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"When people ask
the favourite number of me, I say with unrepentant glee: ’It’s One Onety One’ Why, quite naturally!" - A forgotten little gem attributed to Lewis Caroll by J.L.Borges in his 1944 essay ‘Pseudepigraphy and Me’.
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Russell Brand reading our Portraits of Violence book, about political terror and violence, published by New Internationalist. The man has good taste! We need well known folk like this recommending comics, since comics are still far below the level of appreciation (and sales) that they should be at. So - go for it Brandy boy!   In a world that people say is moving to the right nowadays it’s worth noting that we have also had considerable moves the left. For example:
1. Canada - in their election a year and a half ago The Liberal Party's increase of an incredible 148 seats was the largest-ever increase by a party in a Canadian election (from only 36 to 184 seats). They promise such stuff as increases taxes on the super rich and strong efforts against domestic violence. 2. Scotland - despite the conservatives increasing their share in the Scottish parliament last elections their support level is only at 22%, and they still have only ONE solitary conservative MP from Scotland in the wider UK parliament (and even that only just - his majority was a mere 798 votes ahead of his SNP rival. so lets look forward to the 2020 election when there a good chance that the Conservatives will have absolutely no Scottish MPs at all. Zero. Nada!). Plus Green party trebled the number of its seats in the Scottish parliament. In general, Scotland looks like having at least a 'moderate' left wing majority for decades to come... 3. Netherlands - in what was seen as a stance against anti-immigrant ‘populism’ (so called), right wing racists got less support than feared in this years election, whereas the left wing environmentalist Green party made considerable gains with almost 4 times as many seats as before. 4. Northern Ireland the left wing part Sinn Fein (motto "Building an Ireland of Equals”) got their largest ever shares of seats in the assembly, and the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour party) increased it seats too. They even have a seat for a party called ‘People Before Profit’, which sounds like a good idea to me! 5. In Portugal’s elections at the end of 2015 saw three left wing parties—the Socialist Party, the Left Bloc, and the Communist/Green Alliance get 62% of the vote and a Socialist leader, Antonio Costa, became prime minister, vowing to “turn the page on austerity”. 6. Spain - a left wing party, Podemos, shot up in support to become the 3rd biggest party only a year and a half after forming. 7. Eduador - the left government there has achieved a 38 percent reduction in poverty and large increases in spending on education and healthcare. 8. And now, this week, the appointment of a new finance minster in South African who promises radical wealth redistribution. Of course criticism and doubt of all of the above could be made (and probably some ejit will), but, still, these examples above clearly show that not everywhere is moving to the right. |
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July 2026
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