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… Continue reading High Noon this Easter
Category The Lie
The Rule of the Rough Beast
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… Continue reading The Rule of the Rough Beast
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
A Drawing of Conclusions
It is surely still natural to respect a conclusion that is reached through cogent argument. Each stage of the argument leads to the next stage, like a series of links in a chain. The conclusion is given its authority, its right to be heard and accepted, by the strength of the links that have led… Continue reading A Drawing of Conclusions
If the People is Sovereign, Lying to the People is High Treason
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]… Continue reading If the People is Sovereign, Lying to the People is High Treason
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
The Dance of the Emperor who Wears no Clothes
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… Continue reading The Dance of the Emperor who Wears no Clothes
Autumn UK 2016
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… Continue reading Autumn UK 2016
Sayings
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… Continue reading Sayings
Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?
Can liberal democracy survive our tumultuous, bewildering, frightening, dangerous times ? Can it surmount them ? Can it direct the flailing social forces at work towards positive solutions, a viable human future ?
As things stand, it seems not to be coping at all. It is surely in great danger of allowing and even… Continue reading Can Liberal Democracy Survive our Tumult ?