Politics & campaigns.

I was asked onto BBC1's The Big Questions (7 February 2016, Episode 5, Series 9); on BBC Radio Scotland's Call Kaye phone-in (25 February 2016); and BBC Radio Scotland Good Morning Scotland (27 February 2016) to discuss whether Britain's stance on Syrian refugees was morally acceptable (TBQ) and whether one had a moral responsibility toward helping them (Call Kaye) or both (Good Morning Scotland). Read more...

I have had a couple of recent outings on BBC Radio Scotland's Call Kaye phone-in show, on the UK's obligations - and Scotland's in particular - toward the "Med-migrants". My line, I am almost sorry to say, was that we will probably need to be cruel to be kind.... Read more...

I had an outing on the Jeremy Vine Show, discussing the anger which many people seem to feel that "their side" didn't win. Yes, I said: democracy involves a contest between two or more parties, and they all need to be as electable as possible, and the process as civilised as possible.... Read more...

Many people in the creative, inventive and caring industries - the Brightest and the Best - have never socialised with people who openly espouse the Conservative cause, or have only met them to have a row. This why they should expand their horizons..... Read more...

I have only read part of the Bishops’ letter to their parishioners and what follows is not a critique of the document. Rather, I simply want to show how the right-wing might be loving, compassionate and Christian as it argues (and votes) against state provision of welfare. Read more...

Last evening I saw the very moving show, The End of the Journey, A promenade performance about WW1. It was staged in the same, small Pavilion Theatre in Selsey High Street where R C Sherriff took a keen interest in a late 1933 amateur production of his play, Journey's End, the hugely successful and influential West End hit of 1929. Read more...

I more or less said what I meant to at this event for Christian Aid/JustShare in the lovely St Mary-le-Bow, in the City. Read more...

This is the second of a trio of pieces on my take on modern spirituality. have been asked once or twice about the "change of heart" which lay behind my "change of mind", as I became more right-wing. Leave aside that my "radical" or "progressive" or "green" tendencies of the late 1970s were deviations from my previous and more recent thinking, here is an account of where my "heart" was and is, and how it relates to some big ideas of left and right.... Read more...

I love the "problem" of tourism and - most sharply - the problem of the "human zoo". Almost all our travel, at least where it involves looking at people rather than landscape or animals, has a dimension of anthropological voyeurism. Much of it is a matter of play-acting amongst imagined peasantries or primitives. This has now reached new heights of self-consciousness, and is blissfully funny as well as serious.... Read more...

Rory Stewart, Tory MP for Penrith and the Border and previously a diplomat in some chronic "borderlands" (ex-Yugoslavia and Afghanistan) has given us a TV (and, I gather, a book) account of his love of what he calls the Middleland, between England and Scotland, which he now represents. It's exhilarating stuff, but is it tosh.....? Read more...