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In case you thought the public school system was only into power politics or brutish ‘Muscular Christianity’ and – except for Winchester, of course – couldn’t produce intellectuals (no this is not a story about Boris!) but only Wounded Leaders, think again! For now along comes our favourite intellectual, Richard Dawkins (Oundle and Oxford) once…
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Remember that tune? Dionne Warwick sang it so poignantly in 1963, my first year at my English public school. Just can’t get it out of my head today, for some reason. Nor can I get Head Boy Blair out of my head either. The Independent’s Mark Steel is also charmed by Blair’s hearty remarks and…
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Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse for Labour, along comes Tony Blair, Wounded Leader supremo and master story-teller. Already terminally disgraced at home by being unable to apologise for his best-selling fantasy “Weapons of Mass Destruction deployed in only 45 minutes!” that cost so many lives, including, tragically, that of Dr David…
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Last week, in the wake of the return to power of the party of Wounded Leaders, Labour rolled out their leadership campaign. They all seem like nice people, but, as a well-wisher, I found the event, particularly the BBC Newsnight debate, deeply depressing. A pragmatic commentator the day after said that, even though the audience…
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This week has some news for those interested in the rights of children to stay home and have a childhood. It sees both the first review of a book describing the psychological problems of boarding in a British national newspaper and the Canadian Government commissioned official report on the destructive legacy of residential education. In…
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People who find criticism of the boarding habit rather challenging often say to me, “but surely the schools are much better now and the horrors are a thing of the past?” Well, of course the conditions are better – the schools operate in the holy ground of ‘the markets’, so if they were still Spartan…
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“Cameron could only save himself by taking Lib Dem seats so he had to do it as effectively as he could. It was his way of surviving,” says Paddy Ashdown in this morning’s Guardian. It is not the first time that Ashdown has put his finger on something that has psychological depth and truth about…
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So finally the day arrives: our chance to use our only democratic weapon to boot out the Wounded Leaders! Lest us kick in to touch those who have made the poor and the middle pay for the unrestricted greed of the wealthy, while of course always blaming the last lot in power. This is how…
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On Andrew Marr’s show this morning, David Cameron looked tired and spent – and very boring. It must have been hard for him having to speak after Nicola Sturgeon, who is congruent in her body, measured in her speech, and ambitious for real change in the social structure. Cameron’s endless attempts to reinvent the Tories…
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As Britain nervily approaches an unpredictable general election, it’s hard not to identify with a certain troubled soul from one of our greatest dramas and reflect that “something is rotten in the state of” our politics. And, at long last, the psychotherapy profession has started to take note. Following a letter signed by 400 counsellors…
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