Arnold Carton 
If you want to make a name for yourself as the voice of unionism, you can join a political party, work hard to become a local councillor, work even harder on behalf of your constituents, win their trust and perhaps become an MLA. Eventually people might take notice of what you say. But this involves years of hard work. Is there a quicker way, one that involves less hard work? Find an issue that divides people (the Americans call these …
Why did Britain (or England) prosper in the late 1700’s and lead the way in the Industrial Revolution? Was this in part due to the earlier Glorious Revolution when our own ‘King Billy’ defeated the Catholic King James and ensured that Britain was a ‘Protestant State’ and had a Protestant work-ethic? Why do some countries like the USA become rich, while nearby countries like Mexico remain poor; what makes one country successful and another fail? During my lifetime I have …
The British government needs more money. In the financial year 2023/24 the deficit was £131 billion, equivalent to 4.8% of GDP which is only slightly above the UK average since 1970 of 4.7%. (See Link 3 below) This is equivalent to around £1,920 per head of the UK’s population, but the deficit will increase because of the demand for more defence spending by Russia and the USA. Undeserving Poor and Deserving Rich Unfortunately, our new Labour government has unwisely committed …
When any long-term relationship breaks down there is always pain and sometimes financial disagreement. Just as when a marriage ends in divorce, now that the special relationship between the UK and the USA is coming to an end, it is probably a good idea to take full stock of our financial and other arrangements so that the divorce can be amicable, or at least polite and rules based. None of us want a trade war with the USA but we …
If you were following the news last week it seems that those of us with a Y-chromosome (the males) aren’t doing so well. As a former school teacher with 30 years’ experience in secondary school teaching this does not come as a surprise, but it is sad that it still needs addressed. A detailed report published in March 2025 by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) entitled Lost Boys highlighted the fact that boys start falling behind girls even before …
I have not heard the word ‘yearning’ used for some time. It usually means ‘a strong feeling of wishing for something, especially something that you cannot have or get easily’. This word cropped up in a conversation about getting over broken relationships, where the rejected partner sometimes becomes stuck, yearning for what might have been, mourning for what was lost and refusing to move on. Such feelings are natural, we have all been there, myself included, where we replay memories …
There are historical examples where companies did indeed run countries but not for the good of the citizens. The British East India Company effectively ran India for over 70 years during the late 18th and early 19th century, extracting as much wealth for its shareholders as possible and even being involved in both the slave and opium trades over the years. Clearly, these are not the examples that the USA Trump fans are proposing but I suggest that a closer …
I hear two contradictory claims about Donald Trump. One view says that most of extreme comments are just rhetoric, that he doesn’t intend to carry out many of his threats. An alternative view tells us that unlike other politicians, he does exactly what he promises to do. I don’t believe either viewpoint is entirely accurate. Mr Trump is more random, like a car thief or a housebreaker trying every door until he finds one unlocked, where the pickings are easy. …
Back in 1986 I was teaching a night class in Desktop Publishing (the use of computers to typeset newspapers or magazines). I was enthusiastic about the new technology, but one person in my class who was employed as a typesetter in a local newspaper, informed me that his workmates hated people like me, because the new technology could end up making many of them unemployed. If you look back at the history of new technologies this has always been an …
Were you taught about the Spartans in school history? Sparta was a small Greek state in 500BCE, situated in the south of Greece, roughly 130 miles west of Athens. The Spartans valued the security of the state and military strength above all else and taught its boys how to be the best soldiers in the world using military boarding schools from the age of 7 years, while at the same time allowing a remarkable amount of freedom to its Spartan …
Almost 2 weeks ago Elon Musk was at the centre of a major row with Trump supporters about Elon wanting to allow more foreign nationals into the USA under the H-1B visa programme. Critics of the H-1B system, particularly within Trump’s MAGA base, argue that it depresses wages and displaces US workers. They claim that companies exploit the programme to hire foreign workers at lower wages, bypassing qualified Americans. Elon however, argued that tech companies like his needed many more …
One of very few advantages of getting older is that you can look back and see patterns developing over decades, patterns that were not immediately obvious at the time. During the Brexit Referendum campaign and its aftermath, people like Dominic Cummings came to prominence and most of them talked about ‘disruptive leadership’ in a positive way. As someone who worked in the field of ICT, I was used to a fairly rapid pace of change, but I also was well …
You will have heard about a famous politician who is notorious for his lavish lifestyle and licentious behaviour. He had multiple affairs outside his marriages, sometimes with the wives of other leaders. He is very vain and goes to great lengths to hide his increasing baldness. He is adept at using religion as a tool to improve his image, manipulate public opinion, and enhance his power. He will happily proclaim that God is on his side and, therefore, his actions …
It is hard not to be impressed at how quickly AI technology has developed over the past 10 years. Some applications such as the ability to manipulate or create graphics based on a few simple human-language commands, attract our attention (eg FaceApp on Android is simple and fun). Cars that drive themselves are even more impressive, with the Google spin-off, Waymo, being the market leader and trialling the driverless cars in Phoenix, Arizona and LA, but the technology doesn’t seem …
In the past I have rejected labels like ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’ or moderate, partly because they are so vague but also because I detest the way some, who do go under these banners, try to claim an unwarranted moral superiority. The reaction of some to the re-election of President Donald Trump is one example. Online I have engaged with liberals who argue that the defeat of Kamila Harris is good because it shows that people get punished for supporting genocide. The …
As I write on Saturday afternoon, we have no idea whether Harris/Walz or the Vance/Trump team will win the US presidency, but if Harris wins, it seems that it will be the women of America who have saved the USA. Polling indicates that men, especially white non-college-educated men tend to support the Trump/Vance team, with Trump also appearing to attract more Black & Latino men than ever before. By contrast, a majority of women appear to be about to give …
Forty years ago on Saturday, the IRA came close to wiping out the entire British Cabinet in the Brighton Bomb (Oct 12th 1984). Through luck, only 5 people were killed, but many members of the government were injured, some seriously. This was a serious attack on Britain by the IRA and just one of many. Currently, we keep hearing the mantra ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ being used to silence criticism of the carpet bombing of Gaza and …
One year after the Oct 7th atrocity, the horror continues, Palestinian civilians and young Israeli soldiers continue to die and a much wider conflict appears to be on the way. After a year of peace marches, letters to the press, discussions on radio and a death toll of between 40 and 100 thousand there are still a surprising number in the West who believe in the need for Israel to continue with its military campaign Other people (such as myself) …
There are many simplistic ways of looking at the problem of Palestine and Israel. According to some, Palestine belongs to the Jews, they were present in that land over 3000 years ago. OK, so their numbers declined in the Middle Ages with the Jewish diaspora spreading across Europe while Arabs became the dominant group in Palestine, but the territory still belongs to the Jews who were there first and have continued to regard it as their Promised Land through centuries …
The American Library of Congress has an engraving entitled: “Pulling Down the Statue of George III by the Sons of Freedom” which commemorates part of the battle to win freedom from Britain in the War of Independence. What that engraving, or the earlier painting do not show is that the statue was actually pulled down by African slaves who were certainly not free and were acting under instructions from the ‘sons of freedom’. (Listen to BBC podcast How to Invent …