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A chance post on a local history Facebook page around eighteen months ago started me on a quest. Iron Bridge in Hanwell carried I K Brunel’s Great Western Railway over the Uxbridge Turnpike. As usual, Isambard was not content with a straightforward structure but built a spectacular three-way crossing. Girder failures and a fire caused an expenditure of three times the initial cost of the original bridge in repairs and eventually it was replaced by a steel structure in the early 20th century. The bridge today is an archaeological novelty in that elements of the seven bridges that have stood there since the late 1830s remain and are visible in plain sight. My new pamphlet charts the history of Iron Bridge, a very familiar landmark close to Ealing where I grew up. Of all of my publishing ventures this is probably the most self-indulgent. I could have submitted it to a magazine but nothing obvious was appropriate. Anyway, I think it makes a good story and although there is nothing previously unknown in the account, it does draw together several threads and further increases my admiration of I K Brunel. 
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On this side of the pond we watched with mounting disbelief as the American people voted to give a convicted misogynist felon complete control of the presidency and both houses of congress. This is the man who instigated a mass assault on the centre of government attempting to overthrow the result of the previous election. Furthermore, he implied violent disorder if he didn’t win this election and declares that he will pardon the January 6 rioters when he assumes office.
Could it get any worse? It just has. The sitting president has pardoned his son from a series of gun and tax-fraud charges that would almost certainly have seen him serve time in prison. The fact that he said many times that he would not do this just reveals himself to his enemies as a self-proclaimed liar. Biden justifies his actions by reading directly from Trump’s playbook—the pursuit of Hunter Biden through the courts was, he says, a ‘political act’ intended only to harm him, i.e. Joe Biden. The Bidens, of course, have nothing to lose by this decision and both will now fade into obscurity. But if Trump needed an excuse to pardon the rioters—and others—Biden has just handed it to him on a plate. It’s difficult to see how the essential separation of the executive from the judiciary, once sundered, can ever be restored. |
AuthorWelcome to the Mirli Books blog written by Peter Maggs Archives
December 2024
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