Category: Society and Social Issues
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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…
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Why go the public way? (Part one)
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2015.] If tomorrow the government for some reason disappeared and we were all left without a system of state would it in fact be such a bad thing? There are people across the planet (and especially in the USA) who say that anarchy or…
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The best of times?
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2014.] Has there ever been a better time to be alive in the history of our tortured, super-intelligent species? At the press of a few buttons we have virtually all the accumulated knowledge of the last several hundred (or is it thousand?) years…
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When government is sport
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2014.] I don’t often think about Australia. I was born there, grew up there and, until 15 years ago, I lived there. It’s almost become a (very) foreign country to me but recently it has crept into my thoughts again. This remaining ember…
Brett Hetherington 