The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet Beating off hotly tipped favourites such as Pope Francis and Angela Merkel, the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was won by the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. ‘The Tunisian what…?’ asked everyone in surprise. Is it a string quartet? A debating society? Well, actually, it’s a rather unusual coming together of four […]
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The Political Hunger Games
fasting, force-feeding and suicide bombers Day 1… day 2… day 27… day 90… day 118… day 174… day 200… day 253…. proceeding one after another, impossible numbers delivering both relief and pain, telling their tale of suffering, endurance and sacrifice. Cataloguing the body’s drawn out deterioration, the protracted anguish of its shrinking and shrivelling; […]
Corbyn, Content and Consensus
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, How infinite in faculty? In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man […]
Dishonour, Disobedience and Death
July 14th was the first memorial day for victims of honour based violence in Britain. The memorial day was secured by the charity Karma Nirvana, in conjunction with Cosmopolitan magazine and the Henry Jackson Society, and is officially called The Day of Memory for Britain’s Lost Women. It occurs on the birthday of Shafilea Ahmed […]
Bloggers, Floggers and the Magna Carta
Bloggers, Floggers and the Magna Carta 15th June 2015 is the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta. 17th June 2015 is the 3rd anniversary of the arrest of Raif Badawi. A mighty 800 years separate these two events and yet they are intrinsically and fundamentally linked. Both are to do with the […]
May 2015 Blog Tour
I am excited to announce this week (May 25th to 31st) I will be doing a blog tour, guest-posting, having reviews or interviews on a different blog every day. Thank you to all the brilliant bloggers for hosting the tour. Monday 25th May Blog Tour kicks off: http://anawfullotofreading.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/blog-tour-ravinder-randhawa-guest-post.html Tuesday 26th May http://anawfullotofreading.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/blog-tour-ravinder-randhawa-guest-post.html Wednesday 27th […]
In Praise of Doubt
‘I tell you, the first duty of manhood and womanhood is a Declaration of Independence.’ (Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw) ‘I don’t know’ ‘I’m not sure,’ are often received as statements of weakness, vacillation or lacking intellectual rigour. I beg to disagree. I believe they are two of the strongest statements a person […]
Complicity With Barbarism
The most terrible things hit our computer screens every day: injustice, suffering, calamity, wars, violence, and a hundred other cruelties and degradations. We choose which ones we’ll watch and which ones we won’t. In general we exercise a reasoned approach and self-restraint based on our ethics, politics and beliefs; we don’t want to be colluding […]