The View from Cullingworth

Market Murmurations (and why supermarkets are beautiful)

What murmurations teach us is that all these ideas of how markets are guided or directed - as wannabe prime minister Andy Burnham put it, we mustn’t be…

May 22 • Simon Cooke

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April 2026

Freedom and Machiavelli's 'Armed Prophet': What The Prince tells us about how to respond to Militant Islamic Supremacy

We must stop believing that the mere fact of liberty and human rights will win, that we don’t need armed men operating in the shadows to defend that…

Apr 30 • Simon Cooke

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The rhetoric of triangulation: a Zack Polanski case study

A cynical inconsistency of political presentation makes it difficult to construct a programme for government that cuts through the aggressive…

Apr 28 • Simon Cooke

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The Six Second Rule. How Opinion Polling is overused in policy development.

What can you do in six seconds? Walk thirty feet, hit the bad monster a couple of times with your sword, hide, or answer a question about a massively…

Apr 19 • Simon Cooke

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Having half of new homes as Social or Council houses makes the housing crisis worse.

You don’t need council houses, you don’t need rent controls, you don’t need national housing regulators, you don’t need new regulations - you need to…

Apr 15 • Simon Cooke

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As society collapses we must know our enemies

If society collapses, it will do so because politicians, writers and priests exploit - for entirely selfish ends - people’s real concerns. These men are…

Apr 9 • Simon Cooke

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March 2026

Predictions for the 7th May elections in England (the 'don't vote, it only encourages them' edition)

It is one of those purposeless performances, an exercise in democracy where the people elected have no real power beyond the ability to inflate…

Mar 31 • Simon Cooke

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England's folk tradition includes St George and his flag. Denying this is to deny England.

Sewell’s reimagined, almost expropriated, folkiness, shows in her ‘well, actually you know’ story about England’s flag and patron saint - about what…

Mar 20 • Simon Cooke

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On the genesis of genocide (and why Islamophobia is a fiction)

People that ask about the origins of what we’re told to call “islamophobia” should perhaps pay attention to the Yazidi experience.

Mar 11 • Simon Cooke

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There isn’t going to be a Northern Renaissance. Not a chance.

Even if the zoom zoom whizz whizz projects are built - high speed rail, tramways, concert halls and football stadiums - there won’t be any renaissance…

Mar 7 • Simon Cooke

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February 2026

Snobs (they're everywhere and you don't have to like them)

The snob is not trying to bring you gently into a better word but rather telling you that, because you dress or speak wrongly, you can’t be part of my…

Feb 23 • Simon Cooke

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"Mythic Maggie": Exploring the Thatcher Legend's Origins

Popular opinions and comments about Margaret Thatcher reflect a mythic idea of Maggie not the real woman or her governments

Feb 13 • Simon Cooke

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