Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

  Okay, now I've seen everything. Mattel has brought out an autistic Barbie. Sometimes words fail me. This might be one of those times. At first glance, you might think a piece of plastic, complete with dinky little pink headphones, a slightly off-centre gaze, an equally dinky little pink finger clip fidget spinner (what?) and a loose-fitting purple pinstripe dress would make your average battle-scarred autistic adult melt down in Hulk-like rage, feeling like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune many of us have suffered have been naively trivialised and far too neatly labelled. After all, I've never worn headphones in my life and in fact rather dislike them, can look you straight in the eye, don't even know what a fidget spinner is and don't wear loose-fitting clothes. However, I too am autistic and that's why it's called a broad spectrum disorder. A very nuanced understanding of this is required and it's very often misunderstood. Many of us can scar...

If the UK and the EU don't want to be walked all over, sidelined and even invaded by Russia, we and they had better pull our fingers out, come to terms with raw and unvarnished reality, prepare, rearm and immediately and unequivocally back Ukraine with everything we've got. Britain's civilian population hasn't been directly involved in a military conflict since World War Two. We've forgotten every hard lesson that six year conflict taught us. We've run down the armed forces catastrophically , let NATO fall into disrepair (possibly the greatest mistake my own generation has made) and kidded ourselves that democracy was permanently in the ascendancy. That communism/fascism and authoritarianism was finished.  The Triumph of the West by J. M. Roberts and a belief in the end of history popularised by Francis Fukuyama, founded upon the idea that fascism and communism had been defeated, epitomised this incredible naivety. To explain why I'm talking like this, I...