Category: The Republic

The Satanic Verses 30 Years On

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Somewhere on my bookshelves, I used to have a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Its pages slightly browning, because even though I never read it, it must be over 20 years ago that I bought it, and for some of those years it sat on a window sill in the sun. But had it survived the downsizing, and terrible cull of books, that took place when we moved to Thame?

It didn’t take long for me to find it, and yes, it had survived, and is still on my list of Books To Read. Some time. (Being able to find it so quickly, incidentally, is an indicator of how few books remain…)

This search happened after I was reminded of Rushdie’s book by the recent BBC2 documentary, The Satanic Verses 30 Years On. In this film, presenter Mobeen Azhar examines the lasting effect Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses has had on the Muslim community and how the events of 1989 continue to have an impact today. Those ‘events’ followed the book’s first publication, when Muslims in Britain were scandalized by Rushdie’s fiction, convinced that it was a blasphemous affront to Islam. Huge demonstrations took place in Britain, where the book was notoriously burned in the public square in Bradford, and in other countries, especially Iran and the USA. Ayatollah Khomeini issued the notorious fatwah calling upon faithful Muslims to assassinate Rushdie, and death threats were also made against the book’s publishers and all the individuals who had been involved in its publication. 59 people lost their lives in the most violent demonstrations around the world.

At the time there were laws against blasphemy in England and Wales, but they only protected the Christian religion. For a time there was some discussion, supported by a number of liberals and Christians, about extending the law to protect Islam and other faiths. In the end this did not happen: instead, the blasphemy law was repealed in its entirety in 2008, and may be considered to have been replaced (in part) by legislation against religious and racial hate crimes.

It was nothing but a good thing for the Blasphemy Law to have been repealed. It was ridiculous and out-dated, had hardly ever been used by Christians in the hundreds of years of its existence, and the possibility of it being used by Muslims in a case such as the Rushdie case, simply appalling. It’s also an unfortunate reality of the differences between the world faiths, that there are passages even in the sacred Scriptures that could be construed as blasphemous by the adherents of other religions. Christians ‘blasphemously’ (to Muslims) believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The Quran ‘blasphemously’ (to Christians) asserts that Jesus is not the Son of God, and that he did not die on the cross. This is just the start of the problem…

Mobeen Azhar’s documentary followed up the events of 1989, interviewing some of the men who had been involved in the protests. His conclusion was that, although the protests had given the Muslim community the opportunity to make a protest which was, as much as anything, about the racial intolerance and disadvantage they had suffered, it had also had many negative consequences. In particular, the caricature of the Muslim bogeyman was born, because of the way the tabloid press reported the riots. Azhar’s final comment:

“It ushered in this age of division, with Muslims being seen as the other. But we’re not outsiders. We’re a really important part of British society. But we have to be able to stomach debates about our culture, and actually our religion as well. Even if we find them offensive, we have to be able to do that. And it’s only when we can do that, that the ghost of The Satanic Verses will truly be put to bed.”

That blasphemy is still considered a crime anywhere in the world, in the 21st century, is a scandal. We only have to look at the terrible way it is used in Pakistan and other Islamist countries, where not only Christians and ‘apostates’ from Islam are routinely lynched or murdered, but also Muslim politicians and justice officials who try to protect them. And this in a country which, as a member of the United Nations, is supposed to subscribe to the UN Declaration on Human Rights, with its protection of Freedom of Religion. (Including guarantees of the freedom to choose one’s religion, to hold to any religion or none, and to change one’s religious beliefs without fear of reprisal.)

Are human beings offended by material insulting to the God they believe in? They need to just get over it. Is God offended? I think God is likely to have a good laugh about the presumption of us thinking that God might be. But even if God is offended, I’m pretty sure God knows how to deal with it. Probably by grace, mercy, and love, and (I hope) opening the blasphemer’s eyes to see the foolishness of insulting the Divine.

