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Socialism: the Rediscovery of Democracy
As the democratic election process in the United States of America draws to an initial close – it is almost finished but for the shouting, the court cases, and the official recognition of the election’s correctness – there is still one word, one concept left hanging in the air which has been a spectre over every election campaign since at least the Second World War: Socialism. The Republican groups have touted the idea of Socialism as being the great bugbear of the western world, and especially the United States, whereby everything will be taken away from the people, and they will have no democracy left over. It has been thrown…
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Feminism: The Hardliners Fighting Themselves
It’s hard to believe but, even with the rapid advancement of time, knowledge and understanding we are going backwards. Admittedly not all of us, not the entire civilised or uncivilised world, but a few. And it is these few who seem capable of grabbing the headlines which, as we know from the way the press works, should not be that much of a surprise. What is a surprise, though, is that despite the opening up of western society to more equality and fairness, despite the work of feminism and feminists – as much as ordinary people who would not wish to be categorised as such – many women are supporting…
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Literacy and Reading: The Path Least Trodden
There are, we are told, more books being published and bought than at any other time in modern history. A positive flood of new works appear throughout the world practically every day, and the competitive literary marketplace has become a fighting ground, vital with literary supremacy as much as with an ever increasing amount of low-grade slop from Artificial Intelligence compilers. On the one side this is to be greeted, while on the other the question arises over who exactly is writing and buying all these new works? The answer to the first part of this question is simple: there is a wealth of talent either entering or already within…
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Politics: Attributing Blame, Ignoring Solutions
The mass demonstrations across Germany on Saturday, 31 October 2026 have not gone without notice. The presence of tens of thousands of young demonstrators across the country have excited comment and attention through a very broad spectrum of the public and in politics, but not necessarily for the right reasons. The mass media, eager for a good selling story, but without wishing the hard work involved in research and of reporting the background to the demonstrations, has concentrated on the few outbreaks of violence around the periphery of some of the marches. It is this side of the many events which has garnered headlines, and been taken up by those…
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The Enticement of Language Imagery
When I was young, admittedly many years ago, imagination was still A Thing. As a child, and then a young adult, we were called upon to use our imagination in order to play, to learn, to visualise anything which didn’t seem clear to us at first glance. The exhortation to use your imagination was part of daily language usage, and mostly came from those people around me who, through perhaps no fault of their own, were unable to gift enough time to explain something, or suffered a lack of understanding themselves. As a child, of course, imagination was part and parcel of being a child. The cardboard box as a…
