Butch & the Sundance
17
Jul
‘Kid, next time I say “let’s go some place like Bolivia”, let’s go some place like Bolivia ..’
From bitter searching of the heart
16
Jul
A villanelle has nineteen lines and just two rhyming sounds, in this case “ain” and “art”. Frank Scott’s Villanelle for Our Time was set to music by Leonard Cohen on one of his more unusual albums, Dear Heather. Years ago I heard Cohen tell BBC Front … Read More »
Is this England? Ask Chaucer!
10
Jul
I’ve been re-watching This is England. Not the movie, set in 1983, but the Channel 4 mini-series it spawned: This is England 1986 .. 1988 .. 1990. They’re on catch up at All 4 and if you never saw them, find … Read More »
Labour’s problems are Britain’s problems
9
Jul
That there’s a coordinated plot by the Labour Right to unseat Jeremy Corbyn is beyond doubt but the plotters have a legal problem. They’d reckoned on thwarting the party rank and file by following a no confidence vote with a … Read More »
Power of the press
1
Jul
One aspect of the torpedoing of Boris by Gove and his missis, Sarah Vine, is this line in her email to hubby: Crucially, the membership will not have the necessary reassurance to back Boris, neither will Dacre/Murdoch, who instinctively dislike … Read More »
A crisis not a disaster: there’s work to do!
28
Jun
This is a crisis, not a disaster. Like others I’ve been amused by an animated cartoon doing the rounds on Facebook. It depicts the masses eagerly striding into thin air from a cliff that instead of towering over open sea, … Read More »
Don’t blame me …
24
Jun
Yesterday I gave my pencilled cross to a corrupt institution that only last year condemned millions of Greeks to a poverty they’d done nothing to deserve, and has plotted and connived behind our backs to subvert popular will in the … Read More »
The man who turned into a sofa
22
Jun
Today on BBC Radio 4, told from the alternating perspectives of family members where dad is laid low by clinical depression: a moving and creative exploration in prose monologue and rhyming verse. It even ends well. One of those rarities … Read More »
Brexit? Soros speaks
21
Jun
George Soros writing in the Guardian today: .. there are speculative forces in the markets much bigger and more powerful. And they will be eager to exploit any miscalculations by the British government or British voters. A vote for Brexit … Read More »
The case for not voting
20
Jun
At the time of Britain’s 2015 General Election I posted, here and here for instance, on alleged electoral apathy. More recently I’ve implicitly challenged, here and here, the notion of Clinton as ‘the lesser evil’ given Trump’s extraordinary campaign. A … Read More »