tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-372597632012-02-13T10:03:25.374ZCommon SenseCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.comBlogger2861100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-82931865086504248132012-01-29T22:57:00.001Z2012-01-30T23:15:26.450ZLIES, DAMNED LIES and OPINION POLLS
I was born in May 1947. In only the first four years of my life has there been a Labour government that made a fundamental and lasting difference to the life of the nation. Subsequent administrations have certainly contributed to the lives of various groupings, but almost entirely in the realm of social policy. And none of these achievements – the Open Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-4369162285078103222012-01-16T15:07:00.000Z2012-01-16T15:07:52.560ZA GHOST STORY RETAILED
Act III: BIG TROUBLE
In the previous canto of this lamentation for the independent, individual retailer, I limned the way department stores have been subsumed into uniform chains, like Debenhams and House of Fraser. But some of these chains are not all that they seem. For instance, BHS, Burton, Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and others have been herded together under the Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-63856018114221480852012-01-06T23:14:00.000Z2012-01-06T23:14:34.143ZA GHOST STORY RETAILED
ACT II: DEPARTMENTS and POSTURES
To continue the paean to independent retailers and their traditions of service:
Having swamped the town centres, the superstores promptly moved out again. Easily renegotiating or subverting regulations that govern planning permission, they annexed green-field sites beyond the conurbations, often – oh, the poetry of it – on the land of Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-50852284731398490922011-12-31T11:49:00.000Z2011-12-31T11:49:59.381ZA GHOST STORY RETAILED
ACT I: LITTLE SHOPS KNOW HORROR
The narrative arts are apt to organise their material into three acts. The first sets out the status quo – the situation, the characters, the mise en scène. The second introduces development – change, challenge, conflict. The third offers resolution – a return to the status quo (the sentimental happy ending) or, in more mature work, a Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-68950155218039598202011-12-21T00:59:00.000Z2011-12-21T00:59:15.340ZONCE in UNREAL DAVID's (BIG) SOCIETY
The Prime Minister has declared Britain “a Christian country … and we should not be afraid to say so”. It’s not unusual, of course, for politicians to make assertions that have no basis in fact. Sometimes this is done out of ignorance, sometimes out of dishonesty, sometimes out of self-denial, sometimes out of malice, sometimes out of hubris, sometimes out Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-42050966290412938632011-12-11T18:21:00.000Z2011-12-11T18:21:19.696ZPOOR’s SHOW
Ever since the decline of European Socialism in the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the ’90s, capitalism has considered itself king of the world and has behaved accordingly. In Britain especially, the triumph of capitalism has been celebrated by successive governments, whether Conservative or nominally Labour. Under the spell of the Chicago school of economic theory, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-83437826593956607892011-12-03T01:10:00.001Z2011-12-03T09:45:56.563ZTRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT
Through a mist of tears, I caught up with the conclusion of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4’s four-part fly-on-the-wall series. Seven strangers, ranging in age from 22 to 52, were brought together for four weekend “retreats”. The only common factor between them was transitioning – three from female to male, the rest the reverse route. Their progress along these Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-6178507615838357512011-11-30T00:49:00.006Z2011-11-30T10:20:41.803ZNEVER a SOFT or QUIET RUSSELL
For lively-minded people, the mid-teens are a dazzling voyage of discovery, a time when one starts seriously to explore identity, personality, friendship, sexuality, romance, psychology, politics, intellect, culture, self-expression and all the richness of existence and the world. Something that impacted forcibly on that period of my own life was the early work of Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-27534570993847993192011-11-28T03:25:00.001Z2011-11-29T14:03:19.101ZBOOM at the TOP
The report of the High Pay Commission, delivered the other day, has put nourishing flesh on the bones of what many of us had perceived long ago: that Gordon Gekko’s 1980’s mantra “greed is good” has been superseded throughout the upper echelons of the money-manipulating industries by the conviction that greed is the sole motivation for any deal, move, argument, or even thought.
Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-61814260974728070162011-11-08T23:07:00.001Z2011-11-08T23:19:32.869ZThe INCONTINENT of EUROPE
“England has saved herself by her exertions,” William Pitt the Younger once declared, “and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example”. As William Hague is something of an expert on Pitt, it surprises me that the Foreign Secretary has evidently yet to point out this superior remark to his leader. That David Cameron sees himself as saviour of Britain by exertion and Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-78481930155588065492011-10-31T19:01:00.001Z2011-11-02T09:56:05.576ZFEAR and LOATHING in the 21st CENTURY
The moment I heard the bare headlines about the murder of a 28 year-old barman in Ayrshire last weekend, my gaydar detected a homophobic element. At the time of writing, this instinct has yet to be wholly justified by what has been publicly disclosed, but if the evident fact of Stuart Walker’s relaxed and unconcealed sexuality proves to be a total red Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-87360732925231007562011-10-18T23:32:00.001+01:002011-10-19T09:44:04.076+01:00FRANKLY, DEBT (TORY) is RIDING HIGH
“The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills”. Common sense or what? The words are from a speech by the Prime Minister but they were never delivered. Somebody among his many advisors explained gently to him that if every household paid off its debts Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-62636079707268652552011-10-02T21:45:00.000+01:002011-10-02T21:45:39.734+01:00BITER BIT
I no longer tweet. If you’d told me first thing yesterday that by the end of the day I would have cancelled my Twitter account (as it’s called – in fact no money changes hands), I would have been very surprised. But there it is.
