Fiction
Joe Malone, Part Eighteen
Private Investigator is at the Reform Club. A guest of Lady Vanessa Bixby, as she meets with her diner guests. Mandelson and Stuart. So finally I stood up. Lifted the tray from the waiter’s hands [more…]
Blog
America
An Eventful Ride
I was spending a few weeks with “Bestie” at her home in Northern California. She has a beautiful house which overlooks her downward sloping meadow, about five acres, at the bottom of which is a [more…]
Physics
Confronting The Climate Emergency, Part 1
I write this on the eve of my first meeting of the Holme Valley Parish Council Climate Emergency Steering Group [HVPCCESG], a meeting I shall be attending as the newly elected Councillor for the Netherthong [more…]
Arts
The Geek’s Guide To Distilling Commercial Grade Whisky For £8 A Litre Bottle
First, for those people in the UK and other countries where it is illegal to distil spirits without a licence, here’s the legal bit: “It is illegal to manufacture spirits in the UK without a [more…]
Business
The Necessary and Inevitable Recession to Come
Perhaps the most destructive premise of modern, mainstream economics is that a central bank-induced monetary/credit expansion can cause an economy to grow without adverse consequences. Let’s be perfectly clear from the start…this policy has been [more…]
19th Century
A Bear’s Diary – Part 26
February 22nd, 1811. Late last night, as we were heading north-west in a moderate wind, a tremendous grinding crash threw the whole ship askew, and we found ourselves drifting with the sails flapping dangerously, threatening [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Lille, Part 19
I can’t understand why people are rude to the staff. I was always getting told off for being kind, or even just polite, to the maids and servants, or ‘helpers’ as they were often known. I was hissed at for always saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Enquiring politely about their families was frowned upon and helping them with their chores got the second greatest insult [more…]
20th Century
The devil is always in the detail
Cast your mind back to the morning of Friday the 2nd of May 1997. The British electorate had overwhelmingly swept Anthony Charles Lynton Blair to power, in a landslide victory that conjures imagery of a [more…]
Arts
Roger Ackroyd’s Question Time Review
Question Time 13th June 2019 Panel: Mark Reckless (Tory – UKIP – Brexit) Francesca Martinez (Comedienne – it says here) Adam Price (Plaid Cymru) Stephen Kinnock (Labour – Trougher) Theresa Villiers (Tory – Brexiteer) Venue: [more…]