<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="0.92">
<channel>
	<title>Terence Blacker</title>
	<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment</link>
	<description>Regular commentary from the author Terence Blacker, including his most recent Independent articles and a regular blog.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:38:47 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<language>en</language>
	<!-- generator="WordPress/3.0.1" -->

	<item>
		<title>Some more bossy advice for authors: downsize spiritually</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Normally a sunny person who likes to look for the positive in life, I seem to have fallen victim to a certain cynicism while writing my Endpaper column for the Spring edition of The Author, published by the Society of Authors. Maybe I really do believe that, as an author, you should should embrace Buddhist simplicity and &#8216;walk through your...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/blog/some-more-bossy-advice-for-authors-downsize-spiritually/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The truth about creative writing: nobody knows anything</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the past few weeks, I have been landed in trouble by, among others,  Somerset Maugham, Rachel Cusk, Leo Tolstoy and Geoff Dyer. Here is the problem. As a service to the community (and a pleasure to myself), I have taken to starting the day by posting a couple of “writers&#8217; rules”   similar to those...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/blog/the-truth-about-creative-writing-nobody-knows-anything/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Traditional husbands are an endangered species</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For those who are finding that everyday life is just a little bit too easygoing at present, here is a new crisis to help wake you in the early hours with an attack of the horrors. There is a terrible decline in the supply of what the press call &#8220;traditional husbands&#8221;. It is not a...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/from-the-independent/traditional-husbands-are-an-endangered-species/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Alarmism that&#8217;s no help to children</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the side-effects of living in a sensation-hungry culture is that the stoked emotionalism of tabloid headlines has become respectable. Not only do politicians prefer to go for feeling rather than thought, but revered institutions come to believe that, in order to win public attention, they need to be hysterical. This week, thanks to...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/from-the-independent/alarmism-thats-no-help-to-children/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Come off it, Paxo, you can&#8217;t blame the baby boomers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It has become fashionable, indeed almost obligatory, for public figures in their fifties and sixties to turn on their own generation, and blame it for more or less all of our present problems. The baby-boomers, we are frequently told by one of their number, are shiftless, hedonistic, selfish and generally more fortunate than they deserve...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/from-the-independent/come-off-it-paxo-you-cant-blame-the-baby-boomers/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Could Ken&#8217;s civic-spirited ways win voters&#8217; hearts?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The news that Ken Livingstone&#8217;s next book might be about what he calls his &#8220;sexual evolution&#8221; is likely to be causing a mild tremor of arousal among publishers. &#8220;I would like to write about my growing sexual awareness,&#8221; the former Mayor of London has told an interviewer on the publication of his autobiography, You Can&#8217;t...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/from-the-independent/could-kens-civic-spirited-ways-win-voters-hearts/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Some thoughts on my funeral</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There comes a moment in a chap’s life when his thoughts turn to his funeral. He doesn’t have to be particularly old  &#8211; in fact, the truly ancient probably try to think of anything but their last hurrah  &#8211; but, having attended a few funerals of friends and relations, he has begins to wonder in...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/blog/some-thoughts-on-my-funeral/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Come off it, Blacker! A reply to some of my friends on the message-boards</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It is an extraordinary fact that there are newspaper columnists who not only read everything which is written on the message-boards below their columns online, as all good columnists should, but sometimes actually dive into the shark-pool and splash about there for a while. They reply to criticism, put counter-arguments, soon to be followed by...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/blog/come-off-it-blacker-a-reply-to-some-of-my-friends-on-the-message-boards/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Cruel jokes are just a symptom</title>
		<description><![CDATA[  At least we now know how, if you are a comedian whose career is becalmed, you can make yourself the centre of attention. You deploy one of the new swearwords. &#8220;Spaz&#8221; and &#8220;retard&#8221; are favourites and, as this week has, shown, &#8220;mong&#8221; can do the trick pretty well, too. Soon everyone will be talking...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/from-the-independent/cruel-jokes-are-just-a-symptom/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>We should give jockeys a fair crack of the whip</title>
		<description><![CDATA[  There has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been scant sympathy for the professional jockeys who have objected to new rules and penalties for excessive use of the whip. The right of small men to hit sensitive animals for human profit and sport is hardly a case for the European Court of Human Rights. Yet the decisions currently...]]></description>
		<link>http://terenceblacker.com/comment/from-the-independent/we-should-give-jockeys-a-fair-crack-of-the-whip/</link>
			</item>
</channel>
</rss>

