Back When Iran Looked “Normal”
Seventy years ago, Iran did not look like the villain in a Western action film. It had short skirts. Rock and roll. Universities full of women. Cafes. Newspapers. Arguments about politics that did not involve morality police vans.
It looked, inconveniently, like a country trying to modernise on its own terms. Then oil entered the chat. And oil never enters quietly.
The Man Who Touched the Wrong ...
I am old enough to remember water privatisation in the late 1980s. It was sold as modernisation. Crumbling Victorian infrastructure would be renewed. Efficiency would improve. And as a bonus, ordinary people could make a quick profit by buying shares.
Fishermen, rowers, surfers and nature lovers were worried. Banks, hedge funds and speculators were delighted. Most of the country shrugged and changed the channel, wondering what Den and Angie ...
Let me start here. I’m not a rabid anti-royalist. I’m not polishing a pitchfork or practising republican chants in the shower (although I do sing Billy Bragg’s ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ a fair bit). I understand the argument for a constitutional monarchy. I understand soft power. Tourism. Continuity. Pageantry. Hats.
Fine.
But it is 2026, not 1826. And if we are going to keep the Royal Family, surely it’s time we shrank ...
I don’t pretend to have the answers to this complex question. In fact, the older I get the more I realise how little I know about the “right” way to deal with people who’ve fallen headfirst into far-right cultism. People I used to like and respect are getting sucked into it. It’s fucking depressing.
I do know this: if enough people get radicalised, they could help drag the civilised world and democracy down with them. Then talking ...
I finally got round to watching the new BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies, and I’ll be honest, I went in expecting worthy, slightly heavy drama.
It is indeed heavy. But it’s also very well done.
Many of us did the book at school. Basically, a group of boys crash on an island, no adults, and at first they try to do things with some kind of democratic order. Elect a leader. Keep a fire going. Make some simple rules. Then it all slowly ...
