Our Three Europes
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”The quote is attributed to Buckminster Fuller. Another variation…
Cider House Rules II
We don’t often get to discuss the politics of cider. Politicians are usually smart enough to leave cider alone. But it did make the headlines this week, with news of…
Useful Idiots?
This week saw a rally at Westminster in support of housebuilding. There’s no denying the heartache if you’re not adequately housed, but many demanding a cull of our countryside are…
Wanted: an NHS
“The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life… intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness — completeness of depending of…
Choosing to be Beggars
Last week, an environmental coalition – Butterfly Conservation, the League Against Cruel Sports, the Mammal Society, the Ramblers, the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts – held a ‘Rally for Nature’…
Frying-Pans & Fires
With the dust now settled on the Euro-elections, let’s take a look at who will be speaking for Wessex in Brussels and Strasbourg. Well, not just Wessex. We have 16…
Ins & Outs
So, what is the Conservative Party’s settled policy on Europe? Not one to be written without a regular check over the shoulder in the direction of Monsieur Farage. Expect many…
Negatives, Positives
An election with 14 candidates was always going to squeeze our share of the vote, making in-depth comparisons difficult. So we don’t view our 30 votes in quite as negative…
Constitutional Engineering: Fail
British parties of the far Right are often treated as interchangeable. No-one on the Left can be really bothered to explore what nuances separate them. But the differences can be…
Whose Europe?
"Every step forward is preceded by a suppression; every reform by the exposure of some abuse; every new idea is born because of the inadequacy of the old concepts."Pierre-Joseph Proudhon…