s the Sheriff ?

    Posted:

    Around the world, the hoodlums and outlaws are running amok, in their suits of armour made of lies. By contrast, the sheriffs seem downcast, overwhelmed and on the run. I feel downcast and overwhelmed, too. Might it mean that I’m a sheriff, in disguise ? But there is no star in my cupboard. The picture…

  • Toad and the Bong

    Posted:

    Some of the more ardent Tory Brexiters seem very exercised that, after all, Big Ben will not be breaking into song when the UK vacates the EU and seeks alternative residence in their delinquent yet decrepit Brexit wonderland. And the lying Mr Toad, our bouncy new Prime Minister, is coming up with ingenious plans to…