One of the finest pieces of advice I was ever given when reviewing news items in international politics (or anything actually) was to ask the question ‘Who benefits?’ The result of this simple question leads directly onto the question ‘Who benefits from me believing this?’ and from there to a host of questions. It is…
Month: July 2011
A Single Idea
How do we prove our existence? The question may seem frivolous as this is something that needs no proof except when you ask yourself simple questions such as, ‘How do we know this existence is not a dream?’ ‘Can I prove you exist and are not in my imagination?’ The idea and the attempts to…
Expedient Recognition
This week the British Government recognised along with a good many other countries, the Libyan opposition as the legitimate leadership. At the same time the British Government says nothing about aspirations around the world of small peoples who are not rebelling against their own leadership because actually, it is not their own. Why do we…
Brinkmanship
Watching the American arguments on Capitol Hill about the budget has been (for a foreigner) a dispiriting and banal experience. The arguments surrounding the life-blood of the American people (money) take place with hardly any real thought about what those people are suffering. It is not usual for us to think of American’s suffering, or…
Family Secrets
I was talking to a friend this last weekend about writing things that are true about one’s family and she commented that some of the information constituted to her siblings ‘family secrets’ and of course, no other family has ever gone through what they went through so best to keep it secret. She was not…
City Driving
My Garmin has made driving in London easy, as if I had a cabbie in my car and what with air conditioning on a hot day one could almost say it makes the experience pleasurable. But I have heard people say that if you use one then you can be tracked and ‘they’ know where…
For Christina
The autumnal storms of time strip ideas From my imagination like leaves from A tree, which I shed on paper as tears Of ink for roaming eyes to walk upon, And in the rustling of thoughts grasp a vein Of nature, which has waited for my pen Language, books, paper before it attained All that’s…
Blueskin the Cat – first chapter
Blueskin wasn’t bothered by thoughts of an after-life. He couldn’t spell reincarnation and hadn’t even heard of India where the people believed in such things. What did bother him for a moment was the awful memory of being strangled to death in a hanging and the loss of his beautiful blue waistcoat with the pearl…
Education, Education, Education
I never really thought Tony Blair was a good or even an interesting speaker though apparently most of the country did. I am however interested in the ongoing debate for paying for university education on the basis that what is paid is a small percentage of the increase in salary a university graduate may expect…
The Human Censor
I was very interested to learn that Hollywood had a pre-censor era of film making going up to about 1933, after which a host of rules came into force about what was and was not allowed to be shown in films. What interested me was not the actual rules but the fact that it was…