Things Unseen

'We're firmly in the grip of glorious delusions'. ... admitting you can learn to love them while acknowledging the delusions they foster

‘Obama promised “out of this darkness a brighter day will come”; it won’t, of course, because he won’t do anything about guns and the culture of his society which, like ours, is becoming ever more infantile.’ Image courtesy of esc.ape(d) via flickr.com ©©

Moral relativism of the worst kind: ‘lecturing others on human rights, while trying to escape responsibility for our abuse of them’.

‘Self-control used to be a virtue. Now it’s thought of as dysfunctional. If we don’t display our feelings, it’s assumed we don’t have any’. Image courtesy of Nick J Webb via flickr.com ©©

‘Our rubbish tells more about us than our art, and so it is with this ‘puerile tripe and mummy porn’ Image courtesy of crawford.I via flickr.com ©©

As its President accuses Britain of ‘naked colonialism’. This from a country of European immigrants ‘whose national policy has been to wipe out all trace of the people they snatched it from’. Image courtesy of ¡Que comunismo! via flickr.com ©©

David Cameron supports it, Nick Clegg says ‘when’ not ‘if’, the Churches worry about canon law and sin, and gays are split between ‘bring it on’ and ‘this is not the time’. Heat and light in our provocative and informative debate. Image courtesy of Guillaume Paumier via flickr.com ©©

‘leaving judgment, intellect, and common sense at the door, and Instead fitting in with the vacuous as they glorify the vacant’. Image courtesy of Damien Cugley via flickr.com ©©

.....’partly selfish, partly economic, but especially moral: it’s about justice, social solidarity, and incentivising virtue’ Image courtesy of IanVisits via flickr.com ©©

'It's one thing believing what is inherently unlikely, but what about believing something absolutely, obviously, and provably wrong?' Image courtesy of More Good Foundation via flickr.com ©©

Public busybodies delight in the depletion of our vocabulary and the policing of our thoughts. ‘It impoverishes us all’. Image courtesy of puuikibeach via flickr.com ©©

The King James Bible to every school ...’an empty gesture, potentially divisive, and a thinly-disguised attempt to tell teachers what to teach’. Image courtesy of bookchen via flickr.com ©©

‘In a healthy democracy, it’s every citizen’s right to be insulted... Freedom of speech is at stake here’ Image courtesy of Stephen Dagnall via flickr.com ©©

John Sweeney visits Ukraine to recall Stalin’s great famine with aged survivors, and to tell the story of two journalists – one who lied and won the Pulitzer, one who told the truth and was killed.

The pending Olympics are ‘an excuse for normalising the deployment of Action-men and women packing more heat than soldiers in Afghanistan’. [Image courtesy of Trojan631 via flickr.com ©©]

Our children are in danger, yes, but ‘from the jobsworth’s mindset, and from the rule book untempered by common sense’

‘I hate cigarettes, but as they’re legal people must be allowed to smoke them whether or not it hastens disease...’ Politicians should not intervene.

‘I often think that smug mums and dads will soon insist on pushchair lanes so that they don’t have to bother with us childless pavement pests’

The mother of the Yorkshire Ripper’s last victim discovered the police cannot be sued for negligence. 28 years later, the situation is the same. This is a scandal – not least for rape victims, who are often not believed.

The Berlin Wall, guarded for 28 years, saw many violent deaths and many ingenious escapes. Gerry Northam reports.