ofthewedge

rooting around for grubs in diverse soils

  • Who put my man i’ the stocks?

    LEAR: Who stock’d my servant? … O sides, you are too tough; Will you yet hold? How came my man i’ the stocks? CORNWALL: I set him there, sir: but his own disorders Deserved much less advancement. KING LEAR You! did you? REGAN     I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. If, till the expiration… Read more

  • Hacking democracy

    Barry Gardiner MP got grumpy with Nick Robinson last week because the BBC Today Programme had read out the Sun’s stupid headline ‘Crash bang wally’ insulting Corbyn on a day of mishaps on the election trail. Rather pleasingly, Gardiner kept misquoting the title, not sure if intentionally, as ‘crash bang wallop’, so the cheap pun… Read more

  • Endgame

    I was late getting home. Our eldest was under a blanket,  glowering and saturnine, watching My Little Pony. Her mother had just tried unsuccessfully to interest her in a late supper. The little girl was in the danger zone, past bedtime on a school night. She could no longer tolerate contradiction of her whimsies, growing… Read more

  • Three dreams

    In my waking life I do not hold David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn or Donald Trump in very high regard.  But in my unconscious on sundry occasions in the last year or so, our relations have been quite sympathetic, even cordial. I am persuaded that, just as implied in the Acts of the Apostles and the… Read more

  • Great Northern

    ‘Good morrow, Benedick: Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?’ Much Ado about Nothing, Act V. Scene IV A few days ago I watched Alan Bennett’s Diaries, a film about Alan Bennett writing and reading his diaries. In the final scene we see… Read more

  • Post Brexit EU Diplomacy Redux 

    Council meeting  Member states: We have a problem. Commission: Let’s do something. We will propose a solution in the European interest. France: I agree we must do something in the European interest but national governments should be in the lead. [i.e. France.] Germany: I welcome the Commission proposal but we will need to study details… Read more

  • Es riß! (Notes on everything)

    When Trump was sworn in as President yesterday it started to rain on Capitol Hill, raining on the modest throng of snowflakes and deplorables clustered on the first five segments of white tarpaulin along the National Mall, barely reaching the Smithsonian Information Centre, so far as I could tell. The rain was a sign of… Read more

  • This is a really really great blog post. I mean really. I mean there are a lot of blogs out there, and some of them are good. But this one is just, you know, so great.

    There is no document of civilisation that is not at the same time a document of barbarism Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History A while ago when it became clear that Donald Trump was going to secure the Rublican nomination for president, a friend of mine from Croydon offered a striking parable of… Read more

  • A radical Labour keynote speech on the UK and the EU

    [This is what Her Majesty’s Leader of the Opposition should be saying. Yes I know I’m biased but it helps to get it off my chest. The blame for the 23 June debacle lies primarily with Cameron, but secondarily with the ineptitude of the current Labour Party.] Brexit means Brexit. Except that no one knows… Read more

  • Let’s remain. Remain to complain

      Your prophets are like jackals among ruins. Ezekiel 13:4 I wrote three years ago that a plebiscite might lance the boil of the EU’s perceived undemocratic illegitimacy. But the choice needed to be on a clear prospectus: what are we actually voting for or against? What is going on in the UK at the moment… Read more