My mother once told me that as a child I had my own mind and tended to the opposite to what I was told to do. Locally, such a child would have been known as an ‘own way’ child. And there were quite a few around that small village. Retrospectively, I can now see that…
Enough!
Will there ever be a limit to what we humans perceive as enough? Can ‘enough’ become what used to be known as ‘virtue ‘- specifically used here as that which is meant to be good and to serve as a sort of moral compass. It can be reasonably suggested that such a compass is currently…
politics & normalising lying
“A good politician” according to H.L. Mencken (journalist, literary critic and essayist) “is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar”. In our current political landscape across and within nations, one may find Mencken’s observation not far from what one may be thinking of current reality. What makes an honest politician? What happens to honesty, integrity and…
put flesh (incarnate) back into Christmas
Some may recall that more than two decades ago the then BNP launched a billboard campaign with an image of a very euro-western ‘blond’ looking Jesus while making a case for Jesus on their side: the underlying point being that they are on the side of reclaiming Britain’s Christian identity and so would be all…
‘cohorts’ and decolonising
Decolonising pundits are all over the place – often crawling out of colonial woodwork to re-invent themselves and their ware in new clothing. Sooner rather than later though, the colonial hold on some pundits would be exposed. Such is the stark reminder of the provisonality of any decolonising undertaking and especially in our deploying of…
once upon a time…still our time
Among my collection of folk tales, legends, myths and fables is James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994) which offers humorous insights on society’s negotiating of the ‘tightrope walk’ of what some will label as ‘political correctness’. As a ‘vertically challenged’ person, I needed my library chair, which doubles-up as a ladder, to get…
Caribleaper 