In my second year at Surrey, 1969-70, the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein cropped up on Irene Brennan’s reading list for metaphysics and epistemology. He was the first genius I had encountered, at least in the guise of a thinker. I lapped up Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, notwithstanding the fact that Anglo-Saxon philosophy had moved on. It remains… Read More »
I eventually went to university in the autumn of 1968. The route had been circuitous. I had somehow gone from being an ‘Oxbridge possible’ in 1966, to exploring a course in economic history at Nottingham (and buying my first pipe) in 1967, to A-level re-takes and a choice between Hull and Surrey in 1968. Why… Read More »
This fragment makes good an omission. I have been only too aware that so far my father Ron has outshone my mother Margaret. Margaret’s presence has been a shadowy one. This is no way reflects any differential of love, parenting, significance or causal input into who I was or have become. I have been following,… Read More »
For a long while I assumed that I was a laggardly reader in my early years, but I am no longer sure this is true. Certainly my parents helped teach me to read and kept me supplied with reading matter, mostly through attendance at Worthing library in the parsimonious1950s. I was familiar with Enid… Read More »
I have no musical pedigree, or ability. I have experienced this ‘lack’ the more so since moving to the village of Mickleham, which seems to have more than its fair share of talent. Stand-out musicians include Clare Kennington, a superb soloist on the violin, and sister Georgie, whose jazz singing I have enthusiastically blogged about… Read More »
In this fourth blog on Archer’s work on reflexivity I posit an ideal type of the vulnerable fractured reflexive. While the focused autonomous reflexive and the dedicated meta-reflexive characterize significant players around the contestable nature, ownership and use and abuse of wealth and power, the vulnerable fractured reflexive is more accurately portrayed as a non-player.… Read More »
In this third blog in the series I offer a characterisation of another key set of players in the substantive area of health inequalities, those who stand up against or resist the ‘greedy bastards’. The greedy bastards here comprise a cabal at the core of the capitalist executive class (CCE) supported by the state’s… Read More »
Since the quadrupling of oil prices in the early 1970s we have witnessed a change in the class/command dynamic; namely, an intensification of class power relative to that of the increasingly privatised yet regulatory state. In recognition of this I formulated my deliberately provocative greedy bastards hypothesis (GBH), an hypothesis many will find even less… Read More »
The ends of sociability through my secondary schooldays were met largely via ecclesiastical means. There was a moment of religiosity too, an embarrassment now, but an interval to which I return below. It was in my early teens that I first visited St George’s Church in, appositely, St George’s Road, East Worthing. The trigger was… Read More »
This is a longer blog than is usual for me, for which apologies. It is the first of a projected series of four or five. They will examine the writings of Margaret Archer on reflexivity. In this one I set out the basics of her argument and in subsequent ones seek to apply it in… Read More »