{"id":495,"date":"2006-04-29T14:20:25","date_gmt":"2006-04-29T13:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/the-past-is-a-commonwealth-country\/"},"modified":"2006-04-29T14:43:22","modified_gmt":"2006-04-29T13:43:22","slug":"the-past-is-a-commonwealth-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/the-past-is-a-commonwealth-country\/","title":{"rendered":"The Past Is A Commonwealth Country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Leafing through older diary entries, I&#8217;m shocked at some of the unkind and occasionally quite extreme things I&#8217;ve said in the past; for instance about certain groups or individuals I actually rather admire today. I genuinely don&#8217;t recognise the person saying those things as myself. A lot of it just hints at jejune envy at others&#8217; success, which is probably close to the truth. It would be rather Orwellian to revise those old words to fit the person writing this entry today, so I&#8217;ll resist the temptation and let them stand. All you can do is hope that people bother to check with you today before presuming you still hold a certain opinion voiced years ago. I voted Labour then, after all. The world changes, and some parts of people change. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not the DE of 1997, that&#8217;s for certain.  Whether this is for better or for worse is up to others. I&#8217;d certainly never dare to say I&#8217;m a &#8216;better person&#8217; now. It&#8217;d be like saying David Tennant is the best Doctor Who (though I think he is). Or that &#8216;Match Point&#8217; is the best Woody Allen film. One man&#8217;s development and experimentation is another man&#8217;s inconsistency. But the other man is a fool. I feel it&#8217;s like inheriting a wardrobe of clothes from an ancestor, and choosing which garments not only fit you, but can represent you. And which bits you chuck out. <\/p>\n<p>Onwards and upwards is the only way to think. After all, my only sibling gets married tomorrow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leafing through older diary entries, I&#8217;m shocked at some of the unkind and occasionally quite extreme things I&#8217;ve said in the past; for instance about certain groups or individuals I actually rather admire today. I genuinely don&#8217;t recognise the person saying those things as myself. A lot of it just hints at jejune envy at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}