Blog posts in discussion category

I’ve just added 40 per cent to my lifetime output of long Poem, and this blog is an excited celebration. These three new Poems include my strongest political writing to date – Where Power Lies, an unpatriotic swipe at Britain’s warfaring record, and The Commodity News, which pours venom on government and business greed at the heart of the global environment calamity. Continue reading →

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 (This is a reworking and updating of a blog first published in 2022)
The madness started at the high point of Western civilisation, about the time of Woodstock and the Summer of Love when we all of us thought we could change the world. Few people were reading poetry, and it seems to have been side-lined to university English departments where it survived in a kind of National Trust for the writing-we-no longer-have-a-use-for: the old, the obscure, the academic, the elite. I wanted it to be more like The Novel – bigger. Continue reading →

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It flatters his colossal ego and frightens his opponents I would like to offer a mildly unconventional suggestion that we should stop paying attention to what President Donald Trump says. What he does, his disruption to justice and liberal values, … Continue reading →

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… and could coronavirus trigger an end to futile and educationally damaging testing? My apologies for this apparent frivolity at a time when there are obviously more serious things to think about. In other circumstances, poking fun at our system … Continue reading →

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When endless online choice means never finding what you want It hadn’t occurred to me when I started to look for a modest bag to protect a new compact camera that I would be engaging with one of the big … Continue reading →

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How “balance” at the Beeb is about to betray Britain – yet again I have a good friend who is incensed on a daily basis by what he sees as BBC bias in the interminable debate about leaving the European … Continue reading →

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The real hazards of air travel are on the ground in the cattle pens and public undressing area I’ve never disguised my dislike for the discomforts of air travel, but my partner Sue recently told a friend rather alarmingly that … Continue reading →

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And the MPs who think that wrecking our parliamentary democracy is a price worth paying The media is excitedly bombarding us minute by minute with ever more “information” about the antics of our politicians as they wrangle over Europe. But … Continue reading →

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We’ve seen what happened to disgruntled voters in the US. How will British people react to the government neglect and paralysis that comes with Brexit? Continue reading →

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Time for a drastic gardening revolution in Britain When a relative who knew about my interest in wild flowers asked me to identify a forgetmenot-like plant she’d found on farmland and transplanted to her garden recently I immediately dismissed it. … Continue reading →

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