In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Tag: language

  • Six Truth Works Three Tattoos

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    Here in the UK, recent elections and this Summer’s cataclysmic EU referendum have been opportunities for liars, demagogues and PR specialists to practice their skills on the population, in order to sway it to their will. The phenomenon is not unique to the UK, nor of course is it unprecedented. But the pervasive dishonesty, recklessness…

  • “The People” is Sovereign. To defraud the sovereign is a capital offence.

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    In the UK following its EU referendum, “the People’s Will” is a phrase now often being quoted with reverence as something unarguable, final, almost sacred, however uncomfortable. The phrase is being quoted most often and with greatest reverence by the public figures who helped to secure the Brexit vote by whatever means they could –…

  • Three Poems post-Brexit

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      Last Stand   The hyphen between I and Thou is our last stand and foothold. There’s nowhere else to retreat to. No set answer no fixed place. Centuries back the desert fathers came here and left strange word behind among skull and thigh bone and the odd green shoot forced into life through ardent…

  • How can we Defend Free Speech from the Lie ?

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    This piece follows the recent UK referendum on our membership of the EU. Both the quality of the debate and the “decision” that came out of it have left many millions of people reeling and horrified. But how was that decision arrived at ? Why do so many of us find it impossible to accept…

  • Riding the Hyphen between I and Thou

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    With our present tumult and travails in mind, I have remembered a series of poems I wrote in the mid-nineties called “I Hyphen Thou.” I thought they might be relevant then, but they seem even more so now. Below are two short extracts. The idea of the hyphen is based on a book called “I…

  • Post-Referendum First Thoughts

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    At the time of writing, Britain is faced with what the experienced commentator Michael White has described as the worst political crisis of his lifetime. Not just our political parties, but much of our democratic process seem to be imploding. It seems that, having voted to break away from the EU, our nation itself feels…

  • Truth tells – another time

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    Aortal Bleeding Perhaps our Creator lacks a mind and therefore had no plan for how yours and mine would work. In which case our lives and history are just a continuous accident like a river nosing downhill chancing on points of give. But it’s hard not to decipher a certain deliberation verging on cruelty in…

  • Dignity and Light

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    Two new poem collections are about to be uploaded on the website of the project I run, called “Poems for…“. One of them is on Learning Disability and is called “Poems for… Bridges to Learning Disability”  The other is on mental ill-health and is called “Poems for…Self at Sea“. The poems in both collections bring……