No-one heads for the hills thinking it's going to end badly. But sometimes, it just does. We hadn't been to the English Lake District since 2018, a long interruption in a sequence of visits going back almost 40 years. The pandemic, family issues - there were lots of reasons for the gap. But to say [...]
I won't be the first commentator to note that the current perfect storm of crises, centred on Ukraine in the international sphere, the cost of living at home and Brexit somewhere in-between, barely registered in the Conservative Party leadership contest that, today, gave us a new Prime Minister. It puts me in mind of the [...]
The following is a (substantially) adapted version of a talk I gave as President of Defence Humanists on World Humanist Day, 21 June 2022, to Ministry of Defence staff at the invitation of the Department's Humanists And Non-religious in Defence (HAND) network. We seem to be living in a Brave New World: the pandemic, the [...]
A working class woman goes to the opera. And not just any old opera, but Glyndebourne, the über poshest of all (British) opera. My goodness - whatever next?! The snobbery that says that opera, and other high culture, is only for the privileged, the rich and the powerful, is a particularly insidious kind of prejudice. [...]
As the weeks turn into months for the people of Ukraine, and as Russia threatens to consolidate the most ambitious of its ‘frozen conflicts’, the liberal democracies have so far maintained their focus. This was probably the last thing Vladimir Putin expected. He launched this adventure on the assumption that we in the West are [...]
According to official Russian sources, the Ukrainians are either killing their own people or staging highly realistic scenes of mass murder, with the sole aim of discrediting Russia’s invading forces. Of course, nobody in their right mind, except perhaps the most dyed-in-the-wool ideologue or craven fellow traveller, believes any of this. Applying David Hume’s test [...]
Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine has untold impact on countless lives and on the future security and stability of human civilisation. What to say? Let's start with the nature of decision-making. Much has been made of Putin's shift from cool-headed strategist to Napoleonic visionary, and I confess that I saw nothing in the evolution [...]
It is, of course, the season to be jolly, but also when we all look back over the year just gone, and think ahead to what might just be. The media are awash with such reflections and speculations, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I add some random thoughts of my own. The backdrop [...]
Every so often in a career, you encounter someone who makes a lasting impression, who shapes the way you think and who you feel you would like to emulate. For me, Sir John Chilcot was just such a man. As the MOD’s Director Chilcot - possibly the only role in Whitehall named after an individual [...]
Many years ago, I was talking with an Afghan who had lived through the country's civil war. After he had described the horrendous privations and dangers he and his family had experienced, he paused. 'Don't ever leave us like that again', he said. And that, horrifically, is exactly what is happening. Not everything since the [...]
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