I have just watched the video attached to this Guardian article about the increase in Irish women seeking help for abortions abroad, and I am beyond myself with anger, frustration and disbelief. I know that this is what happens in Ireland; I know that it’s inhumane and barbaric yet allowed to go on, but sometimes I forget. Sometimes I forget, and then an article like this comes along and I feel...
Category - Politics
According to the documentary The Right Child [Det rätta barnet], which was broadcast on Swedish television recently, a prenatal screening programme in Denmark has started a trend which, if it continues, will lead to no more babies being born with Down’s syndrome. With more advanced screening technology, more and more parents are choosing to terminate pregnancies when the condition is...
Three children die, because they don’t get the medicine they need. Three children die, but not because there is no medicine and their illness can’t be cured. Three children die in vain, because their father, a religious pastor, chooses not to bring his children to the doctor but to stay at home and pray. “Prayer is,” Swedish blogger Lisa Magnusson writes, “humility, submission. But its...
People are talking about a Capitalism 4.0. Capitalism must change for the better, they say, and become more responsible. The financial crisis that started in 2008 has demonstrated that very clearly. I don’t know much about macroeconomics, but I find this whole discussion almost as disappointing as I find it interesting. Surely it doesn’t take an economics professor to see that, far from...
“If you want to have it all, it’s your job to work out how to do it. If you can’t, give something up.” That’s David Cox’s advice to Kate, the high-flying fictitious character in the film I don’t know how she does it. I suspect we’ll read many a harsh critique of the super-woman film, but I wasn’t quite prepared to read this in the Guardian. I’m not saying that this Hollywood...
“Keeping people safe is the first duty of government,” said David Cameron in the House of Commons after recalling parliament. Not a particularly surprising statement coming from a true conservative. But put into context, where what the prime minister is really saying is that the government’s main task is to protect one part of society from another, it not only explains to some degree how we...
I’m not going to lie: it did disappoint me when David Mitchell wrote that politics shouldn’t be about ideas but about money. Maybe because I admire him so much, both as a writer and as a political commentator, and I didn’t want him to eliminate every bit of hope I’ve ever had for the world. Maybe because the truth hurts. Or maybe it was because I’ve been wanting to write about the...
It’s happened again. One of our key politicians has spoken without censoring himself, and everyone’s in shock. But should we be? How much more do we need to hear to realise that this is the reality of politics in the western world? Kenneth Clarke talked about a distinction between “serious rape” and “date rapes”, referring to the latter as “17-year-olds having intercourse with...