The Stars at Night: Music of the Spheres

HelloandwelcometoanotherepisodeofStarsatNightwithmePatrickMoore. ThethemefortonightsshowisTheMusicoftheSpheres. NowImmoreofaBeethovenfanmyself, butmyfirstguestthiseveningisrathernimblefingeredonthe-elec-tric-gui-tar, aswellasanaccomplishedastronomerandagoodfriend, Brian May HeLLO GLAS…tonbury….good to be here, Patrick. Not just a friend, You’re my best friend NowtheBBCinitsinfinitewisdom has decreed thatasaconditionofnotlaunchinganasteroidattheshow, wemusthavegreaterdiversity. SoIwouldliketowelcometotheshow, theresidentastrologerofthesun, The-Sun-news-paper that is, Mystic Meg It’s a blessing to be here, Patrick NowMeg – DoIcallyouMegorMystic – what do you make of the BBC’s decision to ban any… Continue reading The Stars at Night: Music of the Spheres

Review: False Alarm: How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor and fails to fix the planet.

Bjorn Lomborg (New York, NY: Basic books, 2020) For a long time, there has been no real centre ground politically on climate change: either you are a believer in green activism and its policy platform or a denier, it seems. This is nowhere more demonstrably seen than in the US, where stance on climate change… Continue reading Review: False Alarm: How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor and fails to fix the planet.

Do you have the right to be wrong? A defence of free inquiry

“If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.” (John Stuart Mill, ‘On Liberty’, 1859) “If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind… I should… Continue reading Do you have the right to be wrong? A defence of free inquiry

Lexicon for the Lockdown

Advisor – 1. Someone to give you advice from behind a plexiglass screen; 2. also, the type of facial covering that make you look like a bottled head. Antibacterial – a treatment for the complaint known as skin. Bugle smudger (see Mask) – The facial equivalent of the budgie smuggler; a device to render the… Continue reading Lexicon for the Lockdown

The spectre haunting the West: Marxism and the contagion of resentment

The spirit of resentment forms the dark heart of Marxism, its viral load, to pursue the analogy, and the dialectic its protective mechanism of transport. For Marxism to affect and infect its host, though, it must exploit its weaknesses. One vulnerability is clearly the existence of actual injustices in society, of which there is an endless supply. The other is the susceptibility of a proportion of the population with above average narcissistic tendencies. Though most people are narcissists to some degree, people with several traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder5 are highly susceptible to radical ideologies, not only leftist, but also far-right, Islamist, and animal rights and environmentalist extremism, for example.

Compassion and politics: a dangerous mix

Once, driving in a foreign land many years ago, I passed a person walking alone on a dark, unlit country road. As random, irrational violent thoughts cross all our minds from time to time, I had an unbidden image of attacking them. Instead of just dismissing the impulse through fear, anger or humour, as those… Continue reading Compassion and politics: a dangerous mix

Marriage in the Twenty First Century

In 2008 I authored a piece for an international organisation entitled ‘A Charter for Marriage: Reconsidering the Foundations of Marriage for Twenty First Century Secular and Multifaith Britain’. I saw it doing two things: first, finding a centre ground between the patriarchal cultures of Britain’s immigrant communities, who valued marriage as the centre of extended… Continue reading Marriage in the Twenty First Century