It is clear that not enough is being done to tackle Global Warming, and with President Trump in the White House less progress with come from the USA. China is doing much, despite its still burning coal. Global temperatures have reached 1.3 degrees above pre-Industrial levels, though the averages are less (1.2 to 1.3 degrees). …
Category: Discussion
First Thursday January 2nd 2025
What is very clear is that NHS staff maintain their exceptional quality of care in the midst of seriously underfunded and collapsing structures. Efficiencies have sometimes led to misunderstandings but more often to improvements, though social care and psychiatric services lag well behind, while (scandalously) hospices depend largely on charity. This from half a century…
First Thursday December 5th 2024
The “Assisted Dying” (Terminally Ill Adults- End of Life) Bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons at the end of November, 330 votes in favour, 275 against. But without adequate debate and amendment to provide safeguards it is unlikely to become law. Fears of the later widening of the law (as happened…
First Thursday November 7th 2024
Daniel chapter 3 tells how Jews in exile were required by the Babylonian king to worship a golden statue he set up, under threat, if they refused, of a “furnace of blazing fire” (verse 6). They reply that “our God” could save them “out of your hand”- but even if not, “we will not serve…
First Thursday, October 3rd 2024
Why has Keir Starmer acquired the epithet “Undertaker”? Perhaps because he has deliberately “buried” elements of Corbynism in the Labour Party, to ensure Labour’s “electability” in our first-past-the-post system. A more representative system could allow for a far more creative political debate, even given the inevitable complications and uncertainties of government by coalition. And any…
September 5th 2024 First Thursday
The Report into the Grenfell Tower disaster was been published. In all twelve volumes of exhaustive detail- Volumes Two and Three give 240 and 194 pages of often harrowing accounts (including photographs) of people’s lives through the fire of 14th June 2017. It is clear that the tragedy was the result of 50 years of…
First Thursday August 1st summary
Politicians need to be careful and take responsibility for the words they use- although some are “careful” enough to provoke a reaction (for example Nigel Farage’s hint that the police were not telling the full story about Southport- did this encourage the English Defence League-led riots?) Riots usually come from disenfranchised groups who see no…
First Thursday July 4th 2024
Our discussion was on the morning of the General Election, after a campaign full of sound-bites, and a legacy of lies. James O’Brien: “How they Broke Britain”; Michael Roberts: “Broken Britain”; Jeffrey Scheuer: “The Sound-bite Society”; Digby Anderson: “Faking it”; Nick Davies: “Flat-Earth News” and a Cardiff University Paper: “Immediacy, Convenience or Engagement? An Analysis…
First Thursday June 6th 2024
Amid all the news of the UK General Election (including Nigel Farage’s late intervention in Clacton), the D-Day 80th Anniversary celebrations, and the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, the Ukraine War continues. In his book “How the West brought War to Ukraine: Understanding how the US and NATO Policies led to Crisis, War and the Risk…
First Thursday, May 2nd 2024
Ilan Pape was a Senior Lecturer at the Middle Eastern History Department and Political Science Department of the University of Haifa, Israel, from 1984 to 2006. Following his endorsement of the boycott of Israeli universities, he left Israel in 2007/8 to work as a Professor at the University of Exeter. His major 2006 work “The…