No two individuals are identical. No two individual human experiences are identical. So when we recognise characteristics familiar to our own or someone who shares similar experiences to our own, we find a kind of comfort.
If one had asked the median informed liberal voter 3–4 months ago the greatest overall threat facing our way of life, I speculate that the answer you would have got would have been ‘climate change’ in the main, with perhaps a slightly nutty rump claiming ‘Brexit’.
The title of this essay is misleading. While this short piece will examine the message of Eco’s work a quarter of a century after its publication, it will primarily hope to push you toward a new belief.
In 2018 Norman Lamb questioned the government’s approach to cannabis regulation. He criticised the 19% fall in prosecution levels since 2015, and the 34% fall in cautions since 2017, while it was patently obvious that usage was on the increase.
The British Government has often had a hazy relationship with international law. Indeed their behaviour in the mid-2000s could be characterised as part of the Captain Barbosa-ification of the norms of international law: that is to say that they are ‘more like guidelines’.