What’s wrong with it and why it must go. The comforting fairy tale In the book Candide there is a character called Doctor Pangloss. No matter what happens to the characters in the book, and some pretty bad things happen to them, he always says that they live in the best of all possible worlds. There is a word panglossian that is based…

A small change of direction Firstly, let me apologise for not having written much recently. I’ve been overtaken by the demands of my day job, being tormented by a long-term medical condition that meant I wasn’t sleeping properly, and also some things in my family have taken my mind away…

But a better world is necessary I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land. William Blake’s Jerusalem A Facebook friend of mine said to me: If you can show me a practical…

The demise of the imperial gentleman When I was a child in the 1960s we were taught that we should behave like gentlemen. This meant a few things that might seem a little weird now. Gentlemen were, of course, men, and in the language and perceptions of the time strong and powerful. …

Escape from McMurder Incorporated There is no need to despair. The recent revelations in the Labour party about sabotage by principle-free centrists is a good thing, it’s helping release energy that would have been wasted worrying about which meaningless Labour committee the left should try to take over to do more constructive things like…

2020 vision — the broader picture The Blair/Clinton and friends project represented the final flowering of the old post war consensus, but of course Thatcher and Regan had already torn up the old social contract it was built on. It was doomed as a vehicle for carrying it forward, but that was not its purpose. The…

What happened to the working class? In this section I will draw on the stats quoted in Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race when Reni Eddo-Lodge discusses the British working class. The shaping of the argument is entirely mine, however. The myth of the white working class First, the old industrial working class in Birmingham, Northern England, North Wales…

Racism — useful idiocy for dividing people We share a common ancestor with chimps. We have about 93% of the same DNA. Within the human population itself 97% of the DNA is common. So, this 3% that’s left is the source of all the variation in people you see. This is an amazing thought. On its own…