Nowadays, the Conservatives have a tree as their emblem, symbolic of the countless trees to be felled thanks to them and their allies (Labour, FibDem, even Green) as the urbanisation of England rolls onwards. The emblem used to be a flaming torch, the same symbol that used to warn motorists of a school ahead, beforeContinueContinue reading “Pass It On”
Tag Archives: Arms trade
Jeux Sans Frontières
Events in Paris this week have exposed Europe’s anxieties to the full. Let’s consider some of the possible reactions. On the far Right, and among the not-for-prophet movement generally, this is I-told-you-so time. Even those who disagree with the politics must find recent analysis strikingly prescient. And at least it’s an opportunity to highlight someContinueContinue reading “Jeux Sans Frontières”
The Extravagance of Austerity
Good chancellor, bad chancellor. George Osborne played a little double act with himself this week. It started with lots of spending announcements. A whopping £15.1 billion on roads and £2.3 billion on flood defences. Oh, and Bicester is to be a new town.Then there was the Autumn Statement, seized on with the claim that publicContinueContinue reading “The Extravagance of Austerity”
Defence: Deceit & Denial
We’ve discussed before the centuries-old military occupation of Wessex by the UK’s armed services, and how this distorts both our economy and our objectivity in making moral judgments about foreign intervention or the ability to ‘project influence’ abroad. There’s also an environmental cost. Enter Tidworth from the north at present and you’ll find it aContinueContinue reading “Defence: Deceit & Denial”
Thin Red Line In The Sand
In our massively over-centralised world, subsidiarity mainly means moving power back towards the individual and to the most local communities wherever possible. But not every time. It’s also about co-operation in place of competition. It’s always about doing things at the right level, the smallest level that works. The level at which global security worksContinueContinue reading “Thin Red Line In The Sand”
Blue Touch Paper
It’s an interesting possibility that those who want a kind of war, on terror, on non-growth, or whatever, are in fact aching for a real fight between countries. War is the dominant thought that occupies their waking moments. David Cameron and his party don’t do morality. The idea of a supposedly ethical foreign policy, with itsContinueContinue reading “Blue Touch Paper”
The Pageant of Death
“I have said that we must base our future thinking on the acceptance that nation states, individual, independent nations, can no longer really seriously influence the way in which the world develops. There is nothing that we or, I believe, any other single country can do on its own to affect these great trends ofContinueContinue reading “The Pageant of Death”
Minding Our Own Business
“Peace is a coin which has two sides – one is the avoidance of the use of force and the other is the creation of conditions of justice. In the long run you cannot expect one without the other.”John Foster Dulles, 1956Dulles was not a man whose actions lived up to his words. Nor canContinueContinue reading “Minding Our Own Business”
Wessex Regionalists 