The Leveson inquiry is developing as an ongoing saga of life in the political village.
Textual relations appear to connect just about everybody to just about everybody.
It seems more and more that the election that resulted in the emergence of the condem government was as close to a Putsch as we are likely to see in what up until now has appeared to be a democratic country.
I guess the flaw was that it was intended to to result in a con government and the dem bit was an unfortunate necessity if Mr Brown was to be evicted from Downing Street.
So whilst Mr Cameron was the chosen one he rather let the side down by failing to actually win the election even with the support of his friends in the newspapers who it seems were using the phrase 'all in it together' long before it was used to describe the policies brought forward by Mr Osborne.
Now it seems that those who support the con bit of the coalition against the dem bit are beginning to argue that the Government is beginning to look a bit, well ... left wing really.
The cuts are not deep enough apparently, there is still to much namby-pamby, soft-centred, left wing deferring to those who need a bit of social support.
A recent article in The Times demanded shrinking the welfare state further, raising the age of retirement so that pensions only get paid for six months, stripping the NHS of all its activities apart from A&E and Maternity services and leaving Europe to Johnny Foreigner who will still depend on us to buy their BMW's and Audis .....
Barking really, but there you have it, News International no longer reports the News it makes it or as some might say, makes it up.
I spent the weekend at New Lanark at a Co-op Day School.
The bad news was that I had no signal, no wi-fi and therefore no access to facebook, twitter, email etc for 24 hours.
There were definite withdrawal signals, evident by the end of the first day.
And the joy I experienced as I drove up out of the Clyde Valley to the siren sounds of my 'phone beeping to announce that I had messages, was quite wonderful.
I invoked the spirit of Steve Jobs and gave thanks for connectivity.
But the good news was a different kind of connectivity altogether.
As you wander around New Lanark the site is decorated with quotations from Robert Owen.
A man who believed that treating people with respect and dignity, offering education and fair trade in his village shop, establishing the first workplace nursery in the world, offering warm. comfortable houses for his workers to live in, each with the small garden where they could grow wholesome food, was a way not only of improving the conditions for working people but of making the world a better fairer place.
As Owen expressed it an a speech he made when he opened the Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark on New Year's day 1816:
'I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundred fold: and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal'
Owen was an idealist and he put his ideals into practice at New Lanark, now a world heritage site, around the site placards carry quotations from Owen on subjects as varied as the importance of education, health, fair rewards for work, the upbringing and education of children and care of the elderly.
In the work place, in the school, in the Adult Education Centre and in the care of the community as a whole, Owen rehearsed the axiom that:
'it is in the interest of all, that everyone, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, that everyone should be placed in the midst at those external circumstances, that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life'
It seems that from 1816 inspired by Owen and other social reformers up to and including Beveridge we made progress to a better and more enlightened world.
But now we are moving backwards to a darker and more dangerous place in which happiness is afforded only to those who inhabit the exclusive world of privilege, a world in which they and only they, are in together .
Textual relations appear to connect just about everybody to just about everybody.
It seems more and more that the election that resulted in the emergence of the condem government was as close to a Putsch as we are likely to see in what up until now has appeared to be a democratic country.
I guess the flaw was that it was intended to to result in a con government and the dem bit was an unfortunate necessity if Mr Brown was to be evicted from Downing Street.
So whilst Mr Cameron was the chosen one he rather let the side down by failing to actually win the election even with the support of his friends in the newspapers who it seems were using the phrase 'all in it together' long before it was used to describe the policies brought forward by Mr Osborne.
Now it seems that those who support the con bit of the coalition against the dem bit are beginning to argue that the Government is beginning to look a bit, well ... left wing really.
The cuts are not deep enough apparently, there is still to much namby-pamby, soft-centred, left wing deferring to those who need a bit of social support.
A recent article in The Times demanded shrinking the welfare state further, raising the age of retirement so that pensions only get paid for six months, stripping the NHS of all its activities apart from A&E and Maternity services and leaving Europe to Johnny Foreigner who will still depend on us to buy their BMW's and Audis .....
Barking really, but there you have it, News International no longer reports the News it makes it or as some might say, makes it up.
I spent the weekend at New Lanark at a Co-op Day School.
The bad news was that I had no signal, no wi-fi and therefore no access to facebook, twitter, email etc for 24 hours.
There were definite withdrawal signals, evident by the end of the first day.
And the joy I experienced as I drove up out of the Clyde Valley to the siren sounds of my 'phone beeping to announce that I had messages, was quite wonderful.
I invoked the spirit of Steve Jobs and gave thanks for connectivity.
But the good news was a different kind of connectivity altogether.
As you wander around New Lanark the site is decorated with quotations from Robert Owen.
A man who believed that treating people with respect and dignity, offering education and fair trade in his village shop, establishing the first workplace nursery in the world, offering warm. comfortable houses for his workers to live in, each with the small garden where they could grow wholesome food, was a way not only of improving the conditions for working people but of making the world a better fairer place.
As Owen expressed it an a speech he made when he opened the Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark on New Year's day 1816:
'I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundred fold: and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal'
Owen was an idealist and he put his ideals into practice at New Lanark, now a world heritage site, around the site placards carry quotations from Owen on subjects as varied as the importance of education, health, fair rewards for work, the upbringing and education of children and care of the elderly.
In the work place, in the school, in the Adult Education Centre and in the care of the community as a whole, Owen rehearsed the axiom that:
'it is in the interest of all, that everyone, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, that everyone should be placed in the midst at those external circumstances, that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life'
It seems that from 1816 inspired by Owen and other social reformers up to and including Beveridge we made progress to a better and more enlightened world.
But now we are moving backwards to a darker and more dangerous place in which happiness is afforded only to those who inhabit the exclusive world of privilege, a world in which they and only they, are in together .
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