Think the fight for equality is over? Think again

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Think the fight for equality is over? Think again

George Wright (Political Officer, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Secretary, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his third year of reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

There are countless things in life for which we should apologise. Damaging a friend’s gentleman’s area with an especially vigorous tennis serve, or breaking the nozzle on my college wife’s Henry Hoover spring to mind as recent cases where I had to deploy my glum face, from which murmurous remorseful splutterings were projected. Conversely, there are plenty of things unworthy of an apology, among which passions and trivial mistakes tend to be counted. More significantly, though, no one should ever feel a duty to apologise for, or feel coerced into obscuring who they are – it’s obvious, isn’t it?

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Airport misery

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Airport misery

George Wright (Political Officer, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Secretary, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Humankind has employed its cognitive power to achieve extraordinary feats. We have developed cures to otherwise mortal diseases, illuminated high rise cities with population densities and infrastructure unimaginable to our ancestors and traversed oceans first with the help of buoyancy and then by aerodynamics. Journeys which took weeks can now be made in a matter of hours and with prototypes of a hypersonic London-Sydney jet sloshing around the media, the age of instant access to the world appears to be dangling seductively at our fingertips.

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Dear BMW, I want a terrible car

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Dear BMW, I want a terrible car

George Wright (Political Officer, Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Some things are certainties in life. The British public transport network is in constant disarray, the entire country becomes inoperable when some snows succumb to gravity, the Pope is a Catholic and so on. Further to this list, I would like to add one more: cars are becoming ever bigger and much worse.

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Boris is juggling chainsaws – what could possibly go wrong?

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Boris is juggling chainsaws – what could possibly go wrong?

George Wright (Political Officer, Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Earlier this week, the President submitted a contribution to this blog in which he explained some concerns about the government’s handling of the past few days. They were the words of a man deprived for too long of alcoholic libations, exuding the sort of misery and pessimism to be expected by a mind engulfed by sobriety. Fortunately, though, I am not in Trumpland, so the prospect of a gin and tonic is never more than a few minutes away. Let me, then, pick up where the President left off by taking a gentle perambulation through the events of the past week in politics, albeit without the distraction of a brain preoccupied by an incessant yearning for beer.

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Forget the rules, let’s liberate language

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Forget the rules, let’s liberate language

George Wright (Political Officer, Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

The challenge of identifying the origins of language is one that has never been resolved by mankind – we possess insufficient evidence or methods of analysis to conclusively explain why I’m writing this using the spelling, words and grammar patterns which are universally recognised as English. Yes, we know that English has been influenced by the Romans, the French and the Saxons to name but a few and going further back, we are aware that most European languages trace their roots to something called Proto-Indo European before branching into their modern families, but no matter how far we attempt to follow the linguistic generations, a definite comprehension of where it all came from will probably remain an unsolved mystery for eternity.

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Come on! Speed up!

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Come on! Speed up!

George Wright (Political Officer, Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

The summer is long and sometimes, rain happens. Sadly, rain has happened with depressing frequency in days of recent, so I have become divorced from the usual array of outdoor pursuits and am instead slumped miserably in my office. One of the by-products of being entrapped by sogginess though has been my rediscovery of the internet – more specifically, the worrying entertainment experienced by perusing a Twitter feed called ‘People Selling Mirrors.’ 

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I’ve saved the world

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I’ve saved the world

George Wright (Political Officer, Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Just before Christmas in 2008, Gordon Brown gave us all an early present by claiming to have “saved the world” at Prime Minister’s Questions. Sadly, he had tripped over his tongue. Instead, the then PM confirmed that it was the international banking sector which had been safeguarded by his programme of recapitalisation, rather than the entirety of civilisation. Disappointing. But now, a decade on from his infamous slip-up, I believe I can asseverate to have succeeded where Gordon fell short: I have saved the world.

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Ticket to nowhere? Sure, that’ll be £60 billion, Sir

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Ticket to nowhere? Sure, that’ll be £60 billion, Sir

George Wright (Political Officer, Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

In the not too distant past, I found myself on a flight to Berlin. The plane landed at Schönefeld airport, taxied to its terminal before a few hundred excitable Brits flowed briskly onto German soil. Predictably, the airport was orderly and well signposted, so within a matter of minutes, I arrived at the border, was greeted with a stern ‘Willkommen’ by a slightly disgruntled official and commanded to move along with a Tinder-ish swipe of the fingers. It was all eerily German.

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Britain is in decline; we have stopped worshipping feet

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Britain is in decline; we have stopped worshipping feet

George Wright (Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

A few weeks ago, I rode a bicycle through the impeccably delightful countryside of East Anglia. It was an experience which reminded me of two things: one, I’ve become helplessly unfit and two, quaint rural road signs demarcating distances in miles are so much more pleasurable to behold than those measuring in kilometres. Not only in length, but in capacity and mass too do we see the peculiarity and specificity of the imperial system far outshining the dull mundanity of Napoleon’s autocratic metric potion. And metric measurements are exactly that: autocratic. They emanate from the same mindset which adores order, control and standardisation – the evisceration of unique quirkiness is supplanted by a Germanic obsession with neatness and divisibility by ten. 

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Brexit will lead us to either dominance or death

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Brexit will lead us to either dominance or death

George Wright (Ex-Secretary, Former Deputy Returning Officer, Ex-Treasurer, Ex-Whip, Ex-Committee Member, St John’s College) is an undergraduate in his second year of studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Well, maybe. Political discourse is the natural habitat of the hyperbole and you would be excused for thinking I’m doing my part to enrich the biodiversity contained within it. But before you chastise me too harshly for desperately trying to resuscitate project fear, let’s take stock of exactly where we find ourselves. For nearly three years, our parliamentarian overlords have equivocated and tergiversated and blabbered about how Brexit means Brexit. The government has spent month after month dealing in the currency of can-kicking, spitting vacuous metaphor after vacuous metaphor until no BBC studio was left un-moistened by the collective phlegm of their inchoate prolixity. 

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