Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

"
People in this country are disillusioned by a two-party system that thrives on despair. Politicians may regret spending their lives convincing their constituents that nothing will change. Instead, they should inspire some hope that a more equal world is possible.
”

—Jeremy Corbyn January 2025

Privatisation does not save money for the NHS. It diverts money away from the NHS. This is the very same NHS that will end up delivering the expanded care. It is NHS staff – and NHS resources – that will provide the private sector’s “spare capacity”. This is what Dr. Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public means when he says that “feeding the parasite undermines the health of the NHS host”.

Privatisation rests on an illusion that their services are provided out of thin air, hiding the human and economic cost required to satisfy the private sector’s endless greed.

You know the worst thing about this government? It’s the war on woke. Woke means caring for people and it can only be a good thing to care for people no matter what.”

Chinese

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/24/jeremy-hunt-fac...

“True is such a twentieth-century concept. The question is, can I get you to believe it, can I get it repeated enough times to make it as good as true.”

—? Salman Rushdie, The Golden House 2017

It matters because it involves standards, rules and integrity in public office. And once those values start to erode - can the public ever expect to get them back?

“Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.”
Cordelia; King Lear Act 1 Scene 1

—William Shakespeare

Word of the day is 'podsnappery' (19th century, from Dickens): 'insular complacency and blinkered self-satisfaction'.

Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a wooden puppet whose limbs jerk at the whim of the puppet master and, by extension, a politician whose strings of action are pulled by somebody else.

In 1997, when I tutored on the Constitutional Law course at Liverpool Uni and was only ever a chapter of the book ahead of my students, the chapter on “Conventions” floored me. Coming from Germany, this way of securing democracy seemed positively insane.