Beware the Lies of March
- March 29, 2020
- by
- Matt
In difficult times, it’s comforting and perhaps essential to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s also wise to bear in mind that there are always alternative possibilities. Historical tragedies are not like novels or theatrical tragedies. They don’t come with redemptive endings or instructive moral messages. They do not necessarily lead to collective sanity or wisdom. There is no direct historical road to knowledge, self-recognition, rationality, or an upsurge in our better natures.
Such lessons may be there to be learned, and that doesn’t necessarily mean they will...
Lockdown Sunday
- March 23, 2020
- by
- Matt
This weekend was the first weekend of spring. After a long dreary winter filled with rainy days, floods, and moaning winds, the population came out in force to enjoy the sunny weather. At Skegness, hundreds of thousands flocked to the caravan parks and arcades on Saturday. In Victoria and Richmond parks, cyclists, walkers and other...
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...
One Nation Under a Virus
- March 17, 2020
- by
- Matt
I’m not a huge fan of Winston Churchill. He was racist, devious, and ruthless: a romantic imperialist who was as willing to celebrate the slaughter of ‘barbaric’ peoples who opposed the British Empire as he was to turn troops on striking Welsh miners or Greek communists But that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognise the...
Waiting for Corona
- March 15, 2020
- by
- Matt
“The face of London was—now indeed strangely altered: I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow...
Coronavirus: I herd it through the grapevine
- March 13, 2020
- by
- Matt
It may not be true that we get the kind of politicians we deserve, but it’s fair to say that if you elect politicians who have spent years inflicting needless economic pain on the most vulnerable members of society, who brought their country to the brink of economic ruin in order to fulfill a nationalist...
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