What do you think of Lionel Shriver's article @FraserNelson ?
Do you think the phrase in the article 'surrender without a shot being fired' is in any way inflammatory? Might it not suggest or hint that people could or even should take up arms to prevent further 'surrender' of 'territory'? @FraserNelson
Do you think, Fraser, that there are people who have committed no crime, who've come to the UK to work, have worked hard for decades, or working right now, who might feel unfairly threatened by such an article? @FraserNelson
I propose an Olympics for the over-70s (further sections for over-80s, -90s, 100s).
To avoid heart attacks and other forms of dropping dead, the sports would be eg toe-nail cutting, best dishwasher loading, memorising shopping lists, stone-paper-scissors, TV switcher use etc.
1/ To my mind, what's significant about Williamson and Latin is that he has intervened in the languages-in-secondary-schools debate with the mention of just one language - Latin - in a situation where modern langs are downgraded at univs, not compulsory at GCSE.
2/ The idea that offering Latin to state school students will combat the elitism of private education rests on the idea that imitating private education will do the job. Many people here suggest that getting class sizes down to the sizes in private education would be better.
3/ We have to ask why out of all languages did Williamson select Latin.? Of course it's a 'foundation' language and is the root of all 'Romance' languages but there are others including the foundation language of English - Old English (formerly known as Anglo-Saxon).
Now that they've replaced my own lens
with a plastic one,
every day the view through my eyes is
different:
a new blur to my right
a brightened slash in the corner
and two trees where there was one yesterday.
At first
as I walked to the hospital door
it was all seasons of mists
without much fruitfulness
but perhaps that was the sticking plaster
over the transparent eye patch
making it not transparent
and the other eye is always Clint Eastood anyway
playing misty for me.
As Vik the surgeon
took out my own lens
he said, 'Fat.'
We had looked at it on the scan
and I imagined it between his fingers
like a button
(I once cut a sheep's lens in half
in Biology)
and then he threw that bit of me
in a bin.
Unwanted spare part
I stared at the arc lights