Literacy and life expectancy

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A new documentary, H is for Harry, to be released in cinemas on 7 March, focuses on the fact that white, working class boys form the demographic that does worst in our education system. It’s said that 1 in 5 children left primary school in 2018 unable to read or write properly. I’ve heard this statistic before, and understood the difference it makes to life chances, employment, and health, but I was especially shocked to read in the Guardian report on this documentary about the difference it also makes to overall life expectancy:

Adults with poor literacy skills are more likely to be unemployed or in low-paid jobs. There is a link between low levels of literacy and shorter life expectancy, depression and obesity. According to the National Literacy Trust (NLT), a boy born in Stockton-on-Tees, which has some of the most serious literacy challenges in the country, has a life expectancy 26.1 years shorter than a boy born in north Oxford.

26 years off a life expectancy of around 80 is 54. Let that sink in.

A couple of days ago I posted about the differences in library funding between the UK and Finland. It’s instructive to note a few other comparisons as well, described in another article in the Guardian. Life expectancy in Finland is rising; in the UK it has stopped rising. Infant mortality is twice as high in the UK as in Finland. Finland has some of the best education in Europe, because it trusts and rewards its teachers, so that professional morale is high. It also provides free school meals for all pupils, so that no child goes through the school day unable to learn because of hunger. And its system is truly comprehensive, with none of the blight caused by our private schools and selective grammars creaming off the most advantaged children. Finland is dealing effectively with homelessness, and its truly preventative health care measures include the provision of genuinely affordable housing for all, so that people can afford good food rather than paying much of their income on the kind of astronomical private sector rents we see in our system. Finland spends a slightly lower proportion of its GDP on health care provision than the UK, but it can afford to because doctors don’t need to be paid as much as they are in the UK, since housing costs are lower. For every 10,000 people in Finland, there are 32 doctors, compared to 28 in the UK, and there are 40 hospital beds for every 10,000 Finns, compared to 26 in the UK.

There’s more: Finland is also seeking to introduce a truly universal basic income. It has the best green credentials in the world, ranking top in the 2016 Environmental Performance Index. Add to this that Finland is one of the most equal societies in the world: the gap between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% is one of the lowest in the world, second only to Japan.

If we’re looking for ways to improve British society in the coming years (if such an aspiration is even possible) we could do a lot worse than look at how Finland does it.

Why do we need libraries, anyway?

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I’ve said it before, I may well say it again: inside this retired vicar’s breast there still beats the heart of a librarian – albeit one who is very relieved he didn’t spend his whole life in librarianship, in view of the trials and tribulations libraries have been suffering in this country, for as long as I or probably anyone else can remember. Just a few of the statistics tell it all:

  • In 2016 alone, 105 public libraries closed in the UK.
  • Between 2016 and 2017, public library spending fell by £66 million.
  • Annual UK spending on public libraries is just £14.40 per head of the population.
  • The UK is only the 17th most literate nation in the world.

Meanwhile, in Finland, which the UN declared in 2016 the most literate nation in the world they spend £50.50 per inhabitant on public libraries. Nearly four times as much. They’ve just spent €100 million on a new library in Helsinki, called Oodi, even though there are already 36 public libraries in the city.

I wonder if there could be any connection between these statistics, and the highest rate of literacy?

In a May 2018 story in the Guardian about Finland’s libraries, the report begins with the inspiring story of a young girl named Nasima Razmyar who arrived in Finland from Afghanistan in 1992 as a political refugee and asylum seeker. Her father had been a former Afghan diplomat, forced to flee with his family to seek safety elsewhere.

“A library card was the first thing that was mine, that I had ever owned,” says Nasima Razmyar. … Unable to speak the language, with scant resources, and trying to make sense of the strange new city she found herself in, she was stunned to discover she was entitled to a library card that would grant her books – for free. Her appreciation of the privilege has not faded: “I still have that library card in my wallet today,” she says proudly.

That girl is now the deputy mayor of Helsinki, and justly proud of the new library which provides so much more than most of what we in the UK associate with libraries. The Finns see libraries as the visible symbol of their beliefs in education, equality and citizenship, which make me want to ask hard questions about whether we even mean the same things as they do, when we or our politicians mouth those words.

Public libraries are clearly one of the key providers of equality of opportunity. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why successive cost-cutting Governments have starved them of resources?

The Elephant in the Nave

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We’ve been worshipping in our current church for nearly 2½ years now, and I must have lost count of the number of times I’ve been aware of the elephant in the nave. The huge Thing that may not be named, that has almost never been named, that (presumably, for some reason) no one dares to name.