Maybe I was subconsciously ready to give it up. There is a certain justice in the prejudice among Twitter atheists that tweets are largely of the “Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-21775463175583459642011-09-28T00:35:00.000+01:002011-09-28T00:35:04.599+01:00BEING LACKED and LOST/WHY THEN WE RACK the VALUE
Ed Miliband made a good speech to the party conference. The word he hit time and again was “values”. It’s a usefully resonant term, speaking of morality as well as of economy, trailing association with family and tradition and honesty. And he encapsulated it in a neatly turned soundbite: “the wrong values for our country and the wrong values Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-20548566933996320862011-09-19T18:34:00.001+01:002011-09-20T09:14:59.175+01:00GO BACK to YOUR CONSTITUENCIES and PREPARE for ANNIHILATION
That whistling sound you hear emanates from Birmingham. It is in England’s self-styled second city that the Liberal Democrats are holding their annual party conference this year. The whistling indicates that all of them are desperately trying to keep their spirits up. For the realpolitik is utterly dire, not to say terminal.
Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-79276233333922978862011-09-12T22:33:00.003+01:002011-09-13T10:27:55.252+01:00SUNSET in LONDON
Thursday was the 115th anniversary of the birth of Howard Dietz. He’s a largely forgotten figure now and you may well wonder why anyone would want to remember a guy whose day job was that of publicist. Ah, but Dietz was no ordinary publicist. He was the most successful in the role that anyone has ever been in Hollywood. Here’s how.
Dietz got his first job in publicity with Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-53427940868267133362011-08-29T19:45:00.000+01:002011-08-29T19:45:36.490+01:00TERMINATION of CHOICE
Long ago, when the world and I were both young, I used (in a phrase employed in the gay community) to “cruise both sides of the street”. How I came to settle on the one side is a story for another day but, as it turned out, the road I didn’t take was the one that leads to parenthood. The line from me all the way back to the primeval swamp finally expires when I pass.
Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-54992348512783575622011-08-23T18:53:00.000+01:002011-08-23T18:53:48.074+01:00THIS is SO YOU
In separate emails to me and to my partner the other week, an old friend strongly recommended a new movie she had seen. My heart sank and I think I may not misrepresent David if I venture that his did a little too. Does this reaction seem as inappropriate as it does ungracious? Permit me to explain.
I haven’t set foot in a cinema for many months, David for many years. I Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-84059584451379290992011-08-14T22:04:00.004+01:002011-08-14T23:31:56.201+01:00WHAT’s to be DONE?
Over the last ten days, Britain has taken leave of its senses. I do not refer to the urban riots that have scarred the social fabric, or rather I do not only refer to them. I am thinking more seriously and worryingly about the mooted mood – the “clear public mood” as BBC reporter Chris Buckler called it – of anger, blame, vengeance. When he was leader of the opposition, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-78790011987840434372011-08-13T12:11:00.000+01:002011-08-13T12:11:06.485+01:00YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT of THAT
Scene: A Council Flat, North London
Time: Evening, Friday August 5th 2011
Chav Jr: See you later, Mum.
Mrs Chav: Where are you off to at 7:00 o’clock at night?
CJ: Going to see my mates.
Mrs C: Oh no you’re not. And put that hood down.
CJ: Aww, why, Mum?
Mrs C: Because I say so. And you don't want to risk being hugged by David Cameron. Sit down here with me.
Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-91173810715571851672011-08-09T21:27:00.000+01:002011-08-09T21:27:35.611+01:00LONDON’s BURNING
The presidential palace, Damascus, August 2011. An aide approaches the President.
Aide: “Majesty, there is a person-to-person call on the private line”.
Assad: “Who is it?”
Aide: “His Excellency the Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya”.
Assad: “Put him through”.
The aide steps out again. Immediately there is a ping on the desk phone. The President picks Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-77798165475303439082011-08-05T19:07:00.005+01:002011-08-05T23:15:31.554+01:00OUT of ONE’s DEPTH
Ponds are environments of mystery. What dramas are enacted beneath their tranquil surfaces or even at the surface when one is elsewhere? By definition, they possess something intense, complex, profound: namely, depth. They are separate, contained worlds, by far the greatest part of which we are unable to observe. Yet we are instinctively drawn to them.
When we moved to Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-283352791416880892011-07-26T18:37:00.003+01:002011-07-27T10:19:14.673+01:00WORDS MADE FLESH
More than a month after its first British television broadcast on BBC2, I finally took a deep breath and watched my recording of the movie version of Disgrace. Why the reluctance? Nothing to do with reviews, previous experience of any of the participants or the subject matter. Far from it. What reviews I have seen range from admiration for achievement to sympathy for Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-76892412647194143522011-07-13T20:48:00.001+01:002011-07-13T20:58:16.510+01:00BEYOND the DREAMS of AVARICE
Last night, at least one life in Britain was transformed. The capped EuroMillions jackpot of more than £161.5 million was won by a single ticket purchased in these islands. The ticket may have been bought by a syndicate but even if, say, ten individuals share the spoils, the world is different for each of them now.
As I write, no one has yet approached Camelot to Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-86736605048105672112011-07-10T19:46:00.002+01:002011-07-10T19:59:50.761+01:00ART ISN’T EASY
Last weekend, on a brief visit to London, I caught a preview of Road Show. This is the latest and very likely the last of the musical plays with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the pre-eminent practitioner in the field for the past half century. It was his only show that I had never seen, not having been able to get to the public workshop in New York in 1999 or the world Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-2926613013777667892011-07-07T20:27:00.004+01:002011-07-07T20:57:36.340+01:00YOUNG and FOOLISH
The late Michael Young was a great man and much revered by progressive educationalists and leftists alike. His long association with the famously free-thinking independent school, Dartington Hall in Devon, is enshrined in the title he took, Lord Young of Dartington.
