Richard D North.

For an outing on the BBC 1 Big Questions ethics show, I pulled together some research on whether Britain was a fair society. My general view is that one should worry about the poor, on the assumption that they are unhappy because of poverty and need help. It is not a dead cert that people in need of help can be given it, of course. Moreover, it may well not matter whether (or even how much) a country is unequal. Nor is the amount of welfare spending by any means a perfect indicator of whether a country is a good place for either rich or poor to live. Other posts have discussed those themes. (Try an in-site search for "inequality".)  This one is intended to capture a picture of where the UK is compared with its neighbours, and - even more important - with other broadly comparable countries, in matters of wealth, welfare spending and educational outcomes. Read more...

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...

This long poem is in three parts. All of them are long, and intended to flow one from another, but each to make sense on its own. They have been written with an eye (or ear) to being read aloud briskly. An audio version is available here. Sir Percy Hobart (1885 – 1957) was a great man: he was crucial to the formation and training of Britain's WW2 tank units, but he was also creative and - in effect - a military publisher. Sir Percy Hobart, Part 1 Hobo, the man and commander Sir Percy Hobart, Part 2 Hobo the man of design and fabric Sir Percy Hobart, Part 3 The Hobo, his generation and their books Read more...

I had quite an interesting outing on BBC Radio Scotland's Call Kaye phone-in show on the BBC's charter review which begins in earnest today. I argued as usual for the "nuclear option" of getting rid of this antiquated institution. 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...

I have set myself to commemorate the life and death of Wing Commander Billy Filson-Young, and - more broadly - his family. My father Paul North, Billy's half-brother, in 1990 gathered new material about his brothers and here is an eye-witness account written around then. Read more...

Vera Bax, poet and painter, lost two sons in WW2. Both were RAF pilots. She wrote a sequence of four poems on losing them. Some of the poems have been in various anthologies ever since. Read more...

I want to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the death in action of my half-uncle Billy Filson-Young in Burma on 15 May, 1945, aged 25. His mother was the poet and painter Vera Bax (it’s complicated) and she wrote a series of poems about the deaths of her youngest son Richard (a pilot killed in action in 1942, aged 21) and Billy himself. They are of course grief-stricken poems. But they embolden me, too. 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...