Watching the documentary on WW2 and how each combatant martialled its population to dedicate itself to winning the conflict was very instructive as to how, when threatened, everyone becomes a warrior. When the home is threatened everyone, as they say ‘does their bit’ and the government gives incentives to help them decide to get involved….
Category: Quotidial
Fire Fire
The scenes of the fires raging in Los Angeles are horrific. That only ten people have died is testament to the care taken in planning responses to such events. No one has talked about the numbers of animals burned to death, but then few care about them. The loss of libraries in a country fighting…
Strange World
I am used to debating and having an audience discuss an issue with me but podcasting is very strange. We have been going once a week for five weeks and posting on youtube and for one of the discussions we had 390 views. Out of nowhere, I think my other host sent to five of…
It is a shame
that people can look ordinary but are not. Ruled by the brain, which can me convinced of anything, we harbour violent thoughts, hatreds and savagery behind smiles. Only sometimes does the bigotry show itself in the expressions we try hard to hide. I am reminded of the murderers of Stephen Lawrence who dressed so well…
I am disturbed
by all the words of wisdom that keep being trolled out on social media. I mean I have one “it is sunny outside while in the rest of the UK people are facing flood damage and snow falls. Life is very different for everyone.” I have said precisely nothing. I have changed exactly nothing. I…
Wondrous
Nature is wondrous but also brutal. This brutality has fed into our psyche so deeply we think we need to kill but actually all we need to do is defend. We killed not just to save our own lives but to take life and we take it in such quantities it is true to say…
Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
It is probably true to say they don’t have any since the defeat of the Russian by the Mujahideen. I read on various UN sites and medical oversight pages that they cannot even appear on TV series. They cannot run café, or appear in public without a close family member (male) whom they are forbidden…
What is culture?
It is not TV, nor films. It is a way of thinking. Political landscapes develop over time at different speeds and depend upon the prevailing thinking. That fluctuates across generations and is not a steady progression but it is a steady change, no generation is exactly as the one that precedes it. Many times this…
Psychology
As a writer one of the few things I have shied away from is getting into the mind of someone who has done something barbaric. Something I, and more generally most people, would consider uncivilised and worthy if imprisonment if not execution. Trying to get into the mind of the man who just slaughtered people…
Ode
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; — World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s…