It is important to remember this sandstone edifice, raised in 1837, means nothing
IN the middle of December Unicef launched a domestic emergency response in the UK for the first time in its more than 70-year history to help feed children hit by the Covid-19 crisis. The UN agency, which is responsible for providing humanitarian aid to children worldwide said the coronavirus pandemic was the most urgent crisis affecting children since the Second World War.
The first of November is Samhain. The beginning of winter in the old Celtic calendar. It is a time when the dead rise up and mingle with the spirits of the living. The nights are drawing in. The clocks have gone back and the UK Tories have decided to return us all to the early days of the 19th century.
AT the end of HG Wells novel The War Of The Worlds, the Martian invaders are not defeated by brute military force or by state-of-the-art technology, but by germs and viruses. Against these Planet Earth pathogens, the space invaders have no defence. When Wells’s novel was first published in 1898, the British imperial project of Empire and world domination was at its height. What Wells tapped into was the underlying anxiety which eats away at the heart of all power structures when they have reached a zenith.
EACH country is unique because of its people and history, but all countries are alike because none can exist on its own.
THE worst trait in any politician or political party is conceit.
WHEN no-one in the ruling elite actually believes in anything other than their own right to rule, history shows that freedom usually comes after the spilling of much blood. Nothing of social value is given to the majority from autocratic oligarchs in decline. It has to be taken before the damage to the people and the nation is too great.
