Freedom
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Latest Position (29.01.2022) on the Shame of Sheffield Hallam University
For this post it is sufficient to quote the words of Shahd Abusalama and to reiterate that the matter is a long way from being settled satisfactorily. The hope is that readers of this blog will add their voice of protest to Sheffield Hallam University. Shahd Abusalama’s position I am reinstated, which shows how powerful… Continue reading
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Israel: Apartheid State?
This is the second blog that departs from my usual patch and addresses a subject that needs to be kept in the public eye. This is my very minor contribution to aiding that purpose. I speak of the Palestine/Israel situation. Postings on this topic will continue to form part of my blog, though I recognise… Continue reading
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Parental strike against school testing – hint, intimation, or flash in the pan?
Straw in the wind? Harbinger? Hint or intimation? Dunno. Snowball in hell? Impossible odds? Flash in the pan? Dunno. Still, worth noting that at the time of writing 24,412 parents (or people claiming to be parents) have signed an online petition supporting a strike – yes, worth reading that again: a STRIKE – that will… Continue reading
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Dehli thought
Delhi – hot, colourful, polluted, noisy, crowded. Wonderful in it own particular way. The roads, traffic seething: cars, three-wheeled autos, pedal rickshaws, buses – some new(ish), some distinctly rickety. Taxis, swarms of bicycles, motorbikes, some seemingly transporting entire families. And people, all ages – that’s ‘all’ ages – crossing the turbulent traffic sea as the… Continue reading
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From values to counting: the apoliticisation of play (and much else)
One way of characterising the play sector, if indeed it constitutes a sector, is that it is apolitical and dependent, those two qualities interacting and exacerbating each other. By apolitical, I mean that it has no obvious popular or voter support, nor is much attention directed towards securing it. Rather, the ‘sector’ concentrates its efforts… Continue reading
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‘Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today’
To cut to the chase: I hold that a society or culture entrapped by a perpetual need to achieve, to endlessly generate quantifiable outputs, to obsessively ‘progress’ – slippery term that – is a society most likely to exhaust and dispirit its members. For rather too long, that’s pretty much the position that has been… Continue reading
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The Here and Now and related matters
I was flattered to be invited to speak at Play Wales’s SPIRIT conference last week where I ended up talking about freedom, the here and now, and democratic space. To my mind the three ideas are inextricably connected to each other. Part of my talk took what might be called an ‘in principle’ critical stance… Continue reading
About Me
My name is Bernard Spiegal, I write mainly about Palestine/Israel and related issues; sometimes other stuff too
Bernard Spiegal 