Some readers may have had the pleasure of viewing this picture which has been doing the rounds on social media. Like many of my musician friends I ‘shared’ it, and that promptly started a discussion with two others, not musicians themselves but both well-attuned to current social mores, as to whether there was anything wrong […]

The idea that there exists today a Christendom such as existed in the pre-modern era is as fanciful as the suggestion that the followers of Mohammed have established a truly global Caliphate. Nonetheless, to cast the recent rioters against portayals of Mohammed perceived as insulting and their political leaders as only mere descendants of clannish […]

For many supporters of same-sex marriage (SSM) in the UK their opponents are ‘bigots’. They are entitled to their opinion but the epithet in question is, to parody Samuel Beckett, fast becoming a word in search of some meaning. The assumption is that there are people who want something, and that there is no problem […]

There is a school of thought that holds we are at our most honest, and most essentially human, when at our most animal level. This, at least, is a suggestion made by Marc Cooper in his book, The Last Honest Place in America, about high-stakes poker games in Las Vegas. ‘Its thesis’, writes David Flusfeder, […]

‘Modernity’, wrote Hegel, ‘is the secularisation of religion’. In many ways this is true of twentieth-century Europe during which we saw one responsibility after another pass from churches into the hands of government. Chief among these was, of course, the Welfare State, but education and moral authority followed not far behind. The last-mentioned is most […]

The leader of the Labour Party recently made some remarks on the subject of immigration. He admitted, in a speech given to the Institute for Public Policy Research, that the last Labour government had made errors in regard of immigration policy. Mr. Miliband asserts that the Party must now change its tack. Addressing the concerns […]

  Regular readers of a Blog for all Seasons might expect some coverage of the ongoing Leveson Inquiry. It is, after all, a matter of public interest and there are possibilities for ethical analysis. Unfortunately, it is difficult to be other than cynical in respect of the Leveson Inquiry. It was established to examine the […]

The recent Spanish ‘bail-out’ has had a mixed reaction from the global markets. Stock markets in Europe and the U.S. fell, and Spanish borrowing costs rose, after the first post-bail-out trading day. It is fortunate for the Spanish populace, already subject to austerity measures, that the bail-out did not come with the same conditions as […]