Having recently decided to make more time to read fiction, a pleasure I have neglected of late, I have been most fortunate to have started my quest with a book which I believe to be one, if not the finest book's ever written about German Resistance to the Nazis. Of course I would not expect you to take my word alone on this, but fortunately Primo Levi thought the same, so this book comes with one hell of a recommendation. Alone In Berlin, written by Hans Fallada and first published in 1947 is about individual resistance to political tyranny. Its author best sums the ...
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On that memorable October day in 1989, when I cheered Gerry Conlon as he emerged with such joy onto the street outside the Old Bailey, after finally being set free on being acquitted along with the other three people who had become known as the Guildford Four, the last thing on my mind was that 20 years later victim's of miscarriage's of justice would still be emerging from the bowls of the UK judicial system. Yet yesterday Sean Hodgson, like Gerry and many others before him, was finally found not guilty by the Appeal Court after having served 27 years in jail for something ...
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100 years ago this year, the major powers of the day, signed the Shanghai Convention, which has resulted in the worldwide prohibition of opium. It is not an exaggeration to say the signing of this convention and the subsequent versions of it, have resulted in more human misery than almost any other international Treaty. * Since then a whole raft of less harmful drugs have been added to the prohibited substances list. Today there are so many narcotics on the UK’s illicit drug list the Government is forced to categories them alphabetically, although there seems to be no justifiable reason as to which category ...
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Former Euro-communist Martin Jacques, with an article in The Guardian , has joined a long line of media commentators who have used the 25th anniversary of the start of the 1984 miners strike to pour excreta over Arthur Scargill. With their demonization of Scargill it is difficult not to conclude the media’s main aim is to re-write the history of the strike. Reading these articles you will need to look hard to find a condemnation of Thatcher, or the then LP leader Neil Kinnock's disgraceful betrayal of trade unionists in struggle. In 1981, in a democratic ballot, the miners elected Scargill as NUM leader, ...
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The pound is rapidly going through the floor, the government believes it can solve the economic disaster it has jointly created with its pals in the City, by issuing powder puff statements about the wonders of the decisions made at the G20 conference; and the British army is becoming bogged down in Afghanistan, something even the stupidest student at Sandhurst fresh from public school would have foreseen. Yet what has the UK mainstream media, including the broadsheets been full of over the last week, shock, horror, the British prime minister’s gofers spend much of their time smearing the bosses opponents. If ever there is ...
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