I've been around a long time I joined the Academy of Ideas when it began as the then Institute of ideas. I've not made much of an impression and I want to put this right. Sometimes we don't want to admit our ambitions because it becomes difficult to hide from our failures.
My interests are pop music, politics and philosophy. Recently I read an interview with Dr Robert, leader of 60's pop funksters The Blow Monkeys, at the agge of 62 he said, death and illness have become a bigger part of his life, in his words he feels that he is in 'sniper's alley'. For me too, age is concentrating my mind.
In general I keep in mind Enoch Powell's famous quote that 'all political careers end in failure' also Stnig's 'There is no political solution to our troubled evolution'. My point is that we need ideas and values that transcend politics, it could be that it is these ideas and values that draw us into politics, rather than politics for its own sake, or for the sake of power.
So much has been said about Rishi Sunak and the D-Day commemorations, I don't want to add to that. But from my pop culture perspective we're looking at a politicain who was born in 1980. Sunak reached adolescence in the age of Blair and Clinton, very much pop culture politicians, influenced in their youth by The Kennedys and strange as it may seem today in the UK, Harold Wilson.
Today we have an establishment whose members like to see themselves and/or believe themselves to be rebels and outsiders, we would struggle to find a Conservative politician today who is unapologetically middle class, suburban or, well, Conservative. Sunak as others have remarked has the air of the 'head boy' maybe just for once Rishi wanted to be the rebel, to 'quit the scene'. I'm speculating with that last bit, but certainly since Theresa May denounced her own party as the nasty party (to be fair she was brave and had a point), the Tories have attempted to modernise, and they have succeeded, in doing so they have estranged themselves from their own supporters and traditions.
I've been around a long time I joined the Academy of Ideas when it began as the then Institute of ideas. I've not made much of an impression and I want to put this right. Sometimes we don't want to admit our ambitions because it becomes difficult to hide from our failures.
My interests are pop music, politics and philosophy. Recently I read an interview with Dr Robert, leader of 60's pop funksters The Blow Monkeys, at the agge of 62 he said, death and illness have become a bigger part of his life, in his words he feels that he is in 'sniper's alley'. For me too, age is concentrating my mind.
In general I keep in mind Enoch Powell's famous quote that 'all political careers end in failure' also Stnig's 'There is no political solution to our troubled evolution'. My point is that we need ideas and values that transcend politics, it could be that it is these ideas and values that draw us into politics, rather than politics for its own sake, or for the sake of power.
So much has been said about Rishi Sunak and the D-Day commemorations, I don't want to add to that. But from my pop culture perspective we're looking at a politicain who was born in 1980. Sunak reached adolescence in the age of Blair and Clinton, very much pop culture politicians, influenced in their youth by The Kennedys and strange as it may seem today in the UK, Harold Wilson.
Today we have an establishment whose members like to see themselves and/or believe themselves to be rebels and outsiders, we would struggle to find a Conservative politician today who is unapologetically middle class, suburban or, well, Conservative. Sunak as others have remarked has the air of the 'head boy' maybe just for once Rishi wanted to be the rebel, to 'quit the scene'. I'm speculating with that last bit, but certainly since Theresa May denounced her own party as the nasty party (to be fair she was brave and had a point), the Tories have attempted to modernise, and they have succeeded, in doing so they have estranged themselves from their own supporters and traditions.