Should children take term time holidays?

Something has changed and that appears to be an increased desire to choose what is best for ourselves with scant regard for what is best for the wider community as a whole. And this seems equally true of too many left-leaning middle class parents who join the chorus decrying selfish individualism and advocating collective solidarity, even while taking off on their mid-term holiday.

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The few and the many

When asking whether inequality is unfair, we have perhaps too often made the mistake of asking whether it is unfair in and of itself. A better question is to ask whether the inequality we see is the inevitable result of a fair economic and political system. The answer to that appears to be no. But even if it were, we have more good reasons than ever to see rising inequality as representing a grave threat to our health and to the legitimacy of capitalist democracies.

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Do we need metaphors?

The whole point about metaphors is that some are much better than others. It makes sense to say the world shook when the Berlin Wall fell, not that it danced, slept or cooked. Nietzsche said concepts were “merely the residue of a metaphor” but there is nothing mere about it. Believing words to be metaphorical did not prevent him from choosing his very carefully indeed. We should do the same.

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