The elephant is called Brexit.

Surely it would have been possible to mention it at least in the intercessions, when we pray for this country. You wouldn’t have to take sides and pray for a swift and brutal no-deal Brexit, or for no Brexit at all; surely you could pray for ‘a successful outcome to the Brexit negotiations, that would ensure the best and most prosperous outcome for all people in this country, and for Europe’. And people could entwine that neutral form of words with whatever meaning they wanted to attach to it. But no, it has barely had a mention of any kind.

This morning our curate, greatly daring, preached on The Politics of Jesus, from Luke 4.14-21.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

“I’m not talking about party politics,” he says, “I’m not telling you who to vote for.”

And he goes on, “No one gets left out, or left behind, in Jesus’ kind of politics.”

Disingenuous, I call it. If that’s not telling us at least who not to vote for, I don’t know what would be.

Answering Giles Fraser

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Actually, I really want to like Giles Fraser. He has often written insightful, thought-provoking articles in the Church Times and the Guardian. He took a principled stand in the whole affair of Occupy St Paul’s. He seems like an all-round good guy. So I really can’t understand why he is so adamantly pro-Brexit.

Since yesterday’s March for a People’s Vote:

he’s been tweeting and retweeting this kind of message:

What 700,000 said to 17.4 million: “we know best”.

But what do the People’s March have to say to those who voted Leave because they felt profoundly unattended to? Just more of the same?

Less a demo, more a Waitrose queue.

One of his retweets (not Giles himself) describes anti-Brexit argument as

“smug, patronising, neoliberal middle class pish”.

Let’s leave aside the snide gibes about the middle classes. Do they mean anything more than “These are opinions that I don’t like, that are held by some educated people that I want to feel superior to”?

Here’s what I want to say:

Passionately wanting to Stop Brexit does not mean we don’t care about the people who felt the Referendum was their big chance to stick two fingers up at the whole Establishment, the whole political system that has ignored them and simply not worked for them. Yes, these people have been profoundly unattended to; that is a shame and a scandal that ought to be addressed; the Governments of Right and Pseudo-Left that have ignored them for the last 40 years should not be forgiven; the works of those Governments (austerity, privatisation, under-funding of the NHS, failure to regulate banks, or to deal with inequality, or to redistribute wealth through just taxation) should be undone.

But all those things are not the fault of the EU! Indeed, if we had been more like France and Germany and the Netherlands and Denmark and other countries in Europe, instead of constantly bleating and whinging and making out that we were a ‘special case’, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Our country and society and political system are seriously broken and ought to be mended. But you don’t mend a broken leg by cutting it off. We won’t mend a broken United Kingdom by cutting it off from the body of Europe, which is its best chance of health and improvement.

And, “What 700,000 said to 17.4 million: “we know best”?” I think we were saying, “We believe we know better?” So what? Perhaps we do know better? The great idea of democracy is that every person is of equal worth and their vote is equally important. But some things are too important to be left to that kind of a vote. I wouldn’t want the plan for my brain surgery to be determined by a majority vote of the whole hospital staff: I’d want the experts to say and do what needed to be done. I’m not talking about a General Election here: the choice of a Government is relatively trivial in comparison. (Though it beggars belief that, like turkeys voting for Christmas, the majority still votes for Government by the rich, for the rich; and that we cling to First Past The Post, in preference to a system that gives more weight to every vote cast.) Suppose we had a referendum on capital punishment? We won’t have one, for fear the majority would vote to restore the death penalty. The view of the people who are (or have self-appointed themselves as?) people with a better-tuned moral compass, is that that result would be just plain wrong.

I believe the EU referendum was similarly ill-judged and produced a similarly wrong result. When the majority of educated economic opinion (though God knows I’m no lover of the hierocracy of a priesthood of economists), of EU opinion, of world opinion, was that Brexit was / will be catastrophically wrong, a kind of national and economic suicide – then we should let our future be guided by that educated opinion, rather than by people’s general and justified dissatisfaction with how our Governments have been doing.

