Caldicot is currently part of the Newport East constituency for Parliamentary elections. Therefore, our current MP is Jessica Morden. At the next general elections Caldicot and Magor and the Severnside area will be changing due to a constituency boundary change and w will become part of Monmouthsire where Catherine Fookes…
I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to the truth. He reckons Johnson has told over thousands of…
View More Review: The Assault On Truth – Boris Johnson and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism – by Peter Oborne
Today, we went out locally for Severnside branch of the Labour Party Jessica Morden MP from Newport East is still the Parliamentary political representative for us here prior to the boundary changes at the general election when Caldicot and Severnside area will become part of Monmouthshire contituency where Catherine Fookes…
View More Severnside Labour Party campaigning in Rogiet
Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution and the fundamental rights that their new revolutionary societies produced…
View More Review: Rights of Man – by Thomas Paine
This book is quite old, first published in 1951, it dates from a period when the totalitarian reality of Hitler and Stalin were very much fresh in the mind. Hannah Arendt was a German Jew and this work is both philosophical, enlightening and gives a valuable educated insight into the…
View More Review: The Origins of Totalitariansm – by Hannah Arendt
Today we were again out campaigning for Catherine Fookes as Labour candidate for Monmouthshire at the next general election. We were out and about in Town Ward, Monmouth, an area that Catherine knows well as she is the councillor there. Andy and Cath were among the workers I met today…
View More Labour Party Campaigning in Town Ward, Monmouth
This was my second day actually out doing #labourdoorstep – Today it was sunny Caldicot, my hometown. We met up at the local car park of Gray Hill surgery, near the town centre. We would be out today campaigning on behalf of our current MP, Jessica Morden, Newport East. It…
View More Labour Doorstep in Caldicot with Jessica Morden MP
Today was my first day out proper canvassing, doing #labourdoorstep – We were out in Garden City, Chepstow. It is part of the Chepstow Castle ward. Today was important as it was election day. We had a young lady candidate, Gemma Rosser, standing up against some pretty tough Conservative opposition,…
View More Labour Party: Canvassing for Chepstow Castle By-election
I have spent many years supporting the UK Labour Party. I have always voted for them when possible and I have found over the years the support of both Jessica Morden MP and John Griffiths MS, to be second-to-none, especially when helping with my End Of Terror Mental Health issues.…
View More Labour Party: Getting to Work for Catherine Fooke’s Election Campaign in Monmouthshire
I was just chatting away to Ionutz a security nurse in the local mental hospital and he’s Romanian. I passed through Bucharest a few years ago en route to Istanbul on a train journey traversing Eastern Europe. Romania seemed quite rural, poor and quite different to the Europe with which…
View More Review: Red Horizons – The True Story of Nicolae & Elena Ceausescus’ Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption – by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa
Under Nikita Khrushchev, the easing of oppression allowed Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” to emerge despite censorship. This poignant narrative reflects the grim reality of gulag life, showcasing a political prisoner’s struggle and survival amid harsh conditions, offering a lens into the human capacity for resilience and appreciation.
View More Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
‘Et tu Brute’ – these are the immortal words of Shakespeare, recounting the treacherous death of one of Rome’s greatest Emperors, Julius Caesar. This book, by Peter Stothard, is a historical novel, recounting the last days of Caesar and the Empire of Rome immediately after his death and how, to…
View More Review: The Last Assassin – The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar – by Peter Stothard
There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder was drawn to business possibilities behind the Iron Curtain and…
View More Review: Red Notice – How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy – by Bill Browder
Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential and critical figures of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in the 1980s he was part os a set of international world leaders that seemingly had much more influence over people than the political leaders of today. Gorbachev was the…
View More Review: Memoirs – by Mikhail Gorbachev
The author of this, the best study of Vladimir Putin that I have read to date, is Catherine Belton, a Financial Times journalist that was based in Moscow. It is a comprehensive study of the rise of Putin and how he has cemented a Tsar-like power as head of the…
View More Review: Putin’s People – How the KGB took back Russia and then took on The West – by Catherine Belton