Category: Politics
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Election Thoughts 5 | Stephen Hawking | Aliens | Vegetarianism
In a documentary to be shown shortly, Stephen Hawking has suggested that: a) alien life almost certainly exists in other parts of the universe, and b) it will probably not be friendly. If such life is found, or finds us, I think it will have a profound effect on our idea of ‘the other.’ In…
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“If You Want a Nigger for a Neighbour…” | St George | Economic Racism
Interesting piece on the Today programme this morning, re-visiting the constituency of Smethwick – a safe seat in which was notoriously won by the vile Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths in 1964 following his campaign which ran under the slogan ‘If You Want A Nigger For A Neighbour, Vote Labour.” Smethwick reacted to chuck out the…
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Election Thoughts [4] | The Problem of Apathy
Election Thoughts [1] | Election Thoughts [2] | Election Thoughts [3] In the previous post I concluded that the terrorising dimension of the pressure to choose is not simply down to our ignorance of what the choices might mean, or even our ignorance of what we actually want, but our fear of not really knowing who…
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Election Thoughts [3] | The Terrorising Pressure of Choice | Who Do We Want To Be?
Election Thoughts [1] | Election Thoughts [2] In the previous two posts I’ve tried to set out a critique of the choice agenda that main parties are promoting, and also the ‘rights’ / devolved power agenda that is a central tenet of the Conservative Party manifesto. The key question that was rightly asked yesterday was…
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Election Thoughts [2] | The Choice to Control our Own Lives?
In the previous post, I argued that the ‘choice’ agenda that all parties are keen to promote is actually something of a fallacy. Genuine choice of political representation in the kind of democracy we have is pretty much an illusion, and choice in delivery of services like health and education would actually require surplus capacity,…