No Laughing Matter
I never was a great fan of John Cleese, his style of humour being a bit too manic for my liking, but I have to hand it to the old boy for stirring up a hornets nest a few days ago. You’ll remember the enormous stink that ensued when he said that London was “no longer an English city.” He has inevitably been accused of racism by the usual suspects including Piers Morgan and someone…
Dispossession
Dispossession of one people by another may follow a spectacular conquest and genocide event, or it may be a much more gradual process, a salami slicing accumulation of tiny individual losses which take a lifetime but which, by the end of that lifetime, has transformed society beyond recognition and in a way very much to the disadvantage of the dispossessed. This is the familiar “boiling frog” analogy – the frog doesn’t realise the water is…
The Land of Lost Content
Travelling on the London underground is usually an interesting way to observe “diversity”, but earlier this month I was too absorbed in a piece in the Evening Standard to pay much attention to my fellow passengers. The feature which had caught my attention was headed “Ben Fogle and the fine art of being English”. It turns out that Ben has written a new book: ” ‘we hit a funny obstacle today’ he said ‘the book…