“UK plc” has become part of the ordinary lexicon. If anyone finds it objectionable, few say so. No one announced that from now on we should conceive of our country as a business, but gradually, imperceptibly, it became natural to do so. This is how so many cultural shifts happen. Ways of thinking mutate gradually, helped by changes in vocabulary that we accept without question.
ReadIn the Balkanised age of the internet, bands that most people have never heard of can fill arenas, and TV series on platforms most people don’t use can have audiences of millions. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto, shows that intellectuals can play that game too. His YouTube lectures — with titles such as “Identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege” — have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
ReadHistory is not only written by the winners, it’s carved and cast in their image, too. That’s why cold, hard lumps of stone and bronze have a remarkable capacity to fire the passions. Campaigns to erect statues or tear them down are part of a wider cultural conflict, as the latest skirmish clearly demonstrates.
ReadLittle of significance has changed since the scandal because the truth is that it was the almost inevitable consequence of a flawed food system, not just a failing of one small part of it. The nub of the problem is that farm produce is now more often a commodity sold on price than it is a product bought for its distinctive value.
ReadON PETER SINGER. I contributed to this selection of thoughts on books to open your eyes to inequality for the[…]
Read