After the London Bridge terrorist attack, Theresa May found the culprit – the internet: “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said. “Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.” “We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international…
Category: Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941): Nobel laureate, poet, philosopher, composer, dramatist, novelist, artist, dance creator, educational pioneer, … and all-round genius
D-4: Controlling immigration & the internet = controlling terrorism?
Flowers lain and signs of unity posted on Southwark Street after #LondonBridge terror attack:@LBC pic.twitter.com/0wxtN5ye1c — Vincent McAviney (@Vinny_LBC) June 4, 2017 In my previous post, I asked whether controlling immigration would make the UK and better, safer place. The other belief stirred by certain UK politicians and media is that controlling immigration from the…
D-5: Controlling immigration = a better, safer UK?
News of Saturday night’s terrorist attack on London Bridge emerged just as I was finishing this post. I decided to defer its publication and return to the topic of terrorism in my next post. This was the UK Border Control at the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais on Friday night. Every single vehicle is stopped and…
D-6: Beggars cannot be choosers
We’ve seen the @WhiteHouse video about the #ParisAccord. We disagree – so we’ve changed it. #MakeThePlanetGreatAgain. pic.twitter.com/8A92MBwe6c — France Diplomacy🇫🇷 (@francediplo_EN) June 2, 2017 While preparing to turn Brits into Europe’s untouchables, Theresa May spoke to President Trump and expressed her “disappointment” that he had just binned the Paris Climate Accord. Meanwhike, the leaders of…
D-7: Brexit-vision
With Brexit-vision, intolerance seems to have become the ‘new normal’. Take, for example, the so-called “interview” of Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron this evening by Andrew Neil. You can read the full transcript on the Spectator blog (remembering that Andrew Neil is the chairman of the Spectator, among other things). There was a time when interviewers…
D-8: Theresa May – the missing “leader”
Tim Farron just won the #BBCDebate with this 😂👏 pic.twitter.com/pTc5lDnDBr — Laura Ainslie (@LauraAinslie7) May 31, 2017 As Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas pointed out this evening: “The first rule of leadership is to show up”. Apart from Theresa May, the leaders of all the major political parties (plus UKIP) took part this evening in…
D-9: What could be plan B for the UK?
Former MEP Andrew Duff is credited with the formulation of “Article 50”. He has written a fascinating 4-page discussion paper entitled Brexit: Time for plan B for the Brussels-based European Policy Centre. The likely disagreement He analyses the diametrically opposed negotiating positions of the UK and the EU27 (links to which I included in my blog post yesterday)….
8 June 2017: The end of the UK as I have known it?
I was born and grew up in London. I used to love it. I still love London’s theatres but many other aspects are no longer what they used to be – at least for me. The beginning of the end I think the decline started long ago, when both schools and parents stopped teaching children any values…
The centenary of Tagore’s Nationalism
While the First World War was still raging in Europe, Rabindranath Tagore gave a series of speeches in Japan and in the US in 1916-17 warning of the harm of Nationalism. These speeches were published as essays in 1917 in a book called Nationalism. In these essays, Tagore warned of the harm which he believed Nationalism could cause to humanity. 100 years later, his warnings appear to have been prescient and have a new relevance today.
Jo Cox MP & Tagore – #MoreInCommon
The assassination of Labour MP Jo Cox on Thursday while working for her constituents has shocked many of us in the UK. Apart from the tragic loss of such a promising young politician and campaigner, perhaps the most unsettling aspect has been that her killer apparently repeatedly shot and stabbed her while shouting “Britain first“. The man charged with…