The Politics of Dancing

Cookery at its best, along with gardening, represents the most creative of practical activities, combining as they do both utility and imaginative flair. Both however require commitment in terms of time, concentrated mental application, perspiration and emotional engagement, in both activities constant practice is required. Practice if not quite making perfect makes for increasingly satisfying results. Living in a top floor flat in central London I have no access to a garden and possess neither the time nor inclination to obtain an allotment. This has not always been the case and I once enjoyed the satisfaction of growing my own potatoes, onions, carrots and radish. Incidentally whilst understanding the aesthetic I have never been attracted to the idea of growing flowers. For me gardening was always about utility and few things are quite as satisfying as cooking food that you have grown, which leads me to another passion, the passion for cooking. Cooking is the most accessible of cr...

Blood on Their Hands It is Mr Churchill, Prime Minister Atlee and President Truman, (President Roosevelt having escaped justice through the happy coincidence of his death), who should be on trial in Nuremberg . It is they who have blood on their hands. Despite no threat or attacks on Great Britain or France they conspired to launch an illegal war in defiance of the principles of the League Of Nations . Then despite being offered reasonable peace terms by Chancellor Hitler Britain continued to wage aggressive war, leading to the mass slaughter of Europe ’s Jewish population. Along with the imperialist American military, intent on world wide hegemony, we have invaded and destabilised Western Europe and devastated Germany , leaving a heap of rubble in which its starving citizens seek to eke out an existence. We say that there must be a full public enquiry and the war mongers put on trial!

In 1970 John Lennon wrote a song that was pretty much 80% bullshit, Working Class Hero. Lennon was brought up in a middle class area of Liverpool by his aunt Mimi, however at the time I did feel both the strength of the song and the power of the message. In a week that has seen the burial of Jimmy Reid, a genuine hero of working class origin it has brought back memories of other heroes of mine, Jack Jones, Aneurin Bevan, James Connolly. I also was minded of an occasion when I heard Jack Jones speak of his involement in the Spanish Civil War and knew that of this generation we would never see their like again.

Buckingham Palace confirmed details today of the first official visit to Britain of a pope, which will see Benedict XVI celebrate two public masses, meet the Queen and move a 19th century theologian closer to sainthood in a ceremony at Coventry airport. Non-policing costs amount to £15m, a sum to be met by the state and the Catholic churches of England Scotland and Wales. Policing costs will depend on the venue for each engagement and will draw on existing budgets for the forces involved ‑ Strathclyde police, the Metropolitan police and West Midlands police.’ [1] So we are expected to fork out for the visit of this appalling man with a track record, form as they say in the police fraternity, of covering up the sexual manipulation, rape and molestation of children, thus making him guilty of being an accessory after the fact. If this represents the worst aspect of this man's sordid career of obfuscation, denial and outright obstruction of justice there is more. The man is an ...

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Footballers are overpaid prima donnas, mercenary in the extreme and for the most part having about as much loyalty to their club as the size of their pay package and the transfer market can command. I know all of this and yet must confess to being a ‘fan’, which of course, quite appropriately is shorthand for fanatic. Admitting to loyalty to a football club in middle age feels a little like admitting to a love of toy train sets or cheap children’s sweets, the latter also being a weakness of mine. A passion, a life long love affair with a football club is beyond the rational, indeed may represent some sort of ‘disease’ in rather the same way that alcoholism is a disease, once infected there is no cure, you learn to live with it. The idea that being a supporter of a team involves some kind of pleasurable leisure activity is to completely misunderstand the nature of the beast, for the most part it involves constant anxiety, despondency at miserable results, anger at poor performances or s...