Happy New Year. I've made my new year resolutions. It wasn't difficult as most are quite similar to last years. One new one is to take less note of London-centric chatter. Another is to continue to diversity my news sources. Happily, listening less to the BBC's news broadcasts with their in-built 'progressive' bias will neatly combine the two.
This quote from Jonathan Swift fits well: "It is the folly of too many, to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom." *
This is from The Conduct of the Allies (1711) and is referenced in Oxford Essential Quotations. It is as apt now as it was 300 years ago. Indeed, it was probably apt long before it was written, and centuries before coffee arrived here. After all, since the Conquest, the history of the UK is a story of London and the marginalised other – where I and the majority of other UK residents somehow manage to live.
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* The same could be (and no doubt has been) said of Edinburgh.
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