The United Kingdom has a problem: the extreme racist vote of Brexit is still holding its trade back at a time when trade is seen as the only way to dig itself out of the hole privatisation has placed it in. Investment has not been as big as it needed to be from the private…
Forgetfulness
I drove a lady for a respite lunch this afternoon and chatted to her about her life. She had lived all over the world with her accountant husband and neither of them can remember much about it. I tried to ask her what she thought of Paris, how she found India but she was unable…
Iran
I loathe war. It is the most hateful aspect of human activity even if it is an expression of our human personality. I also dislike rabid religion that wishes the whole world to be made in its image and subjugates individuals to ancient traditions that were not informed by deep knowledge or any science. And…
Internet Research
Most research done by the public these days is a matter of reading one or two articles or watching one or two videos they find. They don’t do much more research on those writing or talking than reading the cv on the site. They don’t then write to a leading academic in the field to…
Sadness
I have been thinking these past few minutes about the deaths of the beings I loved. It began with the pain my last dog was in when she died but then I thought of how lonely one of my dogs must have been who died in a cage in the vet waiting to be seen…
Changing Times
When I had my interview for university I was asked in my recent reading what surprised me most. When I answered I was asked what I thought about the fact that other writers took a contrary view of what had surprised me and I said I thought there might be and if I were to…
Weather
The Hurricane presently hitting the USA leaving people without power, killing at least 3 in Atlanta and surprisingly responders being killed, and leaving a huge amount of debris across its path makes one wonder. If this most advanced country is so adversely affected for 6 million people at one time, what is going to happen…
Beyond Paradise
Had a boring if fun day yesterday filing in Charlestown for Beyond Paradise. Watching at the London execs who write these scrips had people putting racing boats out to see stern first. Reminded me of the story I was told when they asked the casting agencies for [people to be the crowd at a fisherman’s…
Caricatures
There is a growing tradition fostered by Facebook and Instagram and other image-rich media outlets, to sum up complex an difficult situations with simplistic images that, if they were in words, would be a falsehood. The one I saw today was of a soldier, presumably Israeli, point his gun directly at a child’s head. In…
Balancing Power
It is a truism that in democracy no one wields power without a vote (leaving aside election fraud for a moment) and in the capitalist system no international conglomerate gets to be such without us all buying their goods. The theorist tell us that we all give a little of our power away to be…