“What fear – the certainty of a dark and dread filled future – would compel you to grip the airframe of a jet as it roared skywards from the earth?”
Category Archives: Articles
Total Betrayal (2) – The Future We Chose
“Conflicts cannot be won on a timetable. Especially not an American schedule. Their firepower is awesome, but their patience is pitiful.”
Total Betrayal (3) – With Friends Like These
“The world does not become more stable when the US retreats. For all its faults, the founding code of the American Republic is the antithesis of tyranny. ‘Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’; these values are dictatorship’s kryptonite.”
Total Betrayal (4) – A Bungled Evacuation
“So far from being safe and orderly, at least seven Afghans were killed in the suffocating crushes which swelled around the airport gates.”
SATIRE ALERT: The Student Union Presidency – A Parable of Wokeness – By Russel Alanbridger (08/04/2021)
Dear reader, welcome. I bring glad tidings. Do you remember that orange man across the sea? Yes, that one. Do you remember how he lost an election and then tried to overturn the result? You do? Oh good. He didn’t manage it in the end. His loss is our gain. Because it turns out thatContinue reading “SATIRE ALERT: The Student Union Presidency – A Parable of Wokeness – By Russel Alanbridger (08/04/2021)”
The Medium is the Massage; the effect of technology on communication, forgiveness and politics. (15/12/2020)
‘The major advances in civilisation are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur’. A.N. Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher, co-author of the Principia Mathematica (1913). The Medium is the Massage (1967) opens with the above quote. It is no throwaway line. The book’s authors: Marshal McLuhan (words) and Quentin Fiore (graphics) hadContinue reading “The Medium is the Massage; the effect of technology on communication, forgiveness and politics. (15/12/2020)”
What does ‘American Psycho’ tell us about Donald Trump? (17th of July 2020)
In Brett Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel, his protagonist, the Wall Street lawyer Patrick Bateman, cares about very few people. He certainly does not care about his girlfriend Evelyn, and definitely not his co-workers, one of whom he chops to death with an axe. But there is one person that literature’s nastiest serial killer looks upContinue reading “What does ‘American Psycho’ tell us about Donald Trump? (17th of July 2020)”
I hope university teaches me to think, but I’m not so sure it will. (15th July 2020)
Oscar Wilde once said that ‘the Oxford manner’, is ‘the ability to play with ideas gracefully’. All being well with my (teacher assessed) A-Levels, I hope to begin my time as a student at Oxford this October. I couldn’t be more excited about this, but recent trends regarding the free exchange of ideas at universitiesContinue reading “I hope university teaches me to think, but I’m not so sure it will. (15th July 2020)”
Dispatches by Michael Herr – War as Pure Experience (July 2020)
Publisher: Picador Cover design: Illustration by Joanna Thomson, Picador Art Dep ‘Our machine was devastating and versatile, it could do anything but stop.‘ ‘For every prayer there was a counter-prayer – and it was hard to see who had the edge.‘ ‘There were plenty of people who believed that we were nothing more than glorifiedContinue reading “Dispatches by Michael Herr – War as Pure Experience (July 2020)”
‘Common Sense’ and the Life of Thomas Paine – The work of the forgotten Founding Father (July 2020)
Publisher: Penguin (Great Ideas Series) Cover Artwork: Phil Baines ‘The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.’ ‘The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth’. ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again’. “I do not believe in the creed professed by the JewishContinue reading “‘Common Sense’ and the Life of Thomas Paine – The work of the forgotten Founding Father (July 2020)”
