Authoritarianism
Dreading The Weekend
The Prime Minister and Cabinet are dreading this weekend. Why so, and how do we know? Because they keep on telling us, not least via endless references to a summer of discontent brought to us [more…]
Always Worth Saying
Arts
Book Review, ‘Karla’s Choice’ by Nick Harkaway
The children have a WhatsApp group where they conspire to buy me useful things for Christmas and birthdays. This is a big improvement on the old scattergun approach, where everyone either bought me the same [more…]
Authoritarianism
Do You Still Believe Anything You Read?
Apologies in advance to Larry and his scribe WorthingGooner for pre-empting part of this coming Sunday’s ever popular and always entertaining Larry’s Diary, but something has cropped up and I think all G-P authors, commenters [more…]
20th Century
Troublesome Afghanistan – 1895 to the Third Afghan War
Drawing the line From 1895 until the Third Afghan War of 1919, Afghanistan experienced a period of relative political stability marked by attempts to consolidate internal control, manage external pressures, and maintain independence amid the [more…]
Internet
You Mean, The Government Uses Actors?
So, the government uses actors. Why not? Dave Prowse, most famous for playing Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, dressed up as Green Cross Code Man in an information film and encouraged youngsters [more…]
Biography
Pen Portrait: Sir Alex Younger, Former Head of MI6
A friend tells me that during their first interview, a candidate for the Intelligence Branch of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) is informed the job involves ‘getting the hang’ of people of interest. The hopeful [more…]
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…]
Economics
Great Expectations (of Free Money)
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ So begins Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities with a line that might apply as much to the modern-day state of British welfare [more…]
Islam
Zarah Sultana. Avoid.
Appropriately born on Halloween 1993 in Lozells, Birmingham, to a Muslim family of Pakistani