Author: Speymouth

On Leadership and its absence

Speymouth January 8, 2023

While we laugh at the debacle of the election of Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker in the USA, closer to home we face our own catastrophic failure of political leadership. Britain’s public sector is in revolt, our national health service is on its knees and millions are facing poverty and destitution; and our political leaders […] Source

How will a democratic revolution in Iran affect the region and world security?

Speymouth January 7, 2023

Iran is the stage for a new wave of protests and demonstrations after the brutal crackdown of the 2018 and 2019 protests. The current protests have gone beyond the previous waves of demonstrations and transformed into a revolutionary movement engaging more than 100 cities around Iran. Iranian Z generation is at the frontline of the […] Source

Tweedledrear and Tweedletrump

Speymouth January 6, 2023

On Wednesday it was Rishi Sunak mouthing vague patronising platitudes, and not to be outdone, on Thursday it was the turn of Keir Starmer. Conscious of my obligations to the readers of this blog, I tried to listen to the speech all the way through, fully intending to jot down notes…

Simple arithmetic with Rishi Sunak

Speymouth January 5, 2023

Rishi Sunak, remember him? He’s the latest unelected Prime Minister, a man who was rejected by his own party and who was awarded the job without any vote after the previous unelected incumbent tanked the economy in just two weeks, and cost the public purse some £60 billion in the process…

Scotland has the energy : it needs the power

Speymouth January 4, 2023

On Tuesday a major new report about Scotland’s energy was published by an independent think tank, Bottom Line. You probably heard nothing about it because this was a report from an independent think tank which showed the importance of Scottish independence if Scotland, which remains an important producer of oil and…

2023 could be an election year

Speymouth January 2, 2023

Well, here we are, another year, and no doubt another Conservative outrage against democracy and decency just around the corner. This is the year when Scotland ought to have been having another independence referendum, but we all know that isn’t going to happen – at least not this October – because…

Political Amnesia as Trauma Response

Speymouth December 31, 2022

I started the review of the year a few days ago, but I couldn’t remember anything that had happened. A friend told me this was a ‘trauma response’. It does seem that experiencing social reality seems like a blunt head trauma the best thing to do is to hide, forget, distract. Fragments of it are […] Source