Lee Dakin

Patriotism is about caring for your fellow citizens – all of them, not just the ones who buy peerages. It is about decently funding our national institutions and investing in our collective futures. It involves delivering a full and enriching education for the next generation, and providing decent care and respite for the elderly and vulnerable. It’s about ensuring we have a capable and well-founded health service, a justice system that is open to all – and which applies equally to all. Patriotism is about ensuring equality of life chances, and the possibility of a home and a family. It recognises that it doesn’t matter what colour, faith, gender or sexuality you are: every person in Britain is equally British, and division demeans us all. But simply being British isn’t enough. We live on this planet with billions of other people, and we have to make it work. So patriotism is building sound and convivial relationships with our neighbours and allies. It is tackling global climate change in congress with the entire world, not seeking ways to screw our rivals and condemn our grandkids to a terrifying heat death. Patriotism is about crushing corruption and fostering decency, rather than the other way around. Those things are patriotic. Not flags. Fuck your flags. Flags are just the wrapping paper around those things, and nothing more. Yet increasingly they’re wrapped around a hollowed-out nation.

Wrote this about flags and patriotism in 2021 (in The Decade In Tory). Stand by every word now.

25.08.2025 08:58 — 👍 444    🔁 176    💬 11    📌 11

In entertainment value, in what coaches can learn about their teams and in allowing smaller nations to actually win games, by and large, the Nations League is better not than not only the friendlies it has replaced but also the European qualifying stages for the World Cup and the Euros

09.06.2025 11:28 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

WE'RE BACK ON THE VERGE!

of relegation

08.04.2025 08:13 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I’m proud to call the amazing cartoonist Ed Wexler a friend.

27.01.2025 13:38 — 👍 37594    🔁 6980    💬 483    📌 201

Banksy drops another bomb.

22.01.2025 14:49 — 👍 5952    🔁 1804    💬 92    📌 98

youtu.be/w61mOvMrspw?...

09.01.2025 09:18 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

...to Channel 4's Sunday Brunch to find Adele Roberts being interviewed about making sport more accessible for all people, discussing legends of the past who paved the way for the stars of today.

I know who's version of the world I'd rather live in.

#bewoke #staywoke

24.11.2024 10:15 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This morning, I lazily fell asleep in front of the TV after watching Match of the Day and woke up to Laura Kuenssberg's show with Piers Morgan saying millions of people have just been to the ballot box and voted for Trump instead of the 'woke candidate'.

I immediately switched over...

1/2

24.11.2024 10:15 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Babel: Adventures in Translation. First published in 2019 by the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Babel: Adventures in Translation. First published in 2019 by the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Rear cover. Blurb: Throughout history, linguistic diversity has inspired people around the world to embark on adventurous journeys through the translation of texts. Lavishly illustrated with a diverse range of material, from Greek papyri to J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish and from illuminated manuscripts to Beatrix Potter, this innovative collection of essays tells the story of how ideas have travelled via the medium of translation across time into different languages and cultures.

#Babel: A fabulous book on translation through history, to the present, ending with the quandary of how to leave important messages to our descendants - showcasing the interconnectedness of languages around the world and our links to the distant past and people thousands of years into the future

19.11.2024 18:41 — 👍 10    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

UK must choose between EU and Trump, trade experts warn Pascal Lamy, former head of the WTO, says Britain will have to take sides if new US administration slaps hefty tariffs on imports, as fears grow over possible trade war

"The former head of the WTO has said that the UK should side with the European Union over trade and economic policies rather than a Donald Trump-led US, as fears grow over a possible global trade war."

Yeah. The UK, even after Brexit, does three times more trade with the EU than the US.

16.11.2024 19:48 — 👍 149    🔁 50    💬 8    📌 4