Politics has become poisonous. I don’t think it needs to be. Government doesn’t work. I think it can. I have some ideas, and because I have no power and no platform, writing them down here is the best I can do. The positive ideas will be at the end, and it gets negative first. Bear with me. The ideas make more sense with the framing. What do you MEAN, government doesn’t work?...
We live cheaply. By choice. I don’t talk about it, usually, because it’s difficult to say anything and walk the tightrope between people’s pity if they get the impression we have to, and them thinking we’re holier-than-thou if they don’t. But sometimes I wish I could explain, so I’m going to give it a try. When we got married, I was used to spending whatever I felt I needed and not looking too far ahead....
Right now feels like an excellent time for any British citizen who cares about the direction of the UK to join the Conservative Party. Wait, don’t go, I know how that sounds, considering “right now” is April 2024, and everybody in the UK hates Tories and wishes they’d go away. And yes, it feels very important to spell out that this is April 2024, because this take will date very fast and won’t apply in a year’s time at most....
We are shaped by our experiences more than most of us like to think. And I grew up religious. For all of my formative years, and quite a way into adulthood, religion was the dominant force in my life. So a very big part of how I look at the world has been formed by that. I see religion everywhere. It’s all religion. Especially the parts full of people who would look at me strangely for insisting on this, because religion is alien to them and they don’t understand it at all....
We get the leaders we deserve. Partly because we accept as unstated fact that we need leaders. The people who think it’s important that someone is in charge, are, oddly enough, the ones in charge. The rest of us aren’t so bothered, so we aren’t. And consequently we don’t get to push the point that maybe it’s OK to have less leadership, because we aren’t responsible for the conversation. For some years now, I’ve been quite visible online....