E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

what happens when the leader is a charismatic charlatan? I have been watching the dawning, infuriatingly slow wake-up call Covid-19 has been for many Americans these past few weeks... as the Washington Post editorial goes, this pandemic will strip the United States of any pretence to normalcy or capability. Trump is one man, but he represents something the land of the free has indulged for decades now - a willingness to ignore science, fact, and reality, for pure partisan ideology and bias. This emotive, irrational and blind behaviour, aided and abetted by the right-wing, often religious TV and radio media and latterly, the amoral nihilistic Silicon valley companies, literally recreated a biblical-level-event Babel. Since America is ludicrously rich and powerful, it has had much capital to spend, even waste. But it has been too intellectually and morally profligate, and now has a gutted and aberrant leadership, unable to form coherent, rational plans, and project determi...

A week or so after a startling election, which culminated in the collapse of Ms May's hubristic intentions for a hard Brexit, and ushered in a new, smiling, roseate Corbyn , PM in waiting, The Grenfell Towers inferno has struck London, and the UK, into a state of numbed horror. In the richest borough in all of the UK, it seems impossible that a 24-storey building with hundreds of families in it could, after one fridge caught fire, become entirely engulfed in flame like a roman candle within minutes. Anyone who has seen the footage will recognise instantly that this sort of disaster just isn't supposed to happen in a wealthy, industrialised nation anymore, one with fire safety laws - but somehow, cruelly and tellingly, the poorer members of UK society were ignored, their needs shelved, their reports and messages binned, and their homes made into a death-trap. If faulty cladding or improper safety measures are the fault, as appears likely, then this will be a case of manslaughte...