Listening to the news from Paris these past few days I, like so many Britons, think of climate change as a terrible possibility which may or may not materialise: an appalling possibility we learn to live with, like the threat … Read More »
Human greed is a fact of life: has been since post surplus (hence class) society weakened the bonds of interdependence to introduce new tensions between social and individuated self. So why say the cartoon is reactionary? Because unless contextualised it’s … Read More »
A few days before the December 2 Syria airstrikes vote I wrote to my MP, one Nick Clegg, to ask how he would vote. My email and his office’s reply are reproduced in full below. While I got an answer … Read More »
It is naive but depressingly common to think Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad came under western fire for being brutal. (Look at the evidence for god’s sake! From Riyadh to Apartheid Pretoria, since when did Wall or Threadneedle Street baulk at … Read More »
Benn’s Syria speech hailed as one of the finest in the Commons since WWII, screamed the Daily Mail in its kicker for an Andrew Pierce piece whose following line ran: Bookmakers have installed him as favourite to succeed Jeremy Corbyn. … Read More »
On one level – the parliamentary balance of forces – it made no difference to the outcome. Had every Labour MP opposed, and Tory rebels tripled, there’d still be RAF fighters over Syria today. We can’t know the thoughts of … Read More »
The Matthew Parris column in the Times yesterday – yup, Rupert’s Times – was headed, The Bombs-Away Brigade are on Autopilot. Its kicker ran thus: “Amazingly, Corbyn is right. The hawks just want to join a scrap with their mates … Read More »
My friend Sue Beardon alerted me to this FB post of November 17 by Greg Afinogenov, a Muscovite living in Boston MA: I’m so sick of seeing the endless debate about “if you care about Paris you don’t care about … Read More »
