Blogs

Say it’s so, Joe

p73btf

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age  Goodness, where do I start? I woke up on Friday morning with half the working world staring at a blue-screen-of-death, thanks to a huge computer outage. I went to bed last night with the news that the President of the …

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Love’s Labours Won

p73btf

The first flushes of love are so spurred and intoxicating That the lovers’ worlds move at a quicker pace The aftermath of a general election is a bit like the start of a love affair – go with me on this one. You begin, all starry-eyed and flush-faced, your heart …

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Night of the long knives

p73btf

And the government by the people, for the people, of the people shall not perish from this earth So it came to pass that the blue hue the UK political landscape turned in 2019 was diluted last night with shades of yellow, green, that wishy-washy pale Reform blue, and red. …

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Things can only get better?

p73btf

We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate I don’t really want to come across as one of those moaning, rent-a-comment, talking head politicians that the news channels are churning out for our amusement in the run up to the election, but, …

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It’s good to talk

p73btf

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, Witty without affectation, free without indecency, Learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood   Sometimes those weird days of 2020-2021 seem like we imagined them. Those days when we weren’t supposed to go out and do that most human of things – communicate, in person, …

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Don’t sit back in ennui

p73btf

Much benevolence of the passive order, may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain on oneself I’m currently sifting through my reams of notes from the NMBS Conference in order that our report in the July issue gives a proper flavour of what was said, by whom to those …

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Politically blind? Or stupid?

p73btf

The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, What was he thinking? Was he badly advised? Where were the PR people who could tell him what the optics would look like? Did he ignore them? Think he knew better? Or just thought he could blag his way through it all? News …

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The Longest Day

p73btf

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory! Good luck! 6 am June 6, 2024. Gatwick Airport, Surrey. Thousands of people queuing, waiting – some patiently, some impatiently – for what is about to come. Clutching …

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Sunak v Starmer part 1

p73btf

They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse. It’s a truth, universally accepted, that you …

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Here comes the rain again

p73btf

the rain came plunging through the leaves as if every drop were a great leaden bead. We’ve known for ages that there would be a General Election this year. There has to be, as the five years since Boris Johnson’s triumphant ‘Get Brexit Done’ demolishing of the red wall, is …

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