Blogs

It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. In today’s least surprising news comes the headline at the top of The Times App: “Labour will miss 1.5m new …

It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heav’n Unto the place beneath Having been through one of the hottest, driest Summers for some years, it seems only fitting that news stories relating to Flood Defence Week should have been hitting my inbox in the past couple of weeks. Ah, Autumn, …

What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows. This is an industry that prides itself on the strength of its relationships. On the close working relationships between merchants and other merchants, between suppliers and other suppliers – …

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person. Two years ago, the world looked on in horror as the news from the Middle East unfolded. The wait that my friend endured to find out if her Israeli soldier nephew, who just wanted …

I have been here before, But when, or how, I cannot tell Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. What has an average lifespan of eight months, nine months, or 10 months, depending on whether you are looking back, respectively, over last past five years, 10 years or 20 …

Who seeks, and will not take, when once ’tis offer’d, Shall never find it more I bought a new kettle and toaster the other day. Bear with me, gentle readers, for this will, I promise become relevant. When the existing one decided to die after three years – falling, of …

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you Forgive me if this seems like old news, but two things struck me about the Angela Rayner stamp duty situation. One, that if, whilst in opposition, you bay for the blood of every one of the …

You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer Listening to the Today programme on my way to work this morning, I actually heard a government spokesman – the Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting no less – say something sensible. He was talking about bringing in …

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. It’s that time of year again when a grizzled old hack’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of …

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won I’m returning to a topic I’ve not touched on for a while, because there hasn’t seemed much to say apart from, how is this still going on? Let me start by going off at a tangent. …