In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • Safe Passage

    I think “Safe Passage” came mostly from something which Mr Jon Lansman was recently quoted as saying (by “The Independent”). Lansman is founder of Momentum and is apparently of the “Far Left.” The subject under discussion was the possibility of a new “centrist” or “Blairite” party to form soon, made up of individual MP’s from both Labour and Tory Parties.

    Mr Lansman was not impressed. “Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna and Gavin Shuker are marginal figures with marginal politics,” he said.“This is very different to the SDP breakaway in 1981….The situation is completely different now. Socialism has gone mainstream…”

    I think we are all marginal figures at the moment including all our so-called leaders, the visible ones of whom seem not to be leaders at all, but flotsam from the past thrown up onto the beach by our chaos. And I don’t think “socialism” has gone mainstream. Rather, I think old fundamentalisms appeal to people in times of havoc. Like driftwood, their dictums and certainties can seem to keep us afloat for a while. Radical and fundamental change is certainly needed. But not old driftwood.

    Posted:

  • The Parrot Looks at Leadership

    Posted:

  • Boy Jez and the Die-Hards

    Jez seems to believe that The Many should be listened to, only so long as he is one of them. Now, as one of The Few, he weighs his words like all the other members of that club, and The Many have to look behind his words to decipher what he really means and then work out what deceptions he is attempting for his own advantage, or that of his own small tribe…. And it turns out in the light of day that Jez is just like all the others – though rather more limp and inactive than many.

    Posted:

  • The Maybot Crashes Yet Again

    On Tuesday night, St Valentine’s night, Theresa May and her government were defeated again in the House of Commons. Apparently she herself was not present. Soon after the defeat, Number Ten issued a statement : “While we didn’t secure the support of the Commons this evening, the prime minister continues to believe… The government will continue to pursue this…to ensure we leave on time on 29 March.”

    Posted:

  • A Brexiter Takes Stock of the Dark Star

    I know that, in writing this, I was remembering a scene from an early “Star Wars” film. An ominous planet approaches. And I remember that image occurring to me, when I came across a book by Iain McGilchrist called “The Master and His Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” The distance between our two brain hemispheres is widening and they are at odds in our space, not complementary. And we make a world that reflects our civil war. Or we seek to escape the world we’ve made, by cutting off (so we like to think).

    Posted:

  • Jez, the Phantom Striker

    Jeremy Corbyn is apparently an Arsenal supporter. Yesterday’s “Independent” editorial came up with the image of the open goal and Corbyn’s failure to shoot. Thanks for that. The piece ended by taking the image a stage further : if the Arsenal manager had a striker who repeatedly failed to shoot in times of need as well as opportunity, the manager would sack that player.

    Posted:

  • An English Word of Apology to Europe

    Yesterday, Mr Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said in a speech :“The facts are unmistakable. Today, there is no political force and no effective leadership for Remain. I say this without satisfaction, but you can’t argue with the facts.”

    And : “I have been wondering what that special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan to carry it [out] safely.”

    Posted:

  • The Parrot Speaks of Fre-dom

    In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer introduced Rhyme Royal to English poetry and all these stanzas of mine about Brexit share that long established rhyme scheme. And Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales and one of those is “The Franklin’s Tale” which I love. And that’s where this medieval word “fre” keeps appearing, later to become “freedom.” But in The Franklin’s Tale, the word means something very different from modern usage. Does that imply corruption just of language, or corruption of spirit ?

    Posted: