There is a general rule about any form of argument that the first person to mention Hitler has lost. Political debate in the UK has increasingly come to reference the war in ways that are very ironic and misleading and need to be unpicked. This morning I saw a picture on the newspaper of a […]
This term can be heard, along with No Platforming, as we struggle with a relatively new problem in British society. The question of who should be allowed free speech in a civilised society is very old but we now have a new twist. Universities, for example, have traditionally represented an ideal where academics of many […]
Patriotism is love of your country, not your government. A number of social media release posts with the union jack, asking people to praise their nation’s fighting forces, support Our Boys, buy and wear a poppy and support British Values. They are usually pompous and aggressive, self-righteous and full of moral indignation. They often insist […]
Government sources like to claim that unemployment is falling and is now at a figure not equalled since 1975 – as low as 4% in August 2018. But what counts as being ‘employed’? The definition used to arrive at that figure assumes that to be unemployed is to be part of the workforce unable to […]
Centre Ground I act from conviction You are stubborn S/he is a fanatic Corbyn is not proposing to replace capitalism … he is not even proposing very significant wealth distribution….according to the economist James Medway, the economic proposals in Labour’s 2017 manifesto were more conservative than those put forward in 1983 by the SDP […]
Antisemitism 1) The essential elements of British antisemitism – the culture we inherit and on which we build In a car park in Truro this summer I heard a local complain that a parking ticket machine was Jewish because it did not give change. The good news is, I was surprised. There was a time, […]
The term Mount Zion appears in 2 Samuel 5:7, 1 Chronicles 11:5; 1 Kings 8:1, 2 Chronicles 5:2 but its meaning shifted from and came to mean the Temple Mount to the name of ancient Jerusalem’s Western Hill. It can be used as a synonym for Jerusalem. Zionism is the desire of the Jewish people to establish (some would say […]
We Never Talk To Terrorists (in public) That is the standard statement made by almost all governments. Often, fortunately, it is not true. They may be negotiating for a truce or settlement behind the scenes but, to succeed, it has to be private. More importantly, to succeed it has to be started. Wars end and […]
What is socialism Modern socialism A number of sites on social media are focusing on the word ‘socialism’ as if it were a terrible threat and that voting Labour will somehow turn the UK into North Korea, or Russia in the 1930’s. That is like saying that having tea with the Archbishop of Canterbury is […]
Any advertising or campaigning undertaken by someone trying to get elected has to be declared so we know how much they spent. There are limits on how much any candidate is allowed to spend and it is easy to check their accounts. But messages supporting them on social media, directly or indirectly, are usually free […]