Category Archives: History

A former medical colleague was urging me recently to lobby my MP to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill. I’ve done my share of ethical lobbying in the past, even on the same subject, contributing to a series of parliamentary consultations as well as twisting the arm of my representative in the Commons. But I think my friend, like so many well-meaning people, has insufficiently realised how Parliament has, especially since the Blair government, changed from being the place where the common people’s views are represented, to the place where they are kept under control by the illusion of representation.

An article by Obaid Omer, whom I assume to be a “moderate Muslim,” writes rather bravely in Quillette that the problem we face with Islamic extremism is not “Islamism” but Islam itself.

My piece on the recent invention of teenage rebellion set me thinking about the related question of inheriting a traditional faith, versus the modern smörgåsbord of spiritual choices from satanism to shamanism, via the Salvation Army. Even a generation after Ginger Lawson, essentially my own teenage choice was whether to accept Christianity in some form, or not. Only a few years later did Eastern religion become a thing, and even considering Islam would have been absurd at that time. How different things are now!

I heard an interview with the Battle of Britain fighter ace Ginger Lacey the other day. Since it was recorded in the enlightened 1970s, the interviewer felt it mandatory to ask if Lacey had ever had doubts about the justness of the war, and consequently whether he had been troubled by strong emotions of hatred, or alternatively guilt, about shooting down and killing German airmen.