The Politics of Dancing

The President's Breakfast A Short Story For The Holiday Season  Eliot had served three previous Presidents and up until the last year, he had thought that he had seen pretty much everything.  However, the previous incumbents had not prepared him for this. Nothing could have prepared him for this nightmare. He was due to retire in just over six months, but this morning, for the first time, he had begun to doubt that he could make it. It wasn’t the daily humiliation that got to him, he had known humiliation before, though had often enjoyed the satisfaction of those who had humiliated him be humiliated themselves in turn. No, it was much worse than that, it was watching the greatest elected office on the planet being daily degraded, humiliated in front of his eyes, and then in front of a global audience, and, to put it in language that he had suddenly become accustomed to hearing, being dragged through the shit. That morning the bell had rung and he entered the preside...

Students at Cardiff University protest to try and prevent Germaine Greer from giving a lecture I don’t think it would be accurate to call me a ‘socialist’ anymore, though it is a term I have used to describe myself for more than five decades. It is not that my fundamental worldview has altered greatly, I still believe in equality, economic and social justice and a political system that eschews privilege and preferment based on class. I also still believe in free speech, civil liberties and free assembly.  These latter two principles used to be associated with the left, no longer. When I was growing up the prohibiters and censors all came from the right, these days they are more likely to come from the left. Would a contemporary Oz trail now have the left supporting the publishers of the Schoolkids edition? I doubt it. We have moved from a culture of freedom and diversity of opinion to one of offence. Rather as a backbench MP can stop a private members bill by shouting ‘objec...