democracy

Is it 1984? ‘We must cancel elections to defend the stability of our democratic institutions’

Posted on 19 January 202620 January 2026 by Grace Lally

Words: Grace Lally. Pic: protests outside East Sussex County Council last year. Elections are being cancelled and opposition groups have been forced to resort to the courts to defend the democratic right to vote. In Putin’s Russia? In Trump’s America? No, this particular anti-democratic stunt is being pulled by our own local councillors here in Hastings and…

A democracy worth defending?

Posted on 18 February 202518 February 2025 by Grace Lally

Grace L Our local borough council is being abolished. It’s a done deal apparently. At the moment we have a local borough council in Hastings that makes decisions on a number of important issues – such as planning permission for new developments and dealing with homelessness – and a county council with a vastly bigger…

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Beginnings

Out of the primordial gooo
A beginning
Birth red and writhe like maggot
On the untrod surface of its earth
Gasp the first untainted breath
Flush lung from liquid’s grasp
And writhe toward your unknown future
All was written from scratched beginnings
Fragments scraped from disparate corners
No truths true but paradox
All logic mere invention
All walls built with nothing but
Bricks and mortar / sand and water
And all sand slips away in time
Structures crumble
Empires fall
And life begins again
Of a new primordial rubble

Oli Spleen, 2000

This section is meant for local poets. Submit your poems to info@hastings-examiner.uk. They’ll be added to our archive and eventually featured here.