Monthly Archives: May 2025

Talk of impending civil wars – in the USA, Britain and elsewhere – is becoming disturbingly common just now. Here’s one of a number of serious academic discussions of the likelihood of one breaking out in present circumstances: https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/. I … Continue reading →

I’m going into hospital on Tuesday for a minor operation. It’s to replace a bone in my ankle – I think; either that, or to screw two existing bones together. (I never like to know the gory details.) Of course … Continue reading →

You would expect me as an (ex-) academic – and who moreover has taught at two American universities – to be more concerned by Trump’s current attacks on higher education than on other aspects of his proto-fascist regime. The Harvard … Continue reading →

When is the Trump nightmare going to end? When he steps down, or dies, I suppose. Has there ever been a more ridiculous head of any state, in the entire history of the world? Stupefyingly ignorant, as we all know … Continue reading →

This worries me. What if Trump is proved right? What if his tariffs are successful; manufacturing returns to America; he is instrumental in bringing peace to Ukraine, Gaza and Kashmir – because diplomacy really is just a matter of property … Continue reading →

‘What does he know of England who only England knows?’ That quotation (from Kipling) has long resonated with me. Of course in Kipling’s case it was meant to direct people’s attention to his beloved Empire, which he believed (erroneously in … Continue reading →

The British Empire, as well as being a site of conquest, exploitation, racism and atrocity, also harboured pockets of idealism, good intentions, and – just occasionally – good outcomes. The best of these (apart of course from cricket) was the … Continue reading →

Can anyone any longer doubt the Fascist proclivities of the Trump administration? It is now even targeting West Point Military Academy, in its aim to force an uncritical and über-‘patriotic’ mindset on Army cadets. And MAGA make themselves out to … Continue reading →

During the Corbyn era, the Labour Party’s alleged anti-semitism played a leading part in its electoral defeat in 2019. The accusation goes back a few years; although certainly not to the origins of the Labour Party, which was one of … Continue reading →

Around 1900 the ‘science’ of Eugenics was invented by Francis Galton. It was taken seriously in Germany and the southern States of America in the 1930s – as well as in Sweden, as it happens. Not so much in Britain, … Continue reading →