But it must have been the black sheep among the particular emission of spermatozoa that fertilised the ovum Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-59851273909305506022011-07-05T20:00:00.001+01:002011-07-06T15:04:35.386+01:00DEFERENCE CUTS
Of course, it’s all the fault of the 1960s. For the century and a half before that revolutionary decade, the “great and the good” were treated with all the deference to which they considered themselves entitled. In the longer view, I suppose, the scornful, the satirical and the downright scabrous have been more often in the ascendancy: one thinks of Swift, Pope and Defoe in the Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-75093937782660452162011-06-20T21:57:00.001+01:002011-06-20T22:15:06.176+01:00FOGH of WAR
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO and a former Danish prime minister, gave an interview to Shaun Ley of Radio 4’s The World at One today that was little short of a disgrace. The interview will be available in the UK for a few days on the BBC iPlayer.
Rasmussen had made himself available in the light of the deaths of nine civilians, including two children, in Tripoli Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-80938835151570784592011-06-12T19:45:00.001+01:002011-06-12T20:31:36.095+01:00PAINED LABOUR
The Labour Party is indulging its death wish again. You’d think its supporters in Westminster and Fleet Street would remember how damaging these bouts can be. But we know that journalists and columnists have the attention span of a mayfly and backbenchers would die of boredom if they didn’t have something vague but loomingly large to gossip and grumble about.
Ever since the ToryCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-43223782490568887482011-06-10T23:35:00.004+01:002011-06-11T10:14:46.363+01:00ROLLING with the PUNCHES II
A large part of my journalism career was spent writing about television. As someone who grew up with the medium’s golden age, I eagerly cast myself in the 1970s as its print champion. It seemed to me that television was not yet written about well enough: where were the weighty books and where was the newspaper criticism that did it justice? In fact there was Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-33514938023523005372011-06-06T20:01:00.002+01:002011-06-06T20:14:24.157+01:00ROLLING with the PUNCHES
In my third month as a Twitter user, I find that I am still feeling my way. It is in many aspects a curious phenomenon, most particularly because one is working in a public forum of unknowable nature and range. Anyone who has ever performed any kind of display in public or service to the public knows of that mysterious hinterland wherein one semi-exists, not discerned Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-85737141720681410082011-05-30T20:06:00.003+01:002011-05-31T09:04:52.206+01:00JUST ANOTHER WORD for NOTHING LEFT to LOSE
Until about a decade ago, I was, for thirty years on and off, a working journalist and a fully paid-up member of the National Union of Journalists. I’d be a journalist again if anyone took my stuff, but I am too long out of the business; the people who decide things have never heard of me and don’t deign to respond to unsolicited pieces; and maybe whatCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-8884883556508603342011-05-19T16:24:00.002+01:002011-05-19T16:25:04.224+01:00RAPE: FOUR HYPOTHETICALS
You are a middle-aged woman. You are alone in the house when your estranged husband calls round. You and he are still on reasonably good terms; it’s just that you can't live together. On this occasion, he's clearly very down. You give him a cup of tea and you both talk for a long time standing up in the kitchen, inconclusively. Suddenly, he starts to cry. You are Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-20274330008951960542011-05-18T22:01:00.003+01:002011-05-19T10:38:05.982+01:00A RAVISHING ROW
At my school in the 1960s, there were termly outings to the theatre. I expect there still are. Nothing unusual about that, you will say. Theatre-goers have long known that a Stratford matinee is only to be undertaken if one can tolerate an auditorium full of adolescents whispering, giggling, rustling sweet papers and, nowadays doubtless, texting each other when bored.
Our Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-82514392656294941012011-05-16T23:04:00.001+01:002011-05-17T09:37:11.221+01:00MAY the FORCE BE WITH YOU
I had thought that, depending on the hurdles thrown into the path of independents, I might put myself forward as a candidate for the elected office of county police commissioner next May. These functionaries have been dreamed up to replace local police authorities and supposedly to make the police more accountable.
I am not the only observer to suspect that what will Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-63073662251985498972011-05-09T21:14:00.001+01:002011-05-10T11:07:50.592+01:00SPLITS and SPATS
Thursday’s multifarious elections changed the UK’s political map in various ways, some of them unexpected. One hesitates to use a phrase like “seismic shift” but the reverberations will go on for months and may yet have further, unimagined consequences. Already three party leaders in Scotland have said they will step down. The balance of the coalition in Westminster and Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-52475125804685592812011-05-02T18:49:00.005+01:002011-05-03T12:05:21.922+01:00BRITISH TELEVISION: A DIM VIEW
This article marks the culmination of several years of off-and-on work. I originally marshalled the material into a proposal for a one-off television programme. For many months, I tried to fire up first one, then another old chum in the programme-making business to run with the proposal and take it to a commissioning editor, preferably the appropriate one at Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-61629936865058720082011-05-01T00:15:00.003+01:002011-05-02T14:39:57.988+01:00The LOUD LAUGH that SPOKE the VACANT MIND
In today’s Daily Telegraph, the columnist I love to hate, Simon Heffer, has once again voyaged into a subject of which he knows nothing: humour. Here is the link:
http://bit.ly/k4klbX
I shall now make Mr Heffer chuckle uncontrollably (given his susceptible funny bone) by revealing that my own name for him is Siphon Effluent. Did you see what I did Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-7005021327194732062011-04-23T23:17:00.000+01:002011-04-23T23:17:52.877+01:00SUBORDINATE LIVES
Thrift and, to a lesser degree, inclination keep us at home while others take their holidays. We are fortunate enough to have a house, land and a general environment that is very conducive to staying put. Even working from home takes no edge off the pleasure.
