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Jack’s Blog

  • Simone Signoret: Smoker

    I was struck by a photograph of Simone Signoret by Jane Bown in the Observer this morning. She reminded me of my Auntie Eva at a particular point in her life. Signoret is smoking. She is not smoking in a post-modern way. The cigarette is planted sternly between her lips, firm, part of her face.… Know More

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  • Four legs good, two legs better

    Watching a satirical programme the other night about Britain’s new anti-terror and public order laws brought home to me how insidiously they creep into the legislation. It is as if the Government is trying to validate the whole premise of George Orwell’s 1984, voted this week as the book that best sums up the last… Know More

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  • Invasion of the body snatchers

    In the first decades of my lifespan people listened to the wireless and went to films. Also, they read books. Certainly they gazed at art. And then they became enraptured by the early days of television. Even at that point, it did not change much. What? Oh, sorry! The distance. The distance was that palpable membrane… Know More

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  • Are you playing my Toon?

    It is with mixed feelings I hear that the team I have supported for some fifty five years has become the fetish-object of a billionaire. They run pro and con like this: Pros Freddy Shepherd will sink, like the R101, below our radar for ever with his personal greed, appalling acumen, crude sensibilities and continual… Know More

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  • Sunday Punk

    Sundays for me follow a pattern established through the years – at least when I am in England. In France (two weeks each month) I buy the Observer (if available). Here, I take the Sunday Times as well, probably under some misguided notion that my objectivity is increased by placing the acetate of the Right… Know More

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  • Arms and God

    The Right to bear arms Does this distinguish the liberal from the fundamentalist United States’ citizen? Guns help define its society inside and its foreign policy outside. Together with an interpretation of God’s will. The right to bear arms Does this distinguish the democratic from the fundamentalist Muslim state? Is this what body politic means?… Know More

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  • Bryan Ferry: Art Lover

    It is always a shock to find your idol has feet of clay – or, in this case, fascist toes in a pool of slime. Not that Ferry was ever a real favourite of mine but he first came to notice when I was in my early twenties and he was from the same place… Know More

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  • Plenty more where they came from

    William Blake invoked us, in his Auguries of Innocence To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Blake also said that he could see the world by going no further than the bottom of his garden. Our understanding of the infinite has probably always been massaged by meditation… Know More

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  • Big Brother

    The phrase ‘locus of control’ stems from a mix of jargons from psychology and sociology. It seeks to position, on a spectrum, the degree to which any individual is constrained by others, in his or her behaviour. This spectrum stretches from being personally responsible for all aspects of your own behaviour at one end and… Know More

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  • Saying Sorry for the Slave Trade

    For an insightful and perturbing thesis on the human condition you could do worse than read John Gray’s book, ‘Straw Dogs’. His views about our species are not very complimentary for those believing in human progress. We are the most pernicious animal that ever spawned itself across the face of the earth. Our cruelty knows… Know More

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