Congrats this week go to Ewan and Brighton_Ro. The IP is sort of festive! https://www.abctales.com/story/ewan/kiss https://www.abctales.com/story/brightonro/thirteenth-floor https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip Merry Christmas to you all.

http://www.itv.com/hub/the-coming-war-on-china/2a4249a0001 The title is deliberately provocative. Does John Pilger mean trade war between the number one and two trading blocks in the world? Because we know that is already happening. President-elect Donald J Trump in his campaign –among other accusations – accused China of raping America and stealing job and the American economy was ‘hurt very badly by China with devaluation.’ The United States...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P5A2QFp0cE this moved me.

Story of the Week is something that's stayed with me since I first read it, so that was a no-brainer, however Poem of the Week has been really difficult, and if there were a method of splitting it three ways I definitely would. Big congratulations to Pingles for 'The invisible hand' and to Rosa Cruz for 'And Lie Beneath' - and two very honourable mentions for Bear's 'Thoughts From the Kitchen' and Philip Sidney's 'Boy in a Bedroom' https://www...

OK, I gave in. Yesterday morning I listened to 'the 20 best carols' on one of the freview channels, might have been E4. Much to my surprise they were - not bad!. Destiny's Child's 8 days of Christmas was the closest to a trad carol. It kept the original tune and the key line 'On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me etc'. The video, ah yes, these carols truly brought home to me the power of pop videos, showed a happy Beyonce and...

What attracted me to Elana Ferrante’s short, debut, novel was her refusal to publicise her books and the belief that a –good – book would find an audience. It seems counterintuitive, but the purity of such belief is hard to argue with, even though if I hadn’t read about her in the Observer Review , I wouldn’t know who she was and would not have read or written this review of her book. Twenty or thirty films in English are being sold to us every...

Congrats go to Catherine Poarch and Noo this week. Two excellent pieces - and the IP should be lots of fun: https://www.abctales.com/story/catherine-poarch/fernundaling https://www.abctales.com/story/noo/pebbles-beach-sissy-23rd-february-2000 https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip

Abuse – to put to a wrong or improper use. To attack in words; to revile. To harm or injure by wrong or cruel treatment. (Penguin Dictionary) Manipulation – to handle or operate skillfully. To control, exploit, or influence by artful, unfair, or insidious means, esp to one’s own advantage. (Penguin Dictionary) When I write of ‘electronic devices’, I am writing about mobile-phones and their content, Tablets and their use, Ipads, laptops,...

A writer has only one imperative or simple rule – read. Often I have little understanding of what I’m reading. Usually there is a but here. I do not understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, but…kinda like a meme from T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding: ‘We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started.’ Or Rumi’s parable of the elephant and six blind men. One holding onto a leg, or trunk, an...