From a safe distance, we watch others sitting in traffic jams, sweltering in airport lounges, regretting the Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-14734973247091490432011-04-21T23:48:00.003+01:002011-04-22T14:35:36.639+01:00SEPARATING the TWEET from the CHAFF
Three weeks ago, I disdained the social networking website Twitter, as I had done ever since I first heard tell of it. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in sensing that all it amounted to was Stephen Fry announcing that he was cutting his toenails in the bath and Victoria Beckham luxuriating in the ability to put 129 exclamation marks behind the words “Bin shoppin”.
Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-6215459960696167762011-04-08T18:41:00.003+01:002011-04-09T10:44:49.110+01:00TAKE THIS WOMAN
Thirty years ago, I was reviewing television for the weekly trade magazine Broadcast. My benign editor, Pattie Williams, gave me carte blanche to cover whatever I wanted and to arrange the material how it suited me. I soon fell into a pattern of pulling together all the recent dramas in one column, the last few weeks’ documentaries in another, then various current affairs Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-7943539975237689242011-04-03T23:35:00.013+01:002011-04-17T09:21:37.542+01:00I’LL GET MY COAT
Our lane expires in a T-junction with a main road. Before the coming of motorways, this road was the main arterial route to London. Despite the parallel motorway section a few miles to the north, which opened forty years ago this year, the old A road remains busy; indeed its use has discernibly increased in the thirteen years that we have lived here. Just by the turn into ourCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-36080236190382876672011-03-30T22:47:00.017+01:002011-03-31T19:13:20.663+01:00ALL VERY …There are elections in the UK on May 5th. As usual, some (but not all) local councils in England will be contested but this year there are other far-reaching ballots: for the whole of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, plus a referendum across the UK on the voting system for the Westminster parliament, to which members are elected from Northern Ireland, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-83184665526657986212011-03-25T19:03:00.018Z2011-03-30T09:55:15.605+01:00A LASS UNPARALLELEDHere are two stories about Elizabeth Taylor. (How hard it is really to think of her as Dame Elizabeth; much harder than Dame Julie Andrews, Dame Shirley Bassey or Dame Dorothy Tutin, all honoured in the same millennial list). Both these anecdotes date from my own school days. Do bear with me; they are indeed eventually about Elizabeth Taylor.They knew how to do posters in Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-6447020433945574992011-03-19T20:55:00.016Z2011-03-19T22:01:15.804ZLIBYA – RATION the RHETORICYesterday, on the eighth anniversary of the Commons vote in favour of the illegal invasion of Iraq, David Cameron laid before parliament the rationale for the United Nations’ resolution to impose a so-called no-fly zone on Libya. From the moral high ground on which Cameron plants his feet, the issue is so very simple. Gaddafi is a bad man and he must be taught a Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-70958245141546009862011-03-17T18:32:00.015Z2011-03-17T20:20:13.406ZNUCLEAR and PRESENT DANGERLike most everybody, I could write what I know about nuclear power and nuclear fuel on the back of a postage stamp. What I do know – or think I know – is that last Friday’s earthquake off the coast of northern Japan and the tsunami that followed, catastrophic as both were, are in danger of being dwarfed by the incident developing at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Nobody Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-29163785432661310722011-03-07T12:07:00.023Z2011-03-07T17:11:50.351ZThe MOAT in HIS OWN EYEAt the weekend, The Sunday Times carried a report that the House of Lords Appointments Commission, the functions of which include vetting nominations for the peerage, rejected David Cameron’s submission of his old cabinet colleague Douglas Hogg. Intriguingly – though the paper did not mention this – the commission numbers among its members Cameron’s former mentor and his Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-30833378350384451022011-02-22T21:57:00.019Z2011-02-26T10:04:03.425ZPRIZE NITWITSIan McEwan duly accepted his Jerusalem Prize on Sunday. He had been widely criticised for electing to travel to Israel for the ceremony, but his decision to do so was also widely supported. As he said somewhat ruefully in his address, the argument was presented to him that “whatever I believed about literature, its nobility and reach, I couldn’t escape the politics of my decision [Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-82430354002304896502011-02-16T20:26:00.025Z2011-02-25T15:11:52.702ZCOAGULATION GOVERNMENTThe contradictions grow more evident with every passing day. The three most damaging charges successfully levelled by oppositions against British governments over the last half-century have concerned “u-turns”, “dither” and “sleaze”. David Cameron’s government has yet to be overwhelmed by sleaze and perhaps has been sufficiently energetic to avoid attracting many Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-47076281346182046632011-02-09T22:36:00.008Z2011-02-15T12:02:36.681ZHERE’s YOUR CLASSFor a quarter of a century, I interviewed writers, directors, actors and comedians for newspaper and magazine articles. My first victim was the dramatist Christopher Hampton, my last the director Robert Altman. Among many others in between were Henry Fonda, Max Wall, Beryl Reid, Hal Prince, Trevor Griffiths, Paul Scofield, George Burns, Alan Simpson & Ray Galton, Edward Bond, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-33957860324620314422011-02-02T17:06:00.009Z2011-02-02T17:25:42.124ZSHAN’T USE THE CHANTOOSE OBITThe great Margaret Whiting died on January 10th and I became exasperated waiting for The Guardian to notice this major loss so I submitted an unsolicited obituary last night. This was not quite as presumptuous as it might seem. I have written several obits for the paper in the past, both at their and at my own instigation. I was particularly stung into action Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-45300922436875676142011-01-27T22:42:00.028Z2011-01-28T11:31:26.778ZRATIONAL