Political Mainly

  The media likes to make things simple, on/off, black/white, in or out, its easier to make an attention-grabbing headline if you can polarise the readers, and force them into one of two pigeonholes , you see we now live in a world that rewards extreme viewpoints, the middle ground has long been deserted as the centrifugal force of identity politics and woke/anti woke culture spins us out to the extremities of the political spectrum. But let's look at that middle ground for a second, if the middle ground was where we all chose to live the world would be a much better place to live, our ideas would be flexible according to our environment and compromise would be a lot easier to achieve. If you look at the political spectrum as a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being far left, and 5 being far right, its easier to get someone who is a 2 or a 4 to be a 3 than it is to get a 1 to be a 5 or a 5 to be a 1. It's not about making people compromise who they are, it's about mak...

  “ Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” George Bernard Shaw The dictionary definition of patriotism is “the feeling of loving your country more than others and being proud of it” according to the Cambridge English dictionary. So why is it that Patriotism looks so much different to this description in real life? In real life it looks very much like a lot of people screaming that my country is better than your country, while doing nothing to improve the international standing of that country, I'm sure that Garry from Gateshead with his union flag T-shirt and bunting all over his house feels patriotic, but looking at it from a different perspective, Gaz, you look like a twonk, I grew up around some people who's version of patriotism, is keeping the country to ourselves, or, in some cases, keeping the foreigners out. Patriotism, is a thin wire, some walk it fine, others fall into the pit of ...

  “ The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a persons conscience” Harper Lee – To kill a mocking bird This week, Twitter has been ablaze with righteous indignation from the right wing and their attack dogs in the media about the appointment of Sue Grey as Sir Kier Starmer's Chief of staff, and one could argue that to the cynical mind it shows poor judgment on the behalf of the Labour party, but what is a little bit of poor judgment in a political system that is filled with goofs and gaffes that make you wonder how stupid they think we really are? It seems to me that the conservatives think they are not only above the law, and above criticism, but they seem to think that they are the only ones to be able to pull of the dodgiest of shit, and it shows their total arrogance and belief that they are the chosen ones, with their old boy network and membership of secret societies, they really do have an unearned sense of entitlement, and this exte...

Every so often a story comes along that grabs your attention, it might just seem at first glance that its just another boring story about the law, but then you realise that the implications of this ruling will have far greater implications, than just in the context of the story as is written. So why should I care about a story in an Irish news paper about a judges ruling in a case in the United states? I mean after all, I live in England, so Irish law and US law have little to do with my life, well take five dear reader and let me tell you a tale of a republican president, a federal judge, the state of Oklahoma, guns and drugs. On Friday 3 rd of February, US District Judge Patrick Wyrick, an appointee of former Republican president Donald Trump, dismissed an indictment against a man charged in August with violating a ban on owning firearms because he used Cannabis, Judge Wyrick overturned the ban stating that it “infringed his right to bear arms under the US constitution'...

  “ I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources – an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates. David Harsanyi. Last week the home secretary Suella Braverman tweeted about new proposals to target organised crime, and I quote. “ We cannot let criminal gangs profit from devastation. Great work is being done to tackle organised crime, including by @GMPolice. And I've announced a national crackdown. Take out the gangs; stop the drugs, violence and antisocial behaviour. We have been here before, it's like every home secretary is so arrogant that they think they are the one who through being tough on crime and criminality that they can end crime and criminality, even Margaret Thatcher, the most hard faced PM to ever haunt No 10 had a crack at it and failed, but as history shows, this approach is nothing more than posturing, in the 50 odd years since the 1971 misuse of drugs act was introduced, the...

  At the time of writing this the Prime Minister of the UK is Rishi Sunak, whose parents are Tanzanian and Kenyan, who happens to be the richest man to ever occupy Number 10 Downing street, for many he is an example of what the son of immigrants can achieve with the right education and the right motivation, he has after all reached the highest office in the land, but how is that possible in a conservative party that has been moving evermore right wing for over a decade. We tend to associate political parties that are further to the right as the least welcoming to ethnic minorities, we have seen in the past far right political groups such as The National Front, The BNP, and EDL having an agenda based around Immigration, and more recently UKIP have had the same strong views on Immigration, but because of their anti EU stance, and making immigration just one part of their manifesto, they seemed to negate the risk of any serious accusations of racism on an organisational level, ...

  A few years ago, I was on a train from Birmingham to Leeds, it was around 5:30, surprisingly not particularly busy for rush hour, There were enough seats and it was as chilled a vibe as could be for a rush hour service, across the aisle and a seat in front of me were a bunch of young people laughing and drinking and generally having a good time not in an obnoxious way, but just with enough merriment for the other passengers to notice how much fun they were having. I would say they were university students, they were about that age and not the usual piss heads that you would expect from, well me when I was that age. A woman sat across the aisle from them leaned across and asked them “what are you celebrating” one of the group, a big lad in a rugby shirt, gulped down the swig of canned G&T and without missing a beat replied “Just being young”. To this day, I have not heard a more perfect answer to a question, why shouldn't you celebrate being young? Youth is the greatest g...