As promised. Here are  some of my FB ramblings from last year.

May 29th

So. You Jewish parliamentary candidates who claim to be Zionists and the voice of the Jewish community fighting from within, bla bla – do you want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister? If not, please explain why the heck you are standing, let alone why I should vote for you. Last chance, guys.

May 30th

Corbyn supporters asking Emma Barnett if she is a Zionist (after he had Abbott-ed himself on the cost of a key policy) as if that equates with fascist. But they are the fascists, bullying people with sneering innuendos because they don’t comply with their group-think. Same bullying we see on campuses across UK and USA.

If Corbyn is elected these people will be even more emboldened whilst the party leadership will, no doubt, bring forth Baroness Chakrabarti to express some platitudes.

The more I see and hear from Abbott and Costzero the more farcical it becomes and the more dangerous.

July 31st (Centenary of Battle of Ypres)

On this sombre anniversary which coincides with Tisha B’Av this year, it is sobering to think of the following:

50 years ago I was at school, 12 years old. 50 years before that day the 3rd battle of Ypres began. The same distance in time between that awful day and the summer holidays at the end of my second year at Grammar school and that summer day and today.

My generation was born in the shadow of two wars, not just one.

My mother-in-law’s father caught a Blighty on the Somme; my mother’s father was sent home in 1918 with the King’s shilling being totally unfit for service.

If the shrapnel that wounded my wife’s grandfather had been a few inches above where it hit, or my own grandfather had been a fit young man, there is a strong chance that not only I and my children, but all of our grandfathers’ descendants would not have walked this earth.

Such are the vagaries of fate and the inconceivable randomness of our lives. This is the excruciating poignancy of such anniversaries where we mourn not just the dead but the forever unborn potential of what might have been.

26th September

Here we see the irredeemable, burnt-out husk of a 21st century disaster – and behind him Brighton West Pier.

Well, that brings us to last year’s Labour Party Conference but this year’s is certainly no joke.