Paul Whelan

With politicians you have to distinguish between what they say and what they mean and between what they promise and what they do. It ...

My farewell to school at 18 before going on to university text of the original on 'A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Dreamer' ...

My farewell to school at 18 before going on to university (tap and enlarge to read or see a legible text published as 'Chant du Cygn...

  The world appears to be in more than its usual disorder. Religion is dividing societies and nations and, where religion is not doing it...

Politics is about power, about the pursuit of power, the contest for power, about maintaining and losing power.  That does not mean ethics...

I haven't seen or possibly even heard anything of I Puritani and I don't think I've seen a Bellini opera. Can't think of ...

As the polls showed Donald Trump was likely to win the US elections, Gerard Araud, French ambassador to Washington and a career diplomat k...

They say we live in a post-factual age where we decide things irrationally, purely on our emotional feel, and most of that is decided on l...

Politics in the end is someone's personal responsibility as well as the impersonal art of the possible.   Challenged by his own pa...

  There will be minority governments in South Africa's major metros, coalitions that are led by either the African National Congress ...

Brexit was not about 'ordinary people' being confused by the facts; not about expert opinion being superior to grassroots opinion;...

Following David Cameron's triumph in the Brexit referendum, which enabled the British people to vote for or against almost anything be...

Serious thoughts   After his inglorious defeat in the UK referendum, David Cameron has resigned as Tory prime minister.  However, li...

Cheer up - well, at least cheer up a little.   There will be some kind of renegotiation because it is unavoidable. Britain is 'in ...

Since I started my blog three or four years back, I've had by this morning 66666 reads - if that is what a 'hit' is.   I ...

There is something incongruous, if not contradictory, about Julius Malema holding up on TV a copy of South Africa ’s constitution and swea...

When some idea or other becomes a buzzword, especially if it sounds impressive or alarming, it is time to stay calm, take a deep breath, a...

Radicals - reformers, activists, extremists, call them what you will - are part and not part of every society. Readers do not need example...

  South Africa does not need another commission of enquiry. It does not need an appeal to the Constitutional Court. It does not need a ...

Professional writers, assisted and managed by experienced subs and editors, produced the traditional media. But times have changed. You an...

The problem in SA is not that the ANC or President Zuma is uniquely corrupt, but that one party is unchallenged in power and has been for...

Heaven forbid people are stopped from blaming the government, the resort of authoritarian regimes. And heaven knows twenty years of ANC go...