Exploitative work contracts have become the norm. Casual, ill-paid or unpaid work creates servitude. In such a climate actual slavery, though illegal, flourishes.
A relentless tide, year after year, of irresponsible comment from the Daily Mail especially is incompatible with the ideals of commonwealth within civil society.
Wolf Hall depicts the dehumanizing effects of power pursued for its own sake. Acting without impunity, irresponsible power undermines common morality for selfish motives. Jimmy Savile is a case in point.
The performance of stories in various fringe venues has gathered enough momentum to present the possibility of a Theatre of Narrative where the art of storytelling is as vital as other performing arts.
The lives of most people are far removed from the concerns of the metropolitan coteries of influence, wealth and power. A good society would value useful work above the squandering of human and capital resources on meaningless schemes.
Corporate culture needs skilled workers trained to do the job. It fears the questioning of values that education encourages.
Isolation from Europe and an end to immigration are disastrous policies derived not from patriotism but from a racial myth whose most vociferous advocate was Enoch Powell. His pernicious legacy endures.
"The truths of literature are truths to feeling rather than the truths of experience. Art re-creates. It reshapes. It expresses an imaginative response to the world. Journalism, by contrast, communicates experience."
Owen Jones' new book has put the topic back on the table, that ethereal, undefinable, untouchable thing which everyone yet knows. So what is it?
The ability to imagine is a necessary human faculty. We need metaphors in order to comprehend and absorb the actualities of life. It isn’t that we can’t bear too much reality. We can understand reality only by way of language.
"The failure to adapt suggests not moral concern but crude reaction in moralistic guise."
"It is easy to confuse sophistication with civilisation. Sophistication can be a soulless exercise in superiority rather than an appreciation of cultivated taste for its life-enhancing qualities."
