I'm back. Thanks for your patience.
One of the things which I regret, in retrospect, not having written a bit more about in the book was the erosion of our basic liberties over the last ten years by this increasingly noxious government. I touched on it, but didn't go into depth.
Yesterday's 42-day detention vote was the last straw for me - and not only for me, it seems. David Davis's resignation today gives me some small spark of hope that the old radical concept of the 'freeborn Englishman' is not quite dead. That it should take a Tory to highlight this, in the teeth of opposition from a supposedly left-wing government, is a dark irony indeed.
Anyway. I have written about this at greater length in the Guardian today. See if you agree.
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The Blog of the Book
Welcome
My name is Paul Kingsnorth. This site is the cyberspace companion to my book, Real England, which was published in 2008 and appears in paperback this summer.
Join me as I travel through a country whose character and identity are being erased by corporate power, an over-centralised state, money and indifference - and meet the people working to turn the tide.
Join me as I travel through a country whose character and identity are being erased by corporate power, an over-centralised state, money and indifference - and meet the people working to turn the tide.
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Contact me
Email: paul@paulkingsnorth.net
Battling the bland
- Campaign for an English Parliament
- Campaign for Real Ale
- Campaign To Protect Rural England
- Common Ground
- Countryside Restoration Trust
- Crystal Palace Community Association
- Freedom For Pubs
- Friends of Queens Market
- Friends of the Earth
- Jericho Community Boatyard
- Knights of St Edmund
- Lancaster - It's Our City
- Marcher Apple Network
- Mebyon Kernow
- New Economics Foundation
- Open Spaces Society
- Oswestry 21
- Oxford - Westgate Watch
- Save Chinatown Campaign
- Save Covent Garden
- Save Our Sheringham
- Save Our Waterways
- Save Pantmawr Inn
- Save Wells, Somerset
- Small Farms Association
- Street parties
- Tescopoly
- The Ecologist
3 comments:
While I share your despair, and I'm pleased that for this week's news at least, the attack on civil liberties is being highlighted.
I don't think though that David Davis is the best standard bearer for flying the tattered flag of the freeborn Englishman. This is the same David Davis who voted for doubling detention to 28 days, who is an enthusiastic campaigner for the death penalty, a strong advocate of Section 28. I may be a cynic, but I am not convinced of his passionate commitment to liberty.
If you actually know of any freeborn Englishmen, as opposed to Subjects of the Crown, then please let us all know.
There hasn't been a freeborn Englishman since 1066.
Dai the Dai?
'Freeborn English Concept'?
Give me a break.
As a blogger, you represent more freedom than him.
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