Category: Society and Social Issues
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The words we use
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2017.] Good. Bad. These are two words that have come back into public language recently. Unfortunately, they are words which express the extremes of a moral spectrum and have been returned to politics via the snarling mouth of US liar-in-chief Donald Trump. I have…
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The Trump show
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2017.] There is really only one news story over the last months: the start of Donald Trump’s regime. Before the end of last year I said on Matthew Tree’s TV discussion program that one of the main reasons Trump was elected was…
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“Cohencentric” [On the life and work of Leonard Cohen]
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2016.] Finishing a long biography of the long, long life of the singer/songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen, something occurred to me the other day. Here was a man who had toiled away on his work year after year, suffering from regular periods…
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Times in the balance
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2016.] Now that summer is here it is easy to ignore the wider world and only take in what we see through the sun’s glare at the beach or from the top of a shady mountain. Away from the ease of…
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Reaching out across the centuries (Shakespeare)
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2016.] One of the greatest things about Shakespeare – one of the things I love most about his writing – is his rare ability to have his characters speak for themselves but also somehow show a more universal state of mind. His fiction is…
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Conversus interruptus
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2015.] Selective semi-listening. Fading in and out of the conversation. Attention-divided syndrome. Texting while talking. Missing the point. Ignorance-bliss. Even not paying attention to your own words when you are the one speaking them. "Is that my mobile ringing?" “Were you just saying saying something…
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Where have all the sad and angry songs gone?
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2015.] I heard a French song on the radio the other day. It sounded like one of those lovely ballads from around the time of the Second World War and it had a melody and lyrics that were sung with just enough melancholy to…
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Hard to believe
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2015.] "Remember, little children are not too little to go hell." These are some of the words that are included in a new picture book published by a Puritan organisation in the United States last month. The book, whose title I choose…
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Easy on the eye
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2015.] Watching my son doing his geography homework the other day I was struck by how much time he was spending on selecting online images to accompany his (minimal) written work. This activity is now a big part of modern education which…
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Why go the public way? (Part two)
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2015.] When I was much younger my mother used to tell me that one day if I ever needed a pay raise I should just go and ask my boss for one. In the 1950’s when she was at work, before having my brothers…
Brett Hetherington 