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Archive for November 2017

Comments blocked as suspected Bot

Dear Friends, Readers and other visitors, I apologise if you have tried to leave comments on any of my blogs and were rejected as a suspected ‘bot’. This is to do with a plugin that I didn’t know I had called MOJO. I have disabled it and tested the system, which appears now to be Read More

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Brexit, Democracy and the Role of Opposition

Democracy: ours is a representative democracy. That means that we elect people to make decisions on our behalf to run our sovereign nation. This allows me to make a direct analogy with a healthy organisation. The Chief Executive is appointed by the Board to make decisions about the best running of the organisation. If a Read More

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Universal Credit, some thoughts

No doubt you will have heard about the way in which the government’s appalling organisation of their universal credit arrangements will leave families without money this Christmas. I have signed a petition to require them to make exceptional payments to avoid the cruel impact of their incompetence and I’d encourage you to sign it too, Read More

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Welfare and Dignity

Posted by: Philip Stokoe at 14:34, January 9 2016. When Margaret Thatcher claimed that there was no such thing as a society, she began the ruthless attack continued by governments of both political parties on those who are needy in our country. Dave Bell in his excellent paper, “Primitive Mind of State”, describes the way Read More

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Why was Nelson Mandela great?

Posted by: Philip Stokoe at 12:34, January 3 2014. In his article criticising the uncritical coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death, Simon Jenkins (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/10/mandela-coverage-banality-of-goodness) described his presidency as indifferent. According to Jenkins, “he was a worse than ordinary president. He did little to resist the drift to cronyism and corruption, was a poor executive, and never Read More

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Curiosity & Interest and the NHS

Posted by: Philip Stokoe at 16:09, April 1 2013. In what follows I want to acknowledge my gratitude to my old friend James Fisher who died last year, much too soon. I had assumed that what I am about to say was taken as axiomatic by my fellow psychoanalysts but he pointed out that I Read More

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