PHOBIASAm I an Islamophobe? A phobia, according to the OED, is “a fear, horror, strong dislike, or aversion; esp. an extreme or irrational fear or dread aroused by a particular object or circumstance”. Well, I certainly possess a fear, horror, strong dislike and aversion to the expressions of Islam that are routinely made in Britain and across the world and I probably experience an Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-56076406986853964742011-01-21T19:03:00.012Z2011-01-21T19:32:25.152ZUNLOOKED-FOR PROMOTIONSI’m truly sad that Alan Johnson felt the need to leave front-line politics. This was done, as some outlets are beginning to explore in lip-smacking detail, in order for him to try to save his marriage. I hope that, if and when he sorts that out, he can return. Johnson is too likeable and reliable a man to be spared.At least his departure was unforeseen, is not the resultCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-19804642036080337132011-01-14T17:54:00.014Z2011-01-15T14:30:46.470ZOLD and SADI offer a few thoughts on the Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election, which Labour held with 14,718 votes (42.1%) against the Lib Dems with 11,160 (31.9%) and the Tories on 4,481 (12.8%). Phil Woolas’ narrow win at the general election – by 103 votes – was nullified by the court to which defeated Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins appealed, alleging that a Labour leaflet libelled him. Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-90856068223774014162011-01-11T16:34:00.017Z2011-01-11T17:42:10.231ZGUN CRAZY II: WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUNDIn my previous posting, I noted that Republicans and Tea Partiers were reacting to the Tucson shooting by accusing anyone who questions the resurgent right’s virulent rhetoric of (to use the British term) “playing politics”. I shouldn’t want to understate the case. Here’s Tea Party spokesperson Mark Meckler in a telephone interview with The Daily BeastCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-50742002779746937462011-01-09T23:42:00.023Z2011-01-12T09:45:35.980ZGUN CRAZYIt tells you everything you need to know about Sarah Palin when you learn that it was only after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday that one of Palin’s websites took down its graphic wherein the states of a number of progressive American politicians (including Giffords) were portrayed in the crosshairs of the sights of a rifle. AnyCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-60762034842142993282010-12-30T23:48:00.014Z2010-12-31T00:29:01.826ZDROPPING BYRecently Google published its annual survey of search criteria, which survey it is pleased to call Zeitgeist. Hardly any of the names featured on the list means anything to me, so I am clearly well outside the zeitgeist. I suspect, though, that, unlike me, most of those who have sought the persons on the list never have cause to use the term zeitgeist in any other context (unless, ofCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-55279601592513344522010-12-20T00:54:00.022Z2011-01-10T14:39:38.517ZLYING FALLOWA couple of postings ago (‘Messenger Shooting’ December 5th), I mentioned an unpublished letter that I had sent to The Guardian in response to David Hare’s “hymn of praise” (as I called it) for Simon Callow, who frequently reviews theatre-related books for the paper. Sir David’s review of – or rather disquisition upon – Callow’s collected occasional pieces along with a new biographyCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-72067284139042073172010-12-11T20:33:00.018Z2010-12-11T21:39:00.790ZSTUDY in DEBTMy own university studies, taken up in the late 1960s, were not wholly a gift from the nation. My generation received student grants but these were means-tested and my father, being relatively comfortable, was obliged to contribute financially to the cost of my further education. Bless him, he never troubled me with knowing at what level he continued to subsidise me even as, for aCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-74457116038754487052010-12-05T18:42:00.011Z2010-12-06T14:30:32.601ZMESSENGER SHOOTINGOn Friday, that nicely assorted pair Jean-Luc Godard and Andy Williams both turned 80. In these straitened times, do you think they combined their celebrations?On the BBC1 10 o’Clock News on Thursday, the sports editor David Bond posed, by my reckoning, five “big questions” concerning the failed bid to bring the football World Cup to England in 2018. There’s only one question Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-11701940880866249562010-11-24T20:12:00.017Z2010-11-24T20:54:18.992ZIF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED …“A majority of the British public believes Prince William would make a better king than the Prince of Wales,” announced The Sunday Times at the weekend. “Most people also think Prince Charles should stand aside for his son”.Charles' christening during the previous reign: with his mum, grandad and great-grandmamaThis is a prime example of what the Irish call “the Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-43837037091908172752010-11-20T19:26:00.019Z2010-11-20T20:36:07.679ZAH, THOSE REVOLTING STUDENTSI come belatedly to the matter of the anti-tuition-fee demonstration, having passed a very busy and rather fraught ten days absorbed in other matters. Expressions of common sense, I maintain, know no sell-by date, however. How depressingly familiar was the reaction to the generally rather heartening expression of defiance that was the raison d’être of this march. Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-32915974637743731962010-11-10T21:59:00.018Z2010-11-11T09:45:44.425ZPARTY HARMANYI find it hard to squeeze out many tears for the fate of Phil Woolas. The erstwhile MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth has been barred from elective public office for three years at a court hearing and banished to political outer darkness for rather longer than three years by the Labour leadership.Woolas has always struck me as a chancer, not someone whom I would admit to my Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-52574883244107735702010-11-03T20:29:00.017Z2010-11-04T10:33:52.804ZNOT EVERYONE STAYED for TEA“America can rise up and surmount [its] problems,” cried Rand Paul, newly elected Senator for Kentucky, “if we just get government out of our way”. And there you have the battle lines of American politics – and indeed of British politics – in a nutshell.Rand Paul is the son of Ron Paul who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Don’t discount Paul Jr Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-483869870273297532010-10-31T23:58:00.028Z2010-11-01T13:17:27.532Z“EVERYTHING THAT LIVES is HOLY
