“The moderate majority are irrelevant,” you say. Well, not really, for overwhelmingly the moderate majority are the main victims of your perpetual battles with an extremist minority. You say your issue is with extremists alone. But you say this while laying waste to entire societies, crushing the dreams of the majority. Yes, you say the …
Wearing his finest suit, articulating the most horrific sentiments in his best Received Pronunciation, England’s respectable racist pleads that you turn away. No, dislocate the enemy from their humanity, he demands: wreak wholesale vengeance on their innocents, multiplied twenty-fold, for the crimes of the militant scourge. England’s respectable racist insists there are no innocents on …
Another late evening working, but the truth is this is the only way to do the job. Working hours spent responding to requests for help from all over. Evenings spent doing my actual job.
All around us, the Peter Principle fully exemplified, as colleagues are promoted to their optimal level of incompetence. The latest, a senior bod sending hares racing, because they don’t understand the technology, and only sought expert advice after highlighting an unverified issue to all and sundry. I do understand why so many of us feel …
Speaking of the events of the day with a guest at the weekend, I confessed that I’m the least qualified to express an opinion given that I’m not a fighter at all. “You’re basically a pacifist,” they nodded, smiling. A fair diagnosis, for I believe war should be a last resort. A necessary evil at …
My mother in law won’t smile for anyone except me. I’m honoured. From downstairs, she enquires after me: “Why is he working in the evening?” We’re not the best of communicators. My substandard language skills only enable us to cover the basics, and my smattering of her native tongue is deployed more for comedic effect …
Our nation is going to have to decide what it values most. Its health and the provision of affordable healthcare, or closed borders. The right wing of our ruling party has made clear what they want, demanding that the Department of Health find an alternative way to address the staffing shortfall in the National Health …
I don’t doubt God, but I doubt myself. I doubt my own opinions. I doubt my reaction to events in the world. I doubt whether my faith and deeds will be accepted. Thus do I pray: “O Allah, grant me a faith which pleases You.”
Does travelling cross-country by public transport make sense in the UK? Pondering a visit to my parents in the south west, I feel compelled to consider taking the train this time. Having moved south from rural North Yorkshire a few years ago, they now live in the very heart of a world heritage city, which …
I am glad I am not a politician, or a person of power or influence. For I would not be able to move for fear that my actions were not ethical or just. I would not be able to make the expedient decisions the powerful make in the real world. I am a naive idealist, …
It’s in times of crisis that I worry most that I’m not normal, forever conscious that my emotional empathy seems broken. Observing myself, I wonder: what’s wrong with me? Why can I never react with the same emotions as everyone around me? Why is my reaction to unfolding events always so off, my anger apparently …
Late on Friday evening. Maybe it’s time to call it a day. Down to 113 95 flagged emails, 26 assigned tasks. Never complain: this the work that keeps us fully employed and collecting a paycheque. Next week…
I was radicalised by the Rwandan genocide in 1994, during which over 500,000 members of the country’s minority ethnic group were killed during a pogrom lasting a hundred days. I thought it was dreadful that the world seemed to look on indifferently at those horrors. My response was to stick posters up around my college …
Britain has another epileptic fit about net migration. Then we dig into the figures and discover that the top two contributors are short term students and healthcare professionals. That’s right, we’re being sent into a spin about international students, who contribute over £40 billon to the UK economy annually. And the other segment? Yes, that’s …
