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Articles by Lavinia Thompson

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About Lavinia Thompson

A university lecturer for many years, both at home and abroad, Lavinia Thompson retired in 2008 and has since taken up freelance journalism. She is currently studying for a distant learning degree in geo-political science and lives in Norwich with her partner. More Posts

The art of entrenched inadequacy

No system of government capable of being devised by humans will ever be perfect and yet after everything that has occurred in this sphere of life in the UK over the past fifty years – not least the unedifying ongoing mess we’ve been subjected to since 2015 and most particularly the progress of [...]

December 13, 2019 // 0 Comments

The certainties of uncertainty

We are – what? – two days and counting into the General Election campaign and all I have seen and read leads me to the conclusion that ‘The Nightmare’ [the three year crisis over Brexit which has now extended into a general existential crisis over our political elite, the constitution and [...]

November 2, 2019 // 0 Comments

The PC advance continues …

Just as the human condition defines our view of the world, so does our stage of life. It’s not so much a case of “Stop the world I want to get off!” but the fact that – as we reach the cusp of adulthood – our backgrounds and circumstances determine our [...]

October 9, 2019 // 0 Comments

On we go

As a habitual tuner to Radio Five Live ever since it first hit the airwaves in its current format in March 1994, I tend to treat its regular presenters of the moment like old friends, even as from time to time they come and go on to bigger (or lesser) things as their career fortunes ebb or flow. [...]

September 16, 2019 // 0 Comments

Things to worry about

With everything that’s going on at the moment, one might be forgiven for believing that we’re all going to hell in a hand cart, the end of human civilisation is night, nothing is sacred anymore, the globe and its politicians have lost all sense of reason and we’ve plainly reached the point [...]

August 28, 2019 // 0 Comments

Even more insignificant that we thought

Just occasionally – as the world confronts reality on a daily basis as regards international political crises, climate change, mass shootings in the United States and whether fat people should get a grip and admit they eat too much and don’t exercise enough – we are reminded of [...]

August 8, 2019 // 0 Comments

Time to take a deep breath

Having long followed UK politics from a one-stage-removed and bemused standpoint I reckon I passed my “You couldn’t make it up” moment watershed in about 1980 so nothing that has occurred since should really have surprised me. In one sense it hasn’t simply because, the more bizarre each [...]

July 23, 2019 // 0 Comments

Making sense of it all

In this modern era of “fake news” – the blurring of lines between what is fact and what is not, even to the point of nakedly-apparent transparency of any incident that takes place being publicly described as an instance of either A … or indeed, e.g. by another supposed news source, as an [...]

July 13, 2019 // 0 Comments

And then there were … er … is it six?

With Boris Johnson as the early runaway leader in both the opinion polls and the first round of the Tories’ stage-by-stage voting system, attention has recently turned to the inevitable next phase in which the rest of the field brave enough begin vying to stay in the race by  braying about their [...]

June 17, 2019 // 0 Comments

Another irony of it all

Today, I’m coming straight from the “stuck record” department of the Rust and at the calculated risk of potentially boring our readers once more by returning to the subject of the ongoing Brexit impasse. It remains – as it has throughout – my view that the heart of the [...]

May 31, 2019 // 0 Comments

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