Genuine democracy is frequently messy, not stage-managed.
For the well-heeled elites, the 90s and 00s were a non-stop party with no hangover: even after the financial crash, the fortunes of Britain's 1,000 richest families more than doubled.
Jobs have become more precarious and staff turnover has increased while union membership has plummeted, weakening workplace solidarity.
The 'free market' is a creed that stirs up near religious devotion among its believers. It is in fact a con, a myth, a great deception.
For years, media moguls and campaigns bankrolled by the rich have fed the lie that migrants are the cause of injustices propagated by the powerful: the failure to build housing, the strain on public services by cuts, the lack of secure jobs, the decline in real wages.
Grief is like wandering through a minefield, as my mother puts it: however carefully you tread, a sudden detonation can happen out of nowhere. A song played in a supermarket; an overheard phrase; someone in the distance who your mind cruelly suggests is your loved one for a fleeting moment.
Philanthropists decide how to spend their money based on their own personal whims, rather than what is best for the social good.
Austerity and economic insecurity have collided with the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, at a time when global instability and warfare have driven millions to flee violence and persecution, a minority of whom have arrived on European shores to be met with hostility.
A party committed to defending the economic interests of rich elites could never win by saying so.
If only Brexit would go away. It sucks the political oxygen away from the issues we should all be discussing: like low wages, insecure jobs and the housing crisis.
University should foster imagination and creativity, enriching society in the process.
We should all expect to be able to die with comfort, dignity and love. Our society does not lack the wealth to realise this aspiration, but the willpower.
Britain's end-of-life and palliative care services are a national travesty. That a public debate on this crisis is so sorely lacking has much to do with our fear of confronting dying and death.
Opposition to immigration is an emotional argument, and human beings are emotional, not robots powered by data.
Modern capitalism is based on a myth: that thriving private entrepreneurs generate wealth through their own hard work, innovation and get-up-and-go.
Democracy is a bundle of rights and freedoms wrestled from the powerful. Our rulers only surrender their power when compelled to - when the cost of resisting pressure from below becomes greater than the cost of giving ground to it.
Neoliberalism has left Britain's boss classes drunk on triumphalism, paying themselves record salaries and bonuses while their workers are imprisoned by poverty and insecurity. It was never going to last.
So much of our lives is surrendered to subordinating ourselves to the needs and whims of others, turning human beings into cash cows rather than independent, well-rounded individuals.
Who can begrudge the generosity of the wealthy, you might say. Wherever you stand on the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny global elite, surely such charity should be applauded? But philanthropy is a dangerous substitution for progressive taxation.
The vast majority of people back higher taxes on the rich. Yet these are fringe ideas within most of the mainstream media, which marginalises those who support them.
