By Michael Faulkner, January 10, 2016

It is customary, in Britain at least, during the days of the winter solstice from late December to early January, for most people to succumb to the spirit of “the festive season.” This is understandable and there is much about the festive celebrations that is genuinely warm-hearted and convivial. There are no national day celebrations in Britain as there is no national day and no notion of what might be acceptable as one. So the family Christmas lunch or dinner is the closest this country gets to the US Thanksgiving. Most people celebrate Christmas, but only a very tiny minority of them celebrate it as a religious festival. This is something that must be quite puzzling to those who follow other religions such as Judaism, Hinduism or Islam, whose festivals and holy days are times of religious observance. After all, unlike the United States and France, England and Scotland have an established church – the Church of England and Scotland, which have a legal position in the state. The Queen is the head of the church and is officially named “Defender of the Faith.” Yet only 1.5% of the population attend church on anything like a regular basis. According to Christian theology, the three most sacred days of the year are Christmas Day (the birth of the divinity in human form), Good Friday (his death) and Easter Sunday (his resurrection from the dead). Yet in the consumerist bonanzas that have come to dominate all three commemorations, they are associated predominantly with Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Easter eggs and Easter bunnies. Religion hardly gets a look-in.  Regarding Christmas, it might be said that if a committee had been set the task of expunging every element of religion from the festival and replacing it with an appeal to “shop until you drop”, they couldn’t have come up with anything better than this. The “success” of Christmas is measured in terms of sales figures and profit margins and for the legions of cash-strapped parents struggling to make ends meet, in the increasing volume of personal debt. But Prime Minister Cameron, in his Christmas message, tells us that Britain is a Christian country.

By Michael Faulkner - 10.11.15

Anyone still harbouring illusions about the objectivity or veracity of the British media should have been disabused of them after the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour party in September. It soon became clear that almost without exception the reaction to his election was hostile. In the case of the corporate print media which includes most national newspapers, this was to be expected. But coverage in more liberal papers such as The Observer and The Guardian was sometimes little better.

By Michael Faulkner - 09.13.15

Since the earliest years of the cold war, in any mainstream discourse on British foreign policy, certain supposed truths have been treated as so self evident that to question them is treated either as infantile ignorance or deliberate hostility to Britain’s “national interest.”  This has been particularly so in the case of the so-called “independent nuclear deterrent” and membership of NATO.  A moment’s reflection by anyone with a mind unencumbered by official “defence” propaganda should call into question the need for either of these. 

By Michael Faulkner - 07.12.15

On the 28th June The Observer, carried a report from Brussels by its Political Editor, Toby Helm under the bold headline The migrant crisis, Islamist terrorism, Grexit and Brexit: a perfect storm of crises blows apart European unity. This list simply embraced the events of the preceding few days that had claimed attention in Europe – the “Four Crises Facing the EU”. Such is the volatility of the times we are living through that when this article reaches its readers in about twelve days from now any comments on the European crises may be quite out of date, though each of them is very important and deserves detailed consideration.