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Britain

Meeting the people (only if you have to)

There are few more satisfying and enjoyable sights that watching politicians being discomforted by confrontations with ordinary members of the public, the very people that in a democracy – oh so inconveniently – they need votes from in order to reach and retain their positions of power and [...]

January 28, 2014 // 0 Comments

Stand to, chaps!

The opening salvos in the major campaign to mark – we mustn’t say ‘celebrate’ – the centenary of WW1 are about to begin. Yesterday I had business to attend to in central London. After I had returned home, I relaxed by reading another passage of Max Hastings’ Catastrophe – [...]

January 25, 2014 // 0 Comments

Clegg at play – sorry, ‘bay’

For my sins, I watched the whole of the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 yesterday morning, which included a featured a 15 minute-plus interview with Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Lib-Dems. Ostensibly, his purpose in agreeing to be interviewed – apart from having his vanity button [...]

January 13, 2014 // 0 Comments

Goodbye and good riddance?

As the USA and Britain military forces prepare to make their ignominious withdrawals from Afghanistan, there is much speculation as to what legacy – if any – they will leave behind. There is also a lot of spin and froth from politicians and military commanders of both countries, naked [...]

January 12, 2014 // 0 Comments

Casus belli? The WW1 debate continues

As I expected – although it seems that Education Secretary Michael Gove, accused of playing politics with the varied opinions upon the cause of World War One, has been told by some Cabinet colleagues to ‘button it’ – the ripples from his Daily Mail article at the beginning [...]

January 9, 2014 // 0 Comments

Keeping a beady eye on Parliament

The great British public, indeed any democratic society, allegedly gets the government and political masters it deserves. That’s why it is vital that light and magnifying glasses should be trained constantly upon the workings and operation of those who control the legislative process. [...]

January 8, 2014 // 0 Comments

Another log on the WW1 fire

In my personal view the Blackadder project, which began to be funny with the Elizabethan series 2, really hit its stride with series 3 – set in the Regency period, with Hugh Laurie outstanding as the Prince Regent himself. Before that I had watched it more for the aristocracy of its [...]

January 6, 2014 // 0 Comments

Oh What A Lovely War

The first LP I ever bought was the stage recording of the musical Oh What A Lovely War, a Joan Littlewood production of the early sixties. As a little boy, brought up at time when much of the map of the world was coloured pink to reflect The British Empire, I initially thought it was a [...]

January 5, 2014 // 0 Comments

Sherlock – the return

Last night (Wednesday 1st January 2014), one of the biggest television ‘events’ of the entire festive season occurred when the first episode of the new series of Sherlock, the ‘brought up to date’ version of the Conan Doyle detective created by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss – starring [...]

January 2, 2014 // 0 Comments

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