The Critical Commentator

                                                      Iran Llugwy in Flood , Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923) Photo Credit:St John's College, University of Oxford [CC BY-NC-ND] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has approved a request from President Rouhani to release about $2 billion in emergency funds to deal with the aftermath of flash floods that have killed at least 76, injured 1,000 and left two million people in need of aid. The Iranian Red Crescent said that it was the country’s worst disaster in 15 years. (AP) (The Times, 16.4.2019) Is the UK sending any aid to Iran? Doesn’t this country owe them over £400 million for a broken trade deal and isn't this part of the reason why Zaghari Ratcliffe is in prison there?                          ...

Health              The only exercise you ever get is jumping to conclusions. Meditation , Gustave Jean Jacquet (1846-1909) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Galler y [CC BY-NC-ND] * Mindfulness is a natural painkiller, research suggests. A study found the trendy meditation - favoured by the likes of Hollywood's resident 'health guru' Gwyneth Paltrow and pop sensation Katy Perry - is just as effective at easing discomfort as the go-to treatment cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Focusing the mind on the present moment is thought to help sufferers cope with their discomfort, which also improves their 'physical functioning' and reduces their risk of depression.   (The Daily Mail) Do you know what thought did?   It followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding. Social Care Maurice Henry Hewlett , James Kerr-Lawson (1864-1939) Photo Credit: National Portrait Gallery, London [CC BY-NC-ND] The social...

            Generalisations of the British press.   We’d all like to live longer. No we wouldn’t. Everyone’s talking about Maggie Smith’s return to the stage. (The Times, 2019)                     No we’re not. Why we all love Arnie Hammer. (The Times, 2019) No we don’t. Who is he? We love to binge on TV series . (The i, 2019) No we don’t. “In 2019 it is possible to construct entire lifestyles – entire identities – around the stuff we eat. You might think: “That’s not me! I don’t do that!” But the truth is that, to one degree or another, you probably do. Everyone does. From part-time vegans to kimchi fetishists to politicians who think that a trip to Nando’s is their “Ich bin ein Berliner” moment, we’re all guilty. The question is how guilty? Not guilty. Everyone does not construct entire lifestyles – entire identities – to one degree or another - around the stuff we eat. ...

                                         Nationwide Landscape with Houses , J. Anton  Photo Credit: Atkinson Art Gallery Collection [CC BY-NC-SA] A century ago the predecessor to today’s Nationwide building society was instrumental in building Letchworth, the first of Britain’s garden cities. Now the mutual society is going back to the future and is to start building homes again for the first time in a hundred years, in a revolutionary not-for-profit venture challenging the major housebuilders’ grip on the property market. The society is starting small. The project, called Oakfield, close to Nationwide’s headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire, is for 239 homes. It is aiming to build better – and bigger – homes as it has to cover just its costs, not squeeze out the 20% - plus margins that the big housebuilders usually expect. “Profit is not our driving factor. The value i...

                   Pushy Parents and Private Schools Ophelia , John Everett Millais (1829-1896) Photo Credit:Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] A former high mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School…has revealed the pressures she faced from stressed teenagers and mothers and fathers expecting daily progress reports in return for fees of over £25,000 a year. Clarissa Farr, who retired from St Paul’s in 2017 after 11 years in charge, recalled parents angry that their daughter had got into the “wrong” Oxbridge college and one teenager so distraught at getting an A at GCSEs alongside a clean sweep of A*s that she was found face down on the floor. The veteran head teacher’s book, The Making of Her , describes parents interfering as a result of their obsession with getting their children on a rung as far up the “league table ladder” as possible. She urges them to cling less to their children when they start secondary school and let them go. She sa...

                                              People Ralph Samuel, from Mumbai, plans to sue his parents for creating him without his consent. Cornfield with Figures , John MacWhirter (1839-1911) Photo Credit: Sandwell Museums Service Collection [CC BY-NC-SA]  “People should understand that they do not owe their parents anything, and that we should be maintained by them for the rest of our lives. They should pay us to live with them, and that’s why I am taking my parents to court, to sue them for giving birth to me.” His mother, Kavita Karnad Samuel responded that, “I must admire my son's temerity in wanting to take his parents to court, especially knowing that we are both lawyers. If I had met my son beforehand, I confess that I would not have given birth to him. But if he can offer a rational explanation as to how we could have obtained his consent t...

                                   Private Schools The Golden Stairs , Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] Any liberal, socially thoughtful person has qualms about private schools and the idea that the rich buy their children a head start, irrespective of intelligence and talent. Only 7 per cent are privately educated yet they dominate politics, finance, arts, media and elite sport.  …Three quarters of judges and a third of MPs were privately educated; top universities hardly get more than half their intake from ordinary schools. In power, after a brief run of state-educated leaders – Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher and Major – we slumped back to the patrician Macmillanesque past with Blair and Cameron. Now, more private-school alumni wait in the wings. …Some on the left prefer not to question the historic management of state schools, but instead blame ...

                                                   Legal Aid Justice, James Thornhill (1675/76-1734)  Photo Credit: City of London Corporation [CC BY-NC] Scotland Yard and other state bodies spent almost half a million pounds in public money on lawyers at the Westminster terrorist attack inquest while victims’ families were denied legal aid. The inquest was into the deaths of an unarmed police officer and four pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in March 17. The pedestrians were struck by Khalid Masood in a van and he then stabbed the officer to death outside the Houses of Parliament. …Now the sisters of PC Keith Palmer, the murdered policeman, have expressed their “utter shock and disbelief” that the state agencies involved spent almost half a million pounds in taxpayer money on legal fees. “It sends a clear message that the victims’ famil...