What is a Paper Candidate? The definition in Wikipedia is sufficient (see it as this link), though I balk at accepting the alternative name for it given there – a ‘no-hope candidate’. In becoming a paper candidate, I have no hope to win a seat but the act itself seems an expression of massive and … More Why be a paper-candidate? And why The Green Party!
Fighting for a historic third term in government, Tony Blair drove to his constituency in Sedgefield and said that his three-pronged object of political desire remained ‘Education, Education, Education’, without using the by then much mocked word. Here is what he said: Education has been, is and will be the driving mission of a New … More ‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.
Making a man of yourself – the strain of the 1950s Image from The Science Museum archive: https://coimages.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/58/936/large_2000_0549.jpg (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) We all assume we know what DIY means (without troubling to extend the acronym to the term DO IT YOURSELF). However, it was not always thus as the ‘Brief History of DIY’ page from … More Making a man of yourself for yourself – the strain of the 1950s
The Executive Order in the US Constitution allows one man (there’d never yet been a woman) to make Executive Orders with the force of law. Donald Trump signed 36 during his first week in Office. The possession in one person to make or change law is not thought of as possible in the idea of … More Handling the Trump syndrome: Never allow anyone the power to make or change law on their own
It was okay once for Labour MPs to laugh at Liz Truss’ belief that stimulating production through decreasing barriers to the rich getting really and relatively richer benefited the relarively poor. Wealth, Truss insists, trickles down the economic structure – increasing private wealth increases the wealth of all and reduces the problem of scarcity of … More ‘Wealtherty’ : a new concept helps us to understand why poverty persists in the wake of economic growth, and why a Labour government should not silently accept trickle-down economics.
Charles Dyer’s play, later a film, The Rattle f a Simple Man tells the story of a Northern mill worker who goes to London to find out if he is up to the job of bringing charismatic success into his life. It is success as a lover he seeks and hence that is a big … More The Rattle Of A Simple Man: or resetting a jelly that has already liquefied.
Tomorrow, the 29th November 2024, the House of Commons debate the Assisted Dying Bill. Already the media is full of hand-wringing MPs commenting on the ‘difficulty’ of the decision. We are meant to empathise but in doing so, we have to remember that the Bill is an attempt to increase the degree of autonomous decision-making … More The hardest decision is yet to come.
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car). Now the prompts from WordPress recycle and fresh questions do not appear, I have to answer the ones I rejected answering the first time round. Times like now when I have no project blogs ready to go, I pick apart the … More Why do we define the personal by the items that you considerable yourself capable of financing? It is a pernicious way of reducing the person to the status of a commodity.
The White Heat of WES or the STREETING of the Blair Witch Project Two days ago Wes Streeting outlined the approach the Starmer government will take to implementing its key pledge to voters – the relaunch of the project called The National Health Service, although it is yet to be seen how clear are the … More The ‘White Heat’ of WES or the STREETING of the ‘Blair Witch Project’.
Geoff works in a charity bookshop as a volunteer and often buys me little books that don’t sell but he thinks might interest me. Yesterday he brought this little book first published in Leipzig, Germany, but undated, with a written brief life of Kolbe by Richard Grant (whom I have failed to trace) in German, … More J.K. Rowling asserts when answering questions about her religious beliefs that she ‘believes in biology’: what I learned on Geoff finding for me a book on Georg Kolbe, who felt forced into such beliefs.
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