20th Century
The History of Pop Music – 1982
Featured song: Madness – Madness – House of Fun This is a series of articles looking at pop music from 1955 when in my opinion proper pop music began up to 1999 when they stopped [more…]
Blog
19th Century
Troublesome Afghanistan
My great-grandfather on my father’s mother’s side served in Afghanistan. Being hill, mountain and lake types, our local regiment, The Border Regiment, deployed to the disputed territory between that country and British India in the [more…]
Arts
Jinnie’s Story, Book Eight – Chapter Twenty
Jinnie sat in her Crawley office and finished her breakfast bap, bought from the sandwich van. She enjoyed a sausage and fried egg bap and a large coffee on every visit to DKL; it was [more…]
Economics
Can the BRICS Nations Lead Us to a Better World?
There is much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by just about every leader in the West, especially by an almost apoplectic President Trump, over a so-called “sinister threat” by the BRICS nations to [more…]
Literature
Postcard from Thailand Part I
Planning การวางแผน Neither the wife or I have ever been to Thailand, and it was one of our ‘bucket list’ of countries we’d like to go to; a visit to which was more likely to [more…]
Literature
The cult of victimhood
It has recently emerged that Raynor Winn (NHRN), whose trip with her husband Moth (also NHRN) along the SW Coastal Path inspired her book ‘The Salt Path’ (followed by the film of the same name [more…]
Cycling
West Country Rides, Five
It takes a week to cycle from Penzance to Berwick. It took me 40 years. Because on the way, I wanted to include every town in England, in what amounted to some two years of [more…]
20th Century
Kill not cure: the economic prescriptions that failed
Introduction In my essay ‘From Socialism to Welfarism: the Betrayal of the Working Class’, I observed that the early socialist thinkers developed their ideas at the peak of the industrial revolution. Socialist theory was therefore [more…]
Drinking
Cruising to the Canaries – Part Two
Day 5 – Wednesday, Funchal, Madeira I awoke just after six; it was still dark, so turned over and went back to sleep for another forty minutes. This time it was grey and grotty, and [more…]