I was talking with a friend about what counts as good writing and mentioned George Orwell’s much celebrated essay on ‘Politics of the English language’. In it Orwell argues writers should think carefully about the language they use as doing so not only produces clear, concise articles for others to read but also enables writers… Continue reading Orwell, Klemperer and language
Category: politics
Reporting Atrocity (3): Lidice Shall Live
10 June (the date of this post) is the anniversary of the Lidice massacre in what is now the Czech republic. If the previous two posts were about disinformation then in this case the facts are not denied. On 27 May 1942, members of the Czechoslovak resistance wounded Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi official in an ambush.… Continue reading Reporting Atrocity (3): Lidice Shall Live
Reporting Atrocity 1
The other day BBC Radio carried a programme on academics who had tweeted or retweeted posts that cast doubt on atrocities carried out by Russian soldiers during the Ukraine war. (There is at the time of writing access to both the programme, 'File on Four: Ukraine: The disinformation war', and transcript of the broadcast at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017thr)… Continue reading Reporting Atrocity 1
It does not make the job very appealing
Although my work focuses on education and technology, rather than party politics, the book I enjoyed reading the most last year was Harriet Harman’s biography [1], or more accurately her reflection on a career as a leading Labour politician in UK. The book is largely about being a woman in a man’s world. Harman was… Continue reading It does not make the job very appealing
Post-truth and a good argument
The term post-truth was, according to Oxford Dictionaries, the Word of the Year 2016. It was defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016 In USA of course the term became widely used in the context of… Continue reading Post-truth and a good argument
Michael Hammond 