… life delights in life” declared William Blake in America. A little more than 200 years after he wrote those words, the only seriously holy item on earth is profit. Dozens of the orders of creature that lived holily on the planet in Blake’s day no longer exist. The dodo was the proverbial extinct bird in my childhood, but by now the dodo is just one of many Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-49618051358299994372010-10-21T20:21:00.011+01:002010-10-21T22:00:09.757+01:00The MOST UNKINDEST CUTS of ALLNow at last we know what the government intends for us and what its philosophy is: we’re all in it together but those already least likely to vote for the coalition are a whole lot deeper in it than the rest. George Osborne’s unleashing of toxic sludge into Britain’s hitherto relatively secure communities has been cunningly contrived. He and his fellow ministers, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-48868396496135374152010-10-13T19:43:00.018+01:002010-10-25T13:17:43.678+01:00ABSOLUTELY TYRANNOUSWhen I was a boy, the world was full of dictators. Joseph Stalin died in 1953 after having run the Soviet Union under his iron fist for thirty years following Lenin’s stroke in 1922. His successor (after a protracted power struggle) was the comedy character Nikita Khrushchev who was never taken seriously enough by the west to be seen as a dictator, save during the Cuban Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-33416790241033728432010-10-09T19:42:00.023+01:002010-10-25T19:05:55.750+01:00A RATHER SUSCEPTIBLE SHADOW CHANCELLOR?Alan Johnson as shadow Chancellor: hands up those who saw that coming. Not Johnson himself, evidently. He has no departmental background in economics, only (as many have been quick to point out) in spending. His genial joke – that his first move would be to “pick up a primer, Economics for Beginners” – was a heedless error that will come back to haunt theCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-88418182366390162742010-10-06T20:38:00.023+01:002010-10-25T19:17:48.714+01:00DRIVEN to DISTRACTIONMy partner and I watch almost no sport on television – none at all in situ – and he takes no interest whatever in print coverage of it, whereas I do look at results (mostly where they pertain to teams within the county in which I was raised) and sometimes read about the characters in sport – insofar as there are any characters – who find themselves in positions that can be Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-32379171234920793772010-09-28T19:23:00.014+01:002010-10-25T19:26:28.847+01:00A SHADOW of the MAN HE WASWe shall learn tomorrow afternoon whether David Miliband intends to serve on his brother’s shadow cabinet team or leave front-line politics, perhaps for good. “Why would he not stand?” you ask. “Isn’t Ed begging him to do so?” Well, of course, Ed is bound to do so for form’s sake. But in many ways, it would make his task a lot clearer, if not necessarily a lot easierCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-7239634096715760182010-09-26T23:59:00.012+01:002010-09-28T19:22:58.953+01:00UNEASY LIES the ED that WEARS the CROWNBarely has he been Labour leader for five minutes and the Cassandras of the commentariat are writing his political obituary. Ed Miliband must be fed up with the media already, let alone with the Tory Party. The soubriquet ‘Red Ed’ – as though Dave Nellist had returned to the House after a long and thorough fanshen under the combined tutelage of Derek Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-67391941468794260382010-09-22T00:45:00.015+01:002010-10-26T19:20:38.957+01:00HOLY JOEThe state visit of Joseph Ratzinger to Britain has prompted in me some further reflection on religion, just as any Pope worth his salt would hope. The major theme his holiness developed while here was the danger of “aggressive secularism” overtaking these islands. I do not think it unreasonable to suggest that the deliverance of such a critical assessment strays beyond the purview of Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-63296718877677902592010-09-17T21:52:00.016+01:002010-10-26T19:42:18.281+01:00NO PIPE of PEACE for the TEA PI worry about the Democrats. The conventional wisdom in the party right now is that the continuing and seemingly irresistible invasion of the Republicans by outsiders backed by the so-called Tea Party in general and Sarah Palin in particular is in fact good for the Obama administration. How so? Because, Democrats argue, these “extremists” will repel mainstream Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-43525571647512303682010-09-11T23:17:00.016+01:002010-10-21T12:30:13.134+01:00LIFESTYLES of the POOR and INFAMOUS“Divide and rule” was ever the default position of Tories wielding power and George Osborne the Chancellor has wasted no time in invoking its methodology to drum up support for the dreaded Spending Review that is now only five and a half weeks hence. What he required for the role of scapegoat was a sector of the community that has little spending power, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-67844316922636443622010-09-05T22:45:00.020+01:002010-09-06T22:01:03.391+01:00SMEAR STUDIESI make no apology for returning to the matter of William Hague and the famous “gay rumours”. Last weekend, I was one of the bloggers to reveal that the unnamed cabinet minister, whose sexuality (according to the lead story in The Daily Telegraph) was being questioned in the blogosphere, was indeed the Foreign Secretary. In the eight days since, the story has developed in quite Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-85034493979537888912010-08-28T20:06:00.014+01:002010-08-29T16:24:32.757+01:00DON’T BE VAGUE …Is it a libel if one describes a person as gay when he or she is not so? If it is indeed libellous, why would it be so? Homosexuality is not against the law in Britain, so long as it is between consenting adults in private. In what would consist the libel? Is being gay a stigma in the eyes of the law, even though it is not illegal?And are there degrees of liability in such a Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-75284573621985632752010-08-24T19:23:00.018+01:002010-08-25T11:21:04.739+01:00UNEASILY LEDA month tomorrow, we shall learn the result of the ballot for leadership of the Labour Party. The consensus among observers has been and remains that the winner, probably in the first vote, certainly after subsequent rounds when runners-up are progressively eliminated, will be David Miliband. The only rival thought to have a chance of upsetting that coronation is Miliband’s younger Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-6517691176799837532010-08-21T00:00:00.028+01:002011-03-25T14:23:06.732ZThe UNI CYCLETwo events this week – the annual ritual of ‘A’ level results and the death of my old professor – have taken my mind back to my own fraught days of trying to get into and then surviving at university. By the by, we never used the horrid term “uni” in those days. We were most apt to say “college”. I recall a pair of elderly and very proper maiden sisters, the Misses Parsons, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-81976194615931472352010-08-17T23:51:00.022+01:002010-08-18T15:06:12.308+01:00CONDEMMEDA hundred days of coalition government. Have you had enough yet?It occurs to me that we get the worst of all worlds by having the Liberal Democrats shacked up with the Tories and pretending that everything’s entirely civilised and efficient. Had the Lib Dems thrown in their lot with Labour, even with the asking price that Gordon Brown stand down, there would have been considerably moreCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-82873223869583029352010-08-10T21:39:00.015+01:002010-08-11T11:18:48.866+01:00DIAMONDS are a GIRL’s BEST FRIEND at COURT“A cheap publicity stunt” Courtenay Griffiths the defence counsel called it and you saw what he meant. He was referring to the prosecution gambit in the war crimes trial of the former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, a gambit that has brought the trial headline news and top bulletin story status all around the world for the first time in its three Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-31476217594004534832010-08-05T17:46:00.017+01:002010-08-05T18:57:15.582+01:00A BEAUTIFUL CORPSELe tout Belfast turned out for Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins on Monday. The snooker player was found dead in his sheltered accommodation, aged 61. It was the biggest funeral in the city since that of five years ago for another self-destroyer, George Best, then two years younger than Higgins.The Higgins funeral, an understated affairI use the term “self-destroyer” advisedly. Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-10589606337740537582010-07-21T23:20:00.025+01:002010-10-27T09:54:59.655+01:00A CONTINENT DARKENED by PREJUDICEI caught up with a recent contribution to the Channel 4 documentary strand, Dispatches. The film was called Africa’s Last Taboo and it may still be accessed, but not for much longer, at www.channel4.com/program#374C56 so do not delay. In the programme, which was filmed, produced and directed by Robin Barnwell for Insight News TV, African-born Sorious Samura Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-76859175412813643762010-07-12T02:00:00.010+01:002010-08-11T11:09:49.880+01:00YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES ARE UPRaoul Moat: it’s a name for a character in a comic novel, isn’t it. Perhaps one by David Lodge or Tom Sharpe. Come to that, so is Derrick Bird, especially spelt that way. Well, perhaps not now.I tended to avoid coverage of Moat’s week on the lam in Northumberland, as far as I could. So I don’t know whether commentators were drawing clever parallels with Derrick BirdCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-59037041917766018562010-07-07T11:18:00.011+01:002010-07-07T13:10:04.058+01:00GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSSOn June 9th, I sent a bunch of policy proposals to the five candidates for leadership of the Labour Party. I declared in my covering letter that "I represent no lobby, faction or interest but myself. I am not even a member of the Party but I have long supported it at the ballot box and I always wish it well". I made brief quotes from each of the candidates' statementsCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-13811042722277525722010-06-30T18:26:00.008+01:002010-11-07T01:47:48.220ZNEVER UNKNOWINGLY RUDEI have gravely offended a friend. That is, of course, if I am permitted still to use the term “friend” in relation to him. I was “rude”, it seems. He has told me this often enough for me to accept that this must be his settled conviction. I don’t think I’ve been rude at all. Like all things, this particular fracas has to be seen in context. I will try to give a flavourCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-67390109325818361622010-06-29T00:07:00.014+01:002010-06-29T00:38:09.720+01:00WHAT ABAHT the STRIKERS?!I know precious little of football. I didn’t watch any of the World Cup matches. Had I been caught up in the tournament, I am sure I would have followed the South American teams, who seem to exhibit a flair for and relish in the game always singularly lacking in the English and apparently in some of the other European sides this time too.Tevez scored for Argentina Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-33691566598408320762010-06-18T20:00:00.020+01:002010-06-19T20:29:18.701+01:00HERE COMES EVERYBODYTony, my best friend at school and my earliest writing partner, left a year before I did to study English and drama at Birmingham University, a good move as it transpired. I stayed on an extra year to do scholarship entrance to Cambridge, in vain as it turned out, but that’s a tale for another day.One weekend, Tony rolled up in his battered old jalopy, flourishing two ticketsCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-52504080544379828882010-06-10T19:26:00.009+01:002010-06-10T19:43:29.735+01:00GETTING ONE’s KICKS ELSEWHEREPerplexingly, thousands of people seem to be travelling around the country promoting syphilis …Like many others, I greeted the end of another season of football last month with relief but now I discover that we are in for even more of the wretched stuff than ever from this weekend onwards and, if the team representing England manage to progress past the first rubber, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-45440860686931464032010-06-01T23:56:00.001+01:002010-06-01T23:56:57.688+01:00I've just signed this petition at Avaaz.org: "We call for an immediate, independent investigation into the flotilla assault, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade." Please join me in signing here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_flotilla_3/96.phpCommon Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-2083832993628304102010-05-31T19:54:00.012+01:002010-05-31T22:21:27.832+01:00RULES BROKEN – LAWS FAR from BROKEIs there anything more purely enjoyable than a political scandal in a party that you don’t support? And who would have guessed that such a scandal would break this soon into the life of the Con-Dem coalition government? Brave face though he may put on it, the David Laws humiliation is a disaster for David Cameron. The grumbling on the Tory benches, already Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-65452011488298390102010-05-29T20:23:00.015+01:002010-05-29T21:09:22.232+01:00CRITICAL CONDITIONSBack in the day (as the fashionable phrase has it), I really craved a berth as a full-time critic on a national newspaper. During more than thirty years of journalism, I wrote quite a lot of reviews across what I reckoned were my three areas of expertise: theatre, film and television (I wrote about the odd book too). Most of these pieces appeared in magazines but now and Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-37318779398301235782010-05-21T12:36:00.003+01:002010-05-21T13:09:52.924+01:00The ODDS COUPLEI had intended to entertain my readers with intelligence of the odds that William Hill are offering against a collapse of the Con-Dem coalition within six months but alas, the leading name in gambling both on and off line shows no interest in responding to my queries, either by email or by phone. I am no betting man myself but I imagined (perhaps over-stimulated by the musical Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-10586356702582774212010-05-12T23:36:00.008+01:002010-05-12T23:54:08.400+01:00CABINET in the SKYA few quick musings on the new cabinet. After having a really atrocious election, fluffing and blustering through interviews on subjects she did not grasp, Theresa May is the new Home Secretary, far higher up the ranks than she ever was in opposition. There’s only one explanation and that is Cameron’s dire shortage of women in his new team, even fewer than Gordon Brown had. Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-81547494019242787262010-05-12T17:25:00.001+01:002010-05-12T17:43:40.825+01:00COITION GOVERNMENT or WHO GETS SHAFTED?The Cameron/Clegg era has begun. One day – possibly one day quite soon – we shall look back on that first joint press conference and laugh. The instant commentaries were largely favourable, citing the relaxed demeanour, the assumed mutual respect, the body language. Even the fact of the session being in the Downing Street garden excited comment but hey, Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-44410341699457034572010-05-11T13:43:00.007+01:002010-05-11T14:00:01.452+01:00PERSONATION is a CRIMEYesterday on The World at One, Martha Kearney interviewed the new Liberal Democrat MP for St Austell and Newquay. She said his name was Stephen Gilbert. I object, your honour. Nobody is permitted to pass himself off as me. On Wikipedia, I find that this person calls himself Steve Gilbert. He has traded in both of these brands for 29 years fewer than have I. And the Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-74737438394368312342010-05-10T22:51:00.009+01:002010-05-10T23:12:33.728+01:00STORMY WEATHERThe fabulous LenaLena Horne was a really fabulous star. Forthright and fearless in her statements and views – she was blacklisted for a time – as well as in her delivery of a number, she was the equal of any of the great twentieth-century purveyors of what is sometimes called the standard repertoire. She could croon a smoochy ballad or suffer through a torch song with the best of Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-85502221134184845552010-05-07T20:10:00.010+01:002010-05-08T15:00:34.156+01:00JUDGING by RESULTSGiven the bad odour into which politics and politicians have fallen over recent months, inducing among swathes of the public a feeling of “a plague on all your houses”, it is neither surprising nor inappropriate that the general election results should disappoint everyone. Everyone, that is, except Naomi Long of the Alliance Party in Belfast East whose 23 percent swing kicked Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-51599270292962668322010-05-06T12:47:00.003+01:002010-05-07T20:41:42.933+01:00The X MANWe did our civic duty at around 11.30 this morning. For the occasion, I wore the cap brought back from China for me many years ago by an old documentary-maker friend, a proper party cap in navy blue with a red star pinned to it. The only remark it drew was from our neighbour to whom I offered my prepared answer that I was going to vote for the local Maoist candidate. He said that was Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-21722432441705475962010-05-05T02:06:00.019+01:002010-05-11T23:21:51.245+01:00HISTORY BOYSOn a recent trip to London, I caught up with some friends, some movies and some theatre. What dictated the timing of the visit was the very short run at Sadler’s Wells of the remounting of the Rufus Wainwright opera, Prima Donna. A fellow Rufus fan and I booked for it, having agreed that we were not influenced by the bad reviews the show had received at its world premiere in Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37259763.post-41895136031751494182010-04-29T18:41:00.012+01:002010-04-29T19:05:28.382+01:00DUFFIED UPWhat an astonishing and misdirected fuss. Gordon Brown, boldly canvassing on the streets of the Lib Dem-held marginal of Rochdale, is caught up in a conversation with Mrs Gillian Duffy who, the press informs us, is a “granny” and a “pensioner” as well as a life-long Labour supporter. It seems a genial enough encounter, at the end of which Mrs Duffy takes Brown’s hand in both of hers.Common Sensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17679494921224305443noreply@blogger.com1