Blogs

Money talks, but it don’t sing and dance, and it don’t walk, Where do we stand on today’s Autumn Statement, boys and girls? Is it a resounding yes, a hell-no, or a meh? Bit of all three I suppose. There’s a general Election hovering just over the horizon, which has …

The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together. Hands up, who saw that one coming? No, me neither. The benefit of listening to the radio on digital technology meant that I could rewind the news, and check that the BBC reporter really had just said, …

I hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood I spend a lot of time getting angry in this blog. Angry about politics, about the cost-of-living, about the global political situation, about idiots not being …

The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies’. If one were to publish a long list of ‘Things that we didn’t expect to hear’, I rather suspect that ‘Boris Johnson’s government didn’t have a …

You have shown me prejudice and greedAnd you’ve shown me howI must learn to deal with this disease There’s been a lot of talk in the last few days of 1997. Of the Labour landslide that swept a youthful Tony Blair into 10 Downing Street, on a wave of optimism …

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? There may be readers who believe I am writing out of turn here, who think I am virtue-signalling from the comfort of my study, cup of …

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. Just when you think it might be safe to start watching the news again, it all kicks off. It’s Party Conference Season, so that means there’s plenty of food for thought coming out of Bournemouth and Liverpool …

Thou callest me a dog before thou hast cause. But since I am a dog, beware my fangs. You can usually find a canine equivalent for the personalities of most people, and Prime Ministers are no exception. Take the three previous incumbents of Number 10 Downing Street, for example. Boris …

There is no square mile of earth’s inhabitable surface that is not beautiful in its own way, if we will only abstain from wilfully destroying that beauty. Having jumped, on several occasions, through the very, very many hoops that my local council requires me to before granting permission for things, …

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold it would be a merrier world A couple of things happened this week to drive home to me, once again, just what a fabulous industry to work in this is. Last weekend my phone was pinging no-stop …