We have a monarch who is supposed to exercise reserve powers independently to protect Her People if needed when Her Government goes full on Pol Pot, and Parliament fails to do its job, but since she has failed in that duty up until now it is unlikely she will step up this time - too busy writing another trite, anodyne speech to patronise us on Christmas Day.

 In decisions of this kind, the search process is highly recursive. We adapt our preferences on the basis of what we find. We may think we want a garden flat in Fulham but once shown a penthouse in Rotherhithe we revisit our assumptions. A good salesman may know you better than you know yourself.

Most institutions should NOT have values. Morals are for us.

The moral is for the individual. Otherwise you get legislated moral uniformity, you get the imposition of a moral code, you get inquisition, you get burning.

 

 James McAuley wrote: ‘Valediction: Roy Campbell’ 

He stood against the leveling stampede

And cracked the stockman’s whip of his polemic; 

He never left his friends or slurred his creed 

In times when cowardice grew epidemic. 

Action he loved, and honour, and the life 

Of simple men before machines were master. 

He gave a pure devotion to his wife, 

And said his rosary amidst disaster. 

Contemptuous of the babble of his time, 

He loved the Muses with a noble passion, 

Catching a golden splendour in his rhyme 

When rhyme and splendour both were out of fashion.

Who now shall bring back from our wars a song, 

Like Heracles returning with a trophy? 

May Christ who calls the singer from the throng 

Give stars and music to his heavenly strophe.

 

• “Objection. The question is argumentative.”

OBJECTION - LEADING THE WITNESS

OBJECTION - ASKED AND ANSWERED