I think Giles Fraser is wrong about Brexit. Middle class or not, I still believe staying in the EU is the best future for all of us, in the UK and in Europe. And our best hope of establishing a more just, fair, social democratic Commonwealth for our nation.

Robert Peston’s WTF?

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WTF?WTF? by Robert Peston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Robert Peston for Prime Minister!

His North London Jewish background is so familiar to me from my own history and native place. He’s my kind of political commentator, too, and in this book (bracketed by a letter to his much-loved late father) he addresses the problem of why the world has gone ‘bonkers’. How come the world’s most successful, wealthy democracies are throwing themselves into the arms of mad populist leaders, and voting for such lunacies as Brexit and Trump?

Peston’s analysis and prescriptions sound totally like common sense; yet in the midst of all this madness which so often leaves me feeling really depressed, he somehow snatches hope, and a degree of optimism, from the jaws of despair.

The key fact is that behind the madness of those 2016 votes, lies the deep dissatisfaction of all those in our societies who feel they have been left far behind in the growing prosperity they see around them. It’s this inequality of wealth, opportunity, prospects, and the fair sharing of the wealth of nations, that we need to address and radically change. It’s a call to the 48% to stop trying to stop Brexit (and if we can’t stop it, at least hoping it will be the unmitigated disaster we’ve all along said it would be), and to work as hard as we can to make it work the best it can. What’s needed is some kind of ‘Brexit mission’ to reunite the country, and mend what’s broken in our economy and politics.

As Peston says, he doesn’t have all the answers, and maybe some of the answers he has are also bonkers. But we at least need to be thinking, and especially talking, about the issues he raises here.

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In which I waver from my faith – in democracy

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Hand on heart, I have a terrible confession to make. I have been one of those — and we are many, many — who have been secretly wondering if democracy is such a great idea after all. When we see Donald Trump in the White House, and the United Kingdom set on a collision course with the iceberg of a no-deal Brexit — all as a result of the democratic process — aren’t we bound to ask ourselves that question?

I’ve even come up with lots of bright ideas for how to remedy the situation, by reverting to some kind of a limited franchise. People like that foolish woman who greeted the announcement of the 2016 General Election with the cry, “Not another one!” She’d be on my little list. Anyone who didn’t want to vote would be on my list. Anyone who didn’t vote would. Anyone who reads the Daily Mail or the Murdoch press…

They’d all be disenfranchised, and because it was their own fault, there would be concomitant small curtailments of their civil rights. You see how it begins? I’m already ten steps to becoming a Fascist dictator!

So it’s great that Philip Collins has written When They Go Low, We Go High, published last year by 4th Estate, and surely not well enough known. It’s quickly rising up my list of Books That Everyone Must Read (especially if they want to be permitted to vote). (No!) Its subtitle is ‘Speeches that shape the world – and why we need them’. Philip Collins is a journalist, and was chief speechwriter for Tony Blair from 2004 to 2007. Though I’m trying hard not to hold that against him. But chiefly, he is passionate about democracy. This book is all about his conviction that liberal democracy is not only the best form of government, but the only one that really makes human flourishing possible. But he freely admits that democracy is in crisis, endangered on many fronts; though this is also nothing new. Perpetual crisis and danger seems, in fact, to be the permanent state of democracy.

The book quotes and analyses many of the most important speeches that have been made all down the ages, from the time of Pericles to Barack Obama, about the importance of government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’. The list includes Cicero, Lincoln, Kennedy, Churchill, Reagan, Elizabeth I, Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King among others. Alongside the extensive extracts are Collins’s comments about how each speech works, what makes it great and important, and why it matters.

The five main sections of the book define five political virtues:

  • through politics the voice of the people is heard
  • politics commits us to persuasion rather than force
  • through politics the demand for recognition can be heard
  • equal consideration of all citizens in free societies is the means by which the material condition of the population is improved
  • when politics prevails, the worst of human instincts can be tamed.

Among the greatest dangers currently facing democracy is populism. On this, Collins writes (p.81)

Populism begins with recriminations about the governing elite and, to use Donald Trump’s extraordinary allegation, their ‘criminal enterprise’. It ends with recriminations about the constitution. All the while it claims to have special knowledge of the will of the people. It is a fraud from start to finish. Plato hated democracy because he thought it led to populist rulers. There is a risk, if we do not find the words to advertise the virtues of conventional politics, that Plato’s anguished prediction will be proved right. The task for the responsible democrat is therefore to describe what has gone awry and find words for a better future, like the wonderful writing in Jefferson’s 1801 Inaugural Address and the compressed poetic expression of Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg. The solution to disenchanted politics cannot be populism. It has to be better, more enchanted politics.

I realise, reading this, that I had fallen from grace, become a backslider with regard to my faith in Democracy. I repent and recommit, and hope to make amends. But that means that, just as the subtitle of this blog pleads for a re-enchanted Church, so my citizenship pleads for just that re-enchanted politics.

What I want to say

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What I’ve prepared to say at the Eight O’Clock Holy Communion this coming Sunday (the Tenth Sunday after Trinity). As usual, preaching to myself before I preach to the congregation:

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. (Luke 19.41-42)

It’s probably the year 30 AD. In Luke’s account, Jesus is approaching the holy city for what will be his last Passover. He has foreseen his death and knows that now it draws near. Yet it’s not himself, but Jerusalem, the City, the people, his fellow-Jews, that he weeps for. Why? Because they do not know the things that belong unto their peace.

All they knew was that they were oppressed, under the Roman occupation, part of an Empire they hated and despised, governed by Gentiles whom they regarded as unclean, outside of God’s covenant and therefore hated by God. They expected and longed for a Messiah who would be a king, a man of war, a conqueror to drive out the Romans, set them free, establish a glorious new godly kingdom.

And this would be disaster for them. It would lead to uprisings, rebellions, eventually to the Jewish War of 66-73 AD which would result in total defeat. Jerusalem would be destroyed and the Temple destroyed, never again to be rebuilt.

If only they had known the things that belonged to their peace! If only they had believed Jesus and embraced his teaching about the true kingdom, the kingdom of God and what it means. (See the Sermon on the Mount, and the Gospels passim.)

But when I consider the world today, I seem to hear exactly the same words: If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.

Jesus is still weeping over a world that turns away from blessing – the blessing that comes from seeking God and living by his will – and instead embraces the untruth and the lies that can only lead to disaster.

I think only of our own country. I don’t want to talk about Brexit: whatever views I have about it, some of you will agree with me, and probably just as many will disagree strongly. None of us really knows what will happen next year, to us or the EU, and the problem seems to be that all of us believe only the facts and forecasts we want to believe…

But I already hate what has happened to this country in the last few years: that we have become so divided, not only about this issue, but about so many others as well. Not just divided, but hatefully divided. Instead of being able to have a calm, sensible, rational debate about things, with people who hold different views – trying to listen to one another, to discover the facts and what is true and right, and then discern together the best course of action, all we have now is not debate at all. It’s become almost usual to curse, accuse, hate and vilify people who hold different views. Not only to suspect them of the worst possible motives, but to publicly accuse them of being traitors or worse. Social media has a lot to answer for in this respect, of course, because people feel able to say all kinds of things on the Internet that they would hardly dream of saying out loud in public, or to a person’s face. (Though sadly, saying it in the safety of the Internet makes them bold enough to do just that.) But it’s not just social media! The headlines of supposedly responsible newspapers, and the tone of their editorials, so often seem to want to stir up violent attitudes and reactions, suspicion, mistrust, hatred of ‘enemies’.

What happened to our country? Where did it go? What happened to British values of tolerance, openness, welcome, hospitality, freedom to hold different points of view, and express them without fear, without being accused of being somehow criminal or evil, without being threatened with violence or death?

These are horrible times to live in, perhaps even dangerous times. (And let me quickly say we are all infected, none of us is immune: don’t we all find ourselves beginning to hate people on the other side of these current issues?)

So what are we, as Christians, to do? Join in with the haters, those who want to make and to crush enemies? Run away and hide our heads in the sand, and pretend that all is well?

I believe that we have a different and special calling, which may be the only thing that holds out any hope of healing. Let us, at least, be people who know the things that belong unto our peace.

Because we are Christians, we are people of Resurrection. We believe in life from the dead; we believe in hope even when others think all hope has gone. We are people of reconciliation, because Jesus died on the cross to reconcile the whole world, all people, to God.

So we must

  • Believe: in all that Gospel we claim to believe.
  • Pray: for our country; but especially love and pray for our ‘enemies’, because that’s what Jesus told us to do.
  • Seek God’s kingdom above all us, because it alone, rather than any of the kingdoms of this world, is the kingdom in which our true citizenship is found.

Above all, not give in to what the World wants to do to us: namely, to make us afraid, make us hate, make us give up hope.

Let’s stand tall and say: No, I won’t give in to that. I will not become what you want me to be.

Prayer, in the words of Psalm 46:

GOD is our hope and strength : a very present  help in trouble.

2 Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved : and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea;

3 Though the waters thereof rage and swell : and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same.

7 The Lord of hosts is with us : the God of Jacob is our refuge.

10 Be still then, and know that I am God : I will be exalted among the heathen, and I will be exalted in the earth.

11 The Lord of hosts is with us : the God of Jacob is our refuge.

 

Lost Connections, by Johann Hari

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When he was 18 years old, Johann Hari went to his GP seeking help. He explained that he felt an enormous emotional pain that seemed to be leaking out of him uncontrollably. His doctor told him a story: that his distress was caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain, specifically a low level of something called serotonin. By taking antidepressants, his serotonin level could be restored and his depression would go away. Johann left the doctor, collected his prescription, and took the first of thousands of little tablets. Almost at once he felt relief, his pain seemed to be lifted. But after a couple of months, it returned and soon he felt just as bad as he had before. He returned to the GP, who prescribed a stronger dose. Again he felt an immediate improvement, which lasted for a few months until once more he fell into a severe depression. This process was repeated several times, until Johann was on the strongest dose of SSRIs, which he continued to take for 13 years. The side effects were horrifying. He put on huge amounts of weight as a consequence of almost compulsive junk food eating. And worst of all, he was still depressed. The drugs were not working for him, and he was not alone: although exact figures are not available for the UK, it is estimated that 1 in 5 US citizens are on antidepressants.

It was at this stage that he began to ask why? Why are so many people depressed? Why are chemical treatments apparently so ineffective? What alternative remedies might there be?

His latest book, Lost Connections: Uncovering the real causes of depression and the unexpected solutions, describes the results of his questions. He spent years looking at research data and interviewing the scientists who had collected it. He travelled all over the world, visiting many of the researchers but also going to places where different, innovative ways of dealing with depression had been tried.

His concluded that depression is not in the head, but mostly caused by real factors in the world outside. The one thing most of those factors have in common is that modern society is sick, and it should come as no surprise that so many people respond to that sickness by falling ill themselves. Johann sums this up by describing it as a ‘loss of connection’, because of the way we are forced to live in the modern world. Among the nine causes of depression and anxiety that he has identified, he lists disconnection from meaningful work, from other people, from meaningful values, from childhood trauma, from status and respect, from the natural world, and from a hopeful and secure future.

If you’re like me, you will respond to a lot of this by thinking, Of course, I’ve always known that; but why then don’t we, or doesn’t society, do something about it? Part of the answer is that Big Pharma makes billions of dollars from the widespread use of antidepressants (also they pay for and conduct most of the research which ‘proves’ the effectiveness of chemical antidepressants); but another large part is that there are too many other political vested interests that resist the major reforms to society that would help solve the problem.

This is a brilliant book, informative, full of heart-warming stories that you just long to see turned into one of those ‘feel-good’ films about people battling against overwhelming odds, to turn around their own lives, and the life of their neighbourhood. There are lots of things we can do as individuals, to lift ourselves out of depression (or to improve our emotional health generally); but much more than that is needed. We need to be working for radical changes to society and the way we live. It doesn’t have to be like this. The changes we need are hard to imagine, difficult to begin, and yet many of them don’t require a lot of expense: they’re simple enough to do, they’re not rocket science.

We know this stuff! Why don’t we do it, and why don’t we protest and keep protesting to the people in power to make these things happen?

Who’d have thought I’d be agreeing with Elton John? But I do, when he says of this book, “If you have ever been down, or felt lost, this amazing book will change your life… Read it now.”

See and read much more about it on Johann Hari’s website.