Britons may be forgiven for waking up this morning thinking they are in a staging of Les Mis. For today the news is this: benefit cheats can be imprisoned for up to ten years. Now, I don't know about you, but that's the definition of draconian. It may be morally repugnant to cheat the state of some money, but very few crimes legitimately warrant doing serious time in the klink. Hard time is a serious thing to inflict on anyone - and it is likely to make a soft criminal a hardened one on release. Rather than impose longer sentences for victimless crimes (the state is not a person), the state should find alternatives to cells, bars and Wormwood.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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