11. MONARCHY IN THE UK - Is This What Democracy Looks Like?
Read More“Either the monarch is sovereign or the people are. It cannot be both.”
10. IN DEFENCE OF WASTE - On the Essential Inessential
Read More“It is now my belief that the inessential, the waste, may be the most important thing in life for ensuring our true wellbeing. Furthermore, it may also ultimately have a knock-on effect of improving the productivity and efficacy of the essential.”
9. WHAT EXACTLY IS MY OBLIGATION HERE? - Who Enforces A Promise We Make To Ourself?
Read More“The crucial thing here is that if I did not do any one of these things, nothing at all would happen. I am not doing them because I believe God told me to and the punishment for failure is hell. I am not doing it because I signed a legally binding contract and would be in breach if certain things aren’t done. There is no law compelling me and not even another human being to whom I have made my oath.”
8. STADIUM HOT DOGS - On Vegetarianism, Food, and Culture
Read More“When I travel, it always strikes me how immediately alienating and othering it is to have to tell people no to their local specialities. As a vegetarian, and as someone who on top of this also doesn’t drink alcohol for other reasons, I find myself constantly imposing a sort of cultural imperialism on the places I visit, insisting on meat free alternatives and never fully being able to immerse myself in the culture I am there to see, and I often wish I hadn’t made the decision that the suffering of non-human animals matters.”
7. YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME? - Re-evaluating Representation & Identity Politics
Read More“If each of our experiences of the world are isolated within a personal island of subjective qualia, then no two people can know for sure whether they experience the world in the same way. What this means for identity politics, is that the underlying notion that Muslims can talk about Islamophobia, the LGBT community about homophobia, non-white ethnic groups about racism, and women about sexism (etc.) with an authority that is lacking from a “non-member” of each group falls apart. Every woman will experience living as a woman in a patriarchal world uniquely; every person who has been discriminated against because of their race, sexuality or religion has felt that hurt without peer.”
6. IDENTITY CRISIS - On Immigration and Belonging
Read More“It is only in the last few years that I began to realise how much I had been affected by being the child of an immigrant. Growing up, because my skin was white, the idea that I was a second-generation immigrant didn’t even cross my mind, although the fact of my status acted constantly in the shadows without my recognition, and I remained completely aware of my non-British heritage even in my ignorance of living its consequences. “
5. BIG DATA - The Importance of Remembering there Can be a Data/Facts Disjunction
Read More“Data, in theory, means measurability, tracking and accountability, and therefore is favoured and celebrated by those in the business of measuring education, tracking education, and holding education accountable. Every year teachers across the country collect spreadsheet after spreadsheet of meaningless data on their pupils. They analyse that data and discuss it endlessly with managers and leaders and make decisions about future planning based on what the data says. But the data gathered is, invariably, pure garbage.”
4. THAT WAS THE PRESIDENT AND THAT WAS THE MAN - On The Importance of Loving Our Enemies
Read More“The argument gaining traction over the last twenty-four hours seems to be this: when Theresa May resigned, she cried, but such tears must be ignored and not generate sympathy because she didn’t first cry for the victims of Windrush, Grenfell, public services cuts, and the environment. She cried only for herself.”
3. DO THE RIGHT THING - The Logic of Using Non-specialists to Deal with Mental Health
Read More“In society at large, as in their microcosm, the humble school, although imperfect, overall, our collective efforts to try and help add more good to the world than would exist in their absence, and so the continued struggle should be supported.”
2. THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY - How Do We Mark An Ending?
Read More“To paraphrase Plato’s old Euthyphro dilemma: do we mark significant endings because they are special, or are endings made significant and special because we mark them?”
1. END GAME - The Ethics of Spoiling
Read More“Those who ‘spoil’ movies and TV shows for other people are moral monsters, just not for the reasons I thought they were”