That question is particularly important after the Brexit referendum, as demonstrations and some newspapers are making a lot of noise about their opponents being ‘enemies of the people’ and ‘traitors’. There seems to be a chance that Parliament will actually be suspended, or ‘prorogued’, which has not happened since we had to chop off the […]
What can we say to persuade a Polish or American coal miner to stop digging coal? Increasingly, people in all countries are coming to understand that you cannot keep on polluting the only plant we live on. There is no real dispute now that science is on the side of the environmentalists. The word used […]
Why are there so many mass shootings in Europe and the USA? One reason is that unstable elements on the far right are stirred up by The Great Replacement Theory (GRT). Mass shootings are an extreme reaction to it, but it also has many other, more slippery but still dangerous effects. It originated when Renaud […]
Capitalism without social control is like a football match without a referee, only playing for your life. The strongest are free to break the rules and take everything. Then they make their own rules, so they can keep it all. Right wing arguments make much of the idea that everyone should be free to own […]
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 […]