America
Film review: Sunset Boulevard
Billy Wilder was born in Austria in 1906 , but became a screenwriter in the late 1920s when living in Berlin. Appalled & concerned about the rise of the Nazi Party, he moved to Paris [more…]
Blog
20th Century
Money, Corruption and Power: The Stolen Elections of Lyndon Johnson – Part 1
“I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it, and how to use it.” – Lyndon Johnson [The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Volume 3: Master [more…]
Arts
Blotto or Blotter?
Since the Spring of 2020, we’ve all had to forego certain things that were dearer to us than others. I particularly miss live debates and political rallies. The last event I attended was the Brexit [more…]
Arts
Confessions of a campsite courier, Part 1
Background For some of you, the title of this piece has probably resurrected memories of certain quality films from the 1970’s. Here, however, I have used the word “confessions” mainly for alliterative purposes. Not that [more…]
America
Check the Edges, Bite the Middle
Part way between Del Mar (Where the Surf Meets the Turf), Reno (The Biggest Little City in the World), and weird Portland, lies the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California. San Francisco itself is [more…]
Hobbies
Shunting Foundations
As mentioned recently, I’m building a new model railway. The baseboard dimensions have been confirmed – a number of sections, each 40 inches x 23in as these can fit into a cupboard for storage. At [more…]
Economics
How the Crisis Unfolds
Economically speaking, we are in a pickle. The blame-game is in full flow in its search for scapegoats. The most obvious culprit is, of course, the Covid virus, but it would be a huge mistake [more…]
Authoritarianism
Dead babies don’t come cheap
As of some date in 2020, we have finally emerged from beneath our cloying and heavyweight safety blanket to embrace a horrific and unpalatable truth. Whatever freedom we thought we had as individuals has been [more…]
Fiction
War Crimes Chapter 35 – Angela and Moira’s Stories
Chapter 35 – Angela and Moira’s Stories She was asleep when her phone started ringing, her mobile that very few people knew her number. Angela groaned and fumbled for her glasses and then the phone [more…]