Editorial
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From each according to his need, to each according to his ability…
I was invited to dinner the other day by some folks not long moved up from Buckinghamshire. It’s happened before. A neatly turned out Sasha or Duncan meets my wife alone, presumably decides she sounds quite jodhpurs, ponies and private schools and is charmed by a false sense of shared values. Sight unseen they extend…
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Distant Guns
Down the lane, after a week off-limits the track around Kirkharle’s lake has reopened following ‘baring off the sward’. It’s a process that sounds intriguingly pagan, certainly a phrase to file away, but it involves a few dozen sheep nibbling till narcotised on grass they’d normally only dream of – if they dream at all. …
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Not in Our Name – Innocence Lost in Arabia
I must admit to feeling thoroughly depressed at the violence accompanying protests across Libya, Egypt and Yemen. Watching video previously posted by murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens describing his enduring relationship with the Arab world only serves to emphasise the nihilistic aspect of his death. Certainly the US lacks the moral high ground in the Middle…
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Class Struggle
Good Afternoon, A few weeks ago I was at Newcastle Airport, sitting at the gate ready to board a Jet2 flight to Heraklion, surveying the wealth of tattoos, false eyelashes and celebrity hairstyles, and suddenly feeling all of my 46 years. Unlike most other low-costs Jet2 should be congratulated for assigning seats during check-in in…
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Arab Spring
At the risk of appearing … er … irresponsible, and being shot down by those with greater knowledge I’m minded to vent my spleen. Right now I’m feeling guilty. If I were Libyan I’d feel betrayed. Downwind of continuing debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and dazzled by the speed of events, the international community is…
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Live Every Day
A stooped old woman leans on her zimmer, eyes unfocused, mouth flapping like a clockwork tortoise – I doubt she knows where she’s going or why. From an adjacent ‘activity’ room a painfully earnest piano hammers out All Things Bright and Beautiful, the chords mixing with an odour of stale urine that manages to overpower…
The Irresponsible Traveller 