Why do certain behaviours, or opinions, or political policies, become popular at some point, where before they would have been rejected out of hand ? Why do certain approaches, or qualities of presentation, previously scorned, suddenly start to be given value ? And do all such changes represent advance, or improvement ? No.
And caught up as we are in… continue reading
Category Trump
The Potent Appeal of the “Strong Model”
In Search of Good Faith
I have been carrying a little string of thoughts in my head for several weeks. They make a point I haven’t seen being made elsewhere and which might be worth adding to the mix. Maybe it would be of interest to someone passing, even throw some further light, however dim and peripheral, on what’s happening around us, or at least… continue reading
Where You Live
This poem was finished on the day of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20th 2021. It does not have the glitter and panache of Amanda Gorman’s poem recited on that day, but I think it carries a great deal of the relief so many of us will have felt on receiving Biden’s clear signals that sense, sanity and integrity were back… continue reading
So where have we got to, so far, in 2021 ?
So where have we got to, so far, in the year 2021 ? Locked in, locked down, sundered from outer family – again. And everywhere, the virus and its effects, spreading yet further, pressing wider and deeper. The masked face, still – and ever increasingly – the image of our time. In the US, a few days ago, that enormous… continue reading
Message to Keir Starmer
Dear Keir Starmer,
I’m a Labour member and a strong supporter and admirer of your leadership. I am sending this email message – and will upload a copy on my blog – fully aware that there is no prospect that you will read it. But, maybe, one of your team will.
I can see, of course, that a Brexit Deal would… continue reading
… 
… Words for an Earthquake
The United Kingdom has left the EU. We have vacated our seat at the high table and it is laid now for just 27 places. We’ve “got it done.”
Or “gone and done it.”
In recognition of the significance of this momentous step we’ve taken, whatever it may mean, I am uploading here a selection of 53 stand-alone short rhyming… continue reading
The Gaze Blank and Pitiless
WB Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” was written almost exactly a century ago, but if it’s possible for a poem to become truer still with age, then surely this one does.
And yet…Yeats wrote his poem in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence (he was Irish). The poem… continue reading
I See Everywhere the False
I thought this was true in 2014, when it was written. I did not know then that the truth can become truer.… continue reading