There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
I think it is not only our duty to look after the aged, but a task that brings its own reward in the form of companionship, expressed wisdom, and guidance as to how to manage life’s testing times. I have always had friends decades older than I, and those friendships have been a privilege.
A commonly heard phrase, or rather media cliché, is that after the COVID-19 crisis ‘things will never be the same.’ It is an understandable sentiment, given the seemingly unprecedented nature of recent events. But how novel is what happened, and how much will actually change?
Calling healthcare a business was always logically flawed. Money is involved, but it is unlike any consumer product businesses. For one thing, the ‘customer’ in health does not decide what represents value, the provider (the doctor or equivalent) does. Patients may have a say, but usually only on the margin.
In these troubled times of COVID-19, most news bulletins concentrate on the daunting figures from Italy, Spain, Britain and the USA. Little countries don’t get much of a mention. Greece is a little country.
I have been bemused to read the result of a recent poll taken in Britain. It suggests that 26 per cent of people feel ‘uncomfortable’ when hearing foreign languages spoken. Me, I feel envious, simply wishing that I was more of a linguist.
We live in an era of hyper-transactionalism, whereby most of what we do is subject to the exchange of money and market pricing. Whereas in the past much of humanity was bound to a political system, now most of us are bound to a globalised monetary system.
Among the bustle of hundreds of thousands of teenagers with clever signs, mild sunburns, and a palpable disdain for major party politics, there was a sense that we could change the world. The noise we made felt so deafening that no one could ignore it. And then we were promptly ignored.
In a turn of events predicted since he announced his candidacy for President, Donald Trump has been impeached. But this impeachment, and even Trump's removal from office, will do nothing to quell the reality that the world is actively electing aggressively oppressive candidates, not only despite their violence, but also because of it.
Tired and world weary, the British electorate went to the polls. Rarely in history can there have been such an assemblage of unelectable or disappointing types standing for office or trying to remain in it. It proved to be an ugly boredom, though it was uglier for some than others.
If the dark days of 1940 provided an opportunity for a chancer and publicity hound like Winston Churchill to emerge as an inspirational leader and reputed giant of the 20th century, why hasn't the catastrophic breakdown of the natural world done something similar for the likes of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Scott Morrison?
Dad is out watering the garden, but all the front windows are open, so he can hear the piano and his wife and two daughters singing. He often hums along to our repertoire, which is a mixture of Anglo-Celtic songs, Australian numbers — and, memorably, 'Lead, Kindly Light', written by the recently canonised St John Henry Newman.
Here, al-Baghdadi seemed to reprise a previous villainous role: that played by Osama bin Laden, the recognisable face of Al-Qaeda. It was similar in another respect: slaying the symbolic head might provide some form of catharsis, but it would hardly redress the logistic realities on the ground.
13-24 out of 200 results.
x
Subscribe for more stories like this.
Free sign-up