Dear kids, There’s a principle of city life called ‘disattendability’. It’s a way of coping with being thrown together with a huge numbers of strangers. In a small town or a village it’s easy to know a lot people by sight, even most of them, and when we are born and raised in such places…
Dear kids, One of my favourite quotes gets attributed to various authors — as all the good ones do — but I credit the astonishing Blaise Pascal who once apologised for the length of a letter, explaining that he did ‘not have the leisure to make it shorter.’ When it comes to academic writing, it…
Dear kids, It used to be much more common than it is now: workers refusing to work until their bosses raised their pay, or for some other grievance. Striking workers would often go on big marches, waving banners, brandishing signs and singing songs to let other people know what they were doing and why. And…
Dear kids, I have to start this week with an apology: I’m going to write one of those ghastly “when I was a lad” pieces. Worse, it’s going to be combined with my feeble version of nostalgia for the old country. So, in advance, “sorry”. New Zealand of the 1970s and early 80s is my…
Dear kids, At the time I’m writing this, there is revolution in the air. Unpopular governments have been forced out by people massing in the streets, and when governments have tried to fight back, they have usually lost. In some of these revolutions, what most worries some onlookers is the ‘power vacuum’ when a government…
Dear kids, One of my favourite scenes in Monty Python’s Life of Brian — yes, I know, Mum nearly didn’t go out with me when she heard I liked Monty Python — Where was I? Oh yes, one of my favourite scenes is where Brian tries to tell his growing mob of disciples to go away,…
Dear kids, A debate on the radio today about people trying to cheat the British student visa system got me thinking about our usual knee-jerk response to such news: People are cheating the system, so make the system tougher, make it harder to cheat. Obvious, right? OK, but why is the answer not ‘The system…
Dear kids, One of the silliest debates in social science — and there are a few contending for that title — is the argument over the use of numerical measures. I’ll spare you the details of the debate, but essentially it’s an argument over the nature of what we are studying. There are some who…
Dear kids, S, today you asked me a fascinating question: why do I like Batman more than Superman? T is into Spiderman at the moment, and this sparked questions about which superheroes I liked best. I have to confess that I do not spend much time pondering the details of American superheroes. They strike me…
Dear kids, I do a lot of work with normative theories, which means ideas about how the world ought to be, not how it is. At Christmas time that feels a particularly relevant topic. Christmas is the intense ritualisation of our hopes for a better world. It celebrates a vision of Utopia — “no place”…
Dear kids, Those on top of the pile usually think they got there because of some particular merit of their own. They worked harder, they learned the right skills, or they had a special spark that those at the bottom of the pile lacked. A significant number therefore look down on other people not just…
Dear kids, One of the most important things you can do as a citizen is to pay attention to the news. One of the most important things you can do as a citizen is to not pay too much attention to the news. Say what, now? OK, let’s start with what counts as ‘news’ in…
Dear kids, Democracy is terrible, right? Instead of making collective decisions based on the right thing to do, we base them on the whims of the ignorant and our most selfish, short-term impulses. Indeed, a day will come when you have some expertise on an issue, and you pick up a newspaper – even a…
Dear kids, People are divided into men and women. Women fall in love with and marry men; men fall in love with and marry women. They have babies, male and female. End of story, right? Errr, no. Not right. Not even close to right. OK, there are homosexuals. Male homosexuals love men and female homosexuals…
Dear kids, One of the things I study is political communication — the content and quality of public discussion in our society. I’m interested in how we can make public discussion better: instead of just taking up positions and haranguing each other, can we base our discussions more on reason, evidence and the everyday experiences…
We were rich once, before your head exploded.
Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Stirling
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