Ventilator Blues
- March 21, 2020
- by
- Matt
When the coronavirus nightmare ends – as it will end one day – there are many things those of us who survive it will want to remember, and there are things that governments – including our own – will want us to forget. One of them is the chronic lack of medical ventilator machines available to the NHS.
Last week, our prime minister asked sixty CEOs from British manufacturing companies to produce 30,000 ventilators in two weeks, in what he cheerily referred to as ‘Operation Last Gasp.’ No one can ever say that this is a...
We Could Be Heroes (Just for No Deal)
- September 01, 2019
- by
- Matt
We have heard a great deal of stirring talk from Brexiters about World War 2 these last few years. It might be Boris Johnson comparing Francois Holland to a Colditz prison guard dealing out ‘punishment beatings’ to the UK in 2017, or condemning MPs as ‘collaborators’ with the EU in his Facebook video last month.
In...
The Wars of Ralph Peters
- September 06, 2017
- by
- Matt
Slowly, but inexorably, the world is drifting towards the prospect of an all-out war between the United States and North Korea. At the very least such a conflict is likely to result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them Koreans. It also raises the very real possibility of the first...
The Madness of King Donald
- July 31, 2017
- by
- Matt
Even by the wild standards of what may well be the most deranged individual ever to inhabit the White House, Donald Trump has had a remarkable week. In the space of five working days he has:
publicly humiliated the admittedly creepy attorney general he himself appointed suggested that immigrants are criminals who cut up the bodies of...
Civilization and its Malcontents
- July 12, 2017
- by
- Matt
In the conservative-far right lexicon, few words have the same emotive power as ‘civilization’ – a term that usually equates with ‘Western civilization’ or simply ‘the West.’ It’s one of those words that automatically gives depth and gravitas to the hollowest and tinniest of human mouthpieces.
Use it enough and you instantly begin to sound a...
Bombs and Chocolate
- April 15, 2017
- by
- Matt
For liberals who saw last week’s missile strikes in Syria as a belated but welcome act of humanitarianism, Donald Trump was always going to be an awkward president to share the moral high ground with. One minute he might be talking about beautiful babies and the children of God, but then he gives interviews...
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