The Looking Glass

MR R. NUTTER Following the death of Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 it seemed appropriate to re-examine privatisation, one of the former Prime Minister’s most important policies. Indeed it seemed quite likely then that a new round of privatisations was in the offing in the years ahead with Royal Mail the top of the ‘for sale’ list. Following her election in 1979 Margaret Thatcher’s government and John Major who followed her embarked on an unprecedented sale of state assets which included gas, water, electricity coal and rail. In addition British Airways, British Steel and British Telecom joined the private sector after years of state ownership. Most off these firms became public limited companies (PLCs) with their shares traded on the stock market. Although often seen as controversial at the time none of these privatised utilities were taken back into the state ownership by the subsequent the Blair and Brown Labour governments with the possible exception of Network Rail in 2003 which w...

The issue of how the New Testament authors dealt with slavery is one that continues to be controversial, often used by atheists as grounds for attacking, if not rejecting the Bible as a source if moral authority outright. [1] This post will suggest that this reading of the new Testament texts is simplistic and the New Testament authors’ references to slavery have to be understood within the Greco-Roman world’s concept of a household. Makeup of the Roman household Didymus was the court philosopher of Augustus, a stoic, seen as a confidant of the princeps and the author of Epitome Peripatetic Ethics and Politics found in the fifth century anthology of Johannes Stobaeus. [2] The section dealing with household management is found in Stobaeus 2.147.26-152.25. Here we find that Didymus, or other Stoic philosophers he is relying upon, have slightly modified the thinking of Aristotle, probably in the light of the different political situation the principate put them in. [3] Aristotle constr...