Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot
Following the showing of the first part, just over a week ago, of the new BBC drama serial ‘Gunpowder’, BBC executives have been criticised for what many have regarded as the unnecessarily gruesome and gory presentation of the Guy Fawkes November 5th plot to blow up parliament. While the programme allegedly features the most violent and viscerally gory scenes of torture and execution ever screened on primetime television, and disturbing though these scenes have been,…
Multiculturalism, Terrorism and the Sad Inevitability of Intercommunal Violence.
During the last forty-eight hours the news has been dominated by reports of a random, cowardly, ill-conceived and deplorable attack on members of the Muslim community of Finsbury Park, London. The attack appears to have been carried out by a man who has no previous history of racist or Islamophobic behaviour; who has no history of membership of so-called ‘far-right’ groups or political parties; who has according to the police, ‘no far-right digital footprint’; and who was…
Towards a New Kind of Democracy
The democratic process and the principle of ‘one man, one vote’, is one of the foundation stones of liberal democracy and is seen by liberals, Marxists and social democrats as an institutional reaffirmation of their ‘sacred’ principle of human equality. Even so, the implementation and the practice of democracy and the practice of one man, one vote, has throughout history, not been without its problems and without its detractors. Critics have pointed to the fact…
Migrate to Australia? Forget it!
By Barry Crockett: I have heard that some young English people alarmed by the deteriorating state of affairs in their own country, have so far avoided taking action in the believe that when things become intolerable in their native land they will be able to “up sticks” and pop over to my country, Australia, and start with a fresh slate in a land of warmth and sunshine amongst people of their own kind. This is a fairly unrealistic…
Yazidis & Others
By Frederick Dixon: There are lessons to be drawn from the unfolding tragedy in Northern Iraq. Some of these are obvious; the crass ignorance and arrogance of the “New World Order” elite which tried to remake an ancient society into a socially liberal western “democracy” safe for gay marriage (and is now tentatively wondering if might not have to go back in to clear up the mess which it created), and the savagery and cruelty of those Moslems…
The Nature of Democracy
By Max Musson: The democratic process and the principle of ‘one man, one vote’, is one of the foundation stones of liberal democracy and is seen by liberals, Marxists and social democrats as an institutional reaffirmation of their ‘sacred’ principle of human equality. Even so, the implementation and the practice of democracy and the practice of one man, one vote, has throughout history, not been without its problems and without detractors. Critics have pointed to…