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Author Archives: Stephen Shellard
The consensus amongst poets….”We’re stuffed!”
“we’re stuffed: I can’t really see a way out of this, there are too many interested parties who have no appetite or incentive for taking their foot of the gas.” — Simon Armitage Continue reading
Posted in Environmental
Tagged "Extinction Rebellion, "Kate Andrews", "Simon Armitage", "Simon Stevens", climate, Monbiot, Poetry, Theatre, Thunberg
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The conversations that just can’t get started
“This story is fundamental to McCann’s thesis that it is the lack of such face to face encounters which is holding change back in Northern Ireland. He engagingly explores the reasons why such conversations are difficult and how they may actually take place” Continue reading
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Tagged "Equal Marriage", abortion, DUP, LGBT, sectarianism, Ulster
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O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us ….
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie usTo see oursels as ithers see us!It wad frae mony a blunder free us,An’ foolish notion:What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,An’ ev’n devotion! From: “To A Louse, On Seeing One … Continue reading
Solid Ground
Sometime during the 1980s, I was lucky enough to hear Dougie MacLean perform at the Dumfries Folk Club, in the rather unglamorous setting of the Cairndale Hotel, ….audience, I am guessing, less than a hundred. I was impressed. I don’t … Continue reading
Not enough pride in Charlie Pride…
Country is a genre dominated by white musicians and rooted in the communities of the deep south where, as Charlie Pride’s career was just starting off, segregation was still openly defended and the old attitudes of prejudice still lingered. Somehow Charlie Pride navigated these alligator swamps without anger, or bitterness. Continue reading
The programme I’d most like Donald Trump to watch.
I am sure that many of us have our own ideas of a particular argument or situation which might prise open the US President’s weird and insular view of the World. He’s currently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, … Continue reading
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Tagged "Chris Packham", "Horizon", climate, habitat, population
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How Many Political Parties do we Really Need?
“One of the few advantages of the First Past the Post [FPTP] electoral system is that it simplifies the choices set before the electorate by the rather brutal device of limiting the number of parties which have any meaningful chance of winning seats. A proportional system inevitably brings more marginal parties into contention for seats and so has the opposite tendency. ” Continue reading
Posted in Comment, Electoral Reform
Tagged "Political Parties", electoral reform, FPTP, PR
2 Comments
Reading the Entrails of the Election
Tony Blair has been prominent in the voices of those seeking to divine the meaning of the 2019 election, dismissing Labour’s current incarnation as “a brand of quasi-revolutionary socialism [that] never has appealed to traditional Labour voters….The takeover of the … Continue reading
Posted in Brexit
Tagged "Dominic Cummings", "Labour Party", "Tony Blair", electoral reform, SNP
4 Comments
Leadership in the 2019 Election: the Good, the Bad and the Indifferent
Let me start by putting in a word for Nicola Sturgeon. Were she to concede to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom she would probably make a better hand at the job than the other candidates on offer. Once … Continue reading
Carruchan 
Correlation and Common Sense
” To establish that someone was in the room at the time of the murder does not, it must be admitted, prove that they committed the crime; but it certainly makes them a suspect.” Continue reading →