On a recent weekend break in Liverpool my wife and I stayed in a hotel near the waterfront and spent a lot of time ambling round the re-developed docks, especially relatively early in the morning where we breakfasted in one of the cafés there. The Liverpool Tate is housed in some of the old warehouses along the dock front.
One morning, as we approached the Tate, I was impressed with the expanse of the building in the strong morning light and decided to take a quick shot. I only had my point-and-shoot camera with me and was inwardly telling myself that such an expanse of building needed the wide-angle lens that I have on my DSLR. The latter would have exaggerated the stretch, making it even more impressive. Nevertheless, I took the shot below. Continue Reading »
Poetry, like prostitution, has been around for thousands of year (though I’d be willing to bet that prostitution was probably there first). And both will continue for thousands more, despite the best efforts of zealots to promote it (as in the case of poetry) or stop it (as in the case of prostitution). However, whereas the latter is arguably becoming more prevalent (figures often quoted suggest that in the UK, one in 10 men have visited a prostitute at least once), poetry is, in many ways, a declining pastime (I suspect that far less than one in 10 adults - especially males - have actively engaged as adults with poetry).
I really do vainly hope that Andrew Motion (the current UK Poet Laureate) will not be replaced when his term of office ends. Continue Reading »
Now that the furore is dying down, I feel compelled to vent my feelings about the John Sergeant debacle that has dominated the UK press in the past week.
For those of you who don’t know, John Sergeant started life as a comedian when an undergraduate at Oxford, and grew into a well-respected political journalist. This portly and gamely retiree agreed to be a contestant in BBC’s most successful light entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing. Continue Reading »
No, this isn’t a joke question. It’s not like: “Why does ‘bath’ have a silent ‘p’?” It is a question that did used to worry me. I would often be asked it. I taught English in the UK for a number of years to school children, college students, and undergraduates, and it was a subject that was always coming up.
Well perhaps I exaggerate - a little. They weren’t always asking me: “Sir, sir, sir … Why has ‘island’ got an ’s’ in it? We don’t say is-land, do we sir?” But the peculiarities of English spelling was a regular source of conversation and involved amusement, wonder, angst, frustration and frequent demoralization for both students and tutors. And in the UK, it is meant to be our language - we are the ones speaking and reading it all the time. It inhabits our brains. It is the natural language of our dreams. It is just that a significant proportion of UK natural speakers struggle with spelling accuracy. The millions learning English as a second language have my sympathy and respect.
Part of the problem is that the English language isn’t like a set of traffic lights. Continue Reading »
How would you feel if, before every day at work, you were expected to participate in a collective act of talking to an unknown, unseen, mythical being, and if this time-consuming act never ever resulted in any demonstrable, substantive change in anything? Personally, I might think it was a waste of time.
If, over time, this act no longer was expected of me, but the ceremony was still continued for the few who wanted to get there early to participate, I might ask: “Why does the company still do this? Surely, those that want to can do it in their own time. Why does the company still support it in the way that it does? Surely, you hard-nosed executives can see that it is achieving nothing?” Continue Reading »
Just two sour footnotes after the genuine joy and sense of hope that many of us liberals felt after America had the sense to vote in a Democrat for President (especially a black one).
The first sour note comes from a South Carolina Roman Catholic priest who has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him ‘constitutes material co-operation with intrinsic evil.’
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed on Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote. Continue Reading »
Yes, it’s musterbation again! No, no, no, NOT masturbation, but MUSTerbation! I’ve written about MUSTerbation before (though judging from my blog search stats, thousands of people think masturbation is spelt with a ‘must’.)
Quite simply, MUSTerbation is when human beings decide that something has to be done or stopped at all costs. It is when we cause problems and go to extremes of behaviour and emotion, working ourselves up, because we lose sight of a bigger picture and start to make ourselves look ridiculous by going all out for a lesser goal. We have tunnel vision. We can’t take off the blinkers. We keep saying to ourselves and others, I MUST … or They MUST … or MUSTN’T. Continue Reading »
It is one thing to inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on yourself because of some unsubstantiated, fanciful belief system that you want to hold on to: it is something entirely different and more reprehensible to cause other people, especially dependent, innocent children, to suffer because of your beliefs.
If you want to self-flagilate because you think you god wants you to do that, go ahead, but don’t hurt children in the process or encourage them to hurt themselves. If you want to fast and deny yourself food because you think that it somehow helps you to be ‘holy’, fine, deny away to your heart’s content, but don’t inflict unnecessary suffering on those that you have a responsibility to protect and care for. Continue Reading »
On a recent visit to Liverpool my wife and I couldn’t but help notice that there were a lot of new shops and offices being built. If you walk from the docks to the city centre it is hard not to get the impression that you are walking on a nice new path through a building site.
I am always on the lookout for photographs and one of the buildings that attracted my attention was a block of offices with an unusual shape that appear to be falling on top of you as you walk by. The untouched shot opposite, taken on my iPhone at dusk, gives a sense of the context for the building (the tower on the right).
I wanted to take a photograph of the building which, for me, would capture something of the building’s unique unusual shape, and its sense of literally overwhelming you as you walk near to it. Continue Reading »
If she were a horse and not a human being, someone would show compassion. However, because Debbie Purdy is a human being, she is being made to suffer unnecessarily. A minority of people (largely informed by religious belief) are imposing their views on the majority in preventing a change in UK law. But the case of Ms Purdy shows how urgent it is for that law to be changed.
Ms Purdy, is suffering from multiple sclerosis and wanted to ensure that if she travelled with her husband to a Swiss clinic to end her life, he would not be prosecuted on his return to Britain.
The law as it stands means that if her husband does accompany her he may be prosecuted if the Director of Public Prosecutions decides that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public’s interest to do so. But so far there have been no prosecutions of the relatives of the 101 British citizens who have gone to the Dignitas clinic. Continue Reading »
On a recent weekend break in Liverpool my wife and I stayed in a hotel near the waterfront and spent a lot of time ambling round the re-developed docks, especially relatively early in the morning where we breakfasted in one of the cafés there. The Liverpool Tate is housed in some of the old warehouses along the dock front.
Poetry, like prostitution, has been around for thousands of year (though I’d be willing to bet that prostitution was probably there first). And both will continue for thousands more, despite the best efforts of zealots to promote it (as in the case of poetry) or stop it (as in the case of prostitution). However, whereas the latter is arguably becoming more prevalent (figures often quoted suggest that in the UK, one in 10 men have visited a prostitute at least once), poetry is, in many ways, a declining pastime (I suspect that far less than one in 10 adults - especially males - have actively engaged as adults with poetry).
Why is ‘island’ spelled with an ’s’?
How would you feel if, before every day at work, you were expected to participate in a collective act of talking to an unknown, unseen, mythical being, and if this time-consuming act never ever resulted in any demonstrable, substantive change in anything? Personally, I might think it was a waste of time.
Just two sour footnotes after the genuine joy and sense of hope that many of us liberals felt after America had the sense to vote in a Democrat for President (especially a black one).
Yes, it’s musterbation again! No, no, no, NOT masturbation, but MUSTerbation! I’ve written about 
It is one thing to inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on yourself because of some unsubstantiated, fanciful belief system that you want to hold on to: it is something entirely different and more reprehensible to cause other people, especially dependent, innocent children, to suffer because of your beliefs.
On a recent visit to Liverpool my wife and I couldn’t but help notice that there were a lot of new shops and offices being built. If you walk from the docks to the city centre it is hard not to get the impression that you are walking on a nice new path through a building site.
If she were a horse and not a human being, someone would show compassion. However, because Debbie Purdy is a human being, she is being made to suffer unnecessarily. A minority of people (largely informed by religious belief) are imposing their views on the majority in preventing a change in UK law. But the case of Ms Purdy shows how urgent it is for that law to be changed.