The Politics of Dancing

On the Hunger for Respect and Approval   “All the positions I took only served to make people whom I liked and admired like and admire me, and did not save a single Jew.” W H Auden The desire to be approved of is one of the most corrosive of human desires, for a writer it is fatal. For the majority of my life, certainly in my professional career in addictions offending and mental health, I never felt very driven by a desire to be liked or to gain the approval of others. Confident in my own abilities and with a clear sense of what I was doing, if others thought well of me all well and good, if not too bad. Of course that is not to say that there were not times that I did not enjoy being on the receiving end of the approval of others, even times when it might have influenced my behaviour; but I did not court it. When it comes to my writing however, particularly when I write about politics and current affairs I find a nagging sense in me of wanting approval. One of the re...

For my sins I have discovered Twitter. Of course I have been superficially aware of the thing for some time but never really saw the point. Then after a discussion with a friend in a café in Piccadilly I decided to give it another go. The net result, [no pun intended] being that I soon became addicted. The appeal of Twitter is not hard to fathom, the potential to take part in a national and sometimes international conversation and to communicate with those whom, outside of virtual reality, you would have no possibility of conversing and - for the politically minded like myself - the chance to add your penny worth to the cut and thrust of political and cultural debate. The atmosphere on Twitter is a strange combination of the intimate and private and public and open. The conversation runs on a spectrum from overly cutesy and saccharine to the virulent and abusive. In political discourse in particular licence is given to a level of rudeness unusual even in the normally acerbic di...

Germany And The End of A Nightmare 100 years ago Germany, with a population of 67 million, was the industrial powerhouse of Europe, Berlin a sophisticated metropolis the heart of an empire that was technologically innovative, progressive in social welfare provision and boasting the strongest labour movement in Europe. The future looked bright, the future promised a continent dominated industrially by German industry and technology and culturally by German ideas. It then all went horribly wrong and Germany entered a nightmare that grew ever darker as the century progressed. Is it fanciful to see in the German world Cup victory in Brazil and the celebrating crowds close to the Brandenburg Gate as the moment that Germany finally emerged from that nightmare? Certainly for the first time in my lifetime the majority of British people were rooting for a German victory once they reached the final and in many cases even before the comprehensive 7 - 1 demolition of Brazil. Germany n...

I want you to imagine the following scenarios.   1)     BBC Business Correspondent interviewing leading Trade Union official: “Well Mr Smith it seems you have increased your membership by 20% since last year, have successfully negotiated improved working conditions for your staff by threatening industrial action, and ensured extra payments for working unsocial hours. To what do you attribute your success? 2)     BBC Business Correspondent interviewing leading businessman: “So despite the fact that over 80% of your staff are paid the minimum wage, you are awarding yourself a bonus payment of over two million pounds, on top of your already generous salary package. Additionally your company has been heavily criticised for the fact that it pays virtually no corporation tax. How do you justify yourself to your workforce and the hard working taxpayers of this country? The Today Programme Not very realistic is it. Yet if you reverse the scenario...

NOTE:  Someone has contacted me to say they found this shocking and in bad taste. Well I certainly hope it does shock people, this is a shocking thing I am writing about. I own that the way I have sought to convey my shock is controversial. However when I read about this case I was so angry that I felt that another angry piece of polemic was useless. I felt the only way to talk about what happened to this little girl was to deliberately set out to shock. AT ‘An eight-year-old Yemeni girl has died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age, a social activist and two local residents said, in a case that has caused an outcry in the media and revived debate about child brides.’ Guardian 11 th September 2013 The Brides Betrayal  The Bride wore white Upon her wedding night Entranced the groom could barely wait No matter that his bride had just turned eight. Although a man of forty years He brushed aside his youn...