Category: Politics
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Christmas lights on the beach
Dear Home Secretary, Fairy lights are on the trees and the lamp posts in the town centre, and the coloured lights are appearing in the shops and the windows of everyone’s houses, but these lights are the ones people of Hastings took to the sea-front, as a farewell message to the families who drowned in…
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Transports of delight!
Oh, what an original idea! Gather up all these alarming, inconvenient people and send them to some far-flung corner of the world we have a bit of control over. It worked before, didn’t it? That’s why Australia is what it is. Come to think of it, lots of UK citizens who hadn’t been marked as…
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VIRUS WARS
Where do you lay the blame? The current mood across the nation is what some drivers call ‘hoot first, brake second’. If something goes wrong, the first thing do is decide whose fault it was and have a go at them. Most people agree, now, that the national response to COVID went badly, badly wrong.…
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Who is best placed to get the Tories out?
We know, we know – Jeremy Corbyn is still the most popular option among Labour voters. I do think we should all support those good people who are trying to reinstate their MP in the Labour Party, even if we have rejected and reviled the Party in its current form. His reinstatement as a Labour…
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The slings and arrows of outrageous social media
When you set up a forum or a social media group, the software sets out a series of steps for you which assume an authoritarian hierarchy. It assumes you are ‘the administrator’ – although you have the option of setting up further administrators. Then it asks you to specify the moderators (sort of electronic grand…
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Forced teaming has dreadful consequences
Imagine Neptunian people are your thing (I know, I know but just imagine… ). Imagine the Neptunian Support Group has been the centre of your life and activity for decades. Then one day, the Neptunian Support Group is offered a load of funding for promoting Plutonian welfare. I mean, Plutonians are nice and all that,…
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What if it’s actually stupidly EASY to break the system?
I was just wondering, and I happen to own a blog, so… Here’s another way to look beyond the smoke and mirrors: imagine an arena set up for a big fight. On one side, there’s a bunch of people. On the other side, a pile of money. The people, obviously, can win easily. They can…
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Please check whether you are part of the problem
The government are robbing us blind, and you know it. While every single one of us watches our climate slipping to the no-return stage of climate crisis, we are each of us spending a large proportion of our energy fighting against the slipping away of our personal income and opportunities as bills go up. the…
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Hibakusha – never forget
Joycelyn Simms’ extraordinary poems about the Hibakusha – those affected (in so many terrible ways) by the nuclear detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inspired by ‘a thousand paper cranes and lanterns floating on the river Ota’, and by John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima – and then, when the poem Grapple Y was published by the…
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Fish heads are still flying
It’s a contentious thing, being a feminist. There are always plenty of vocal people wanting to loudly disapprove of you. Not least of the obstacles that need to be addressed is that of class. I read a story recently about a woman who told those less well off than herself to save money by cooking…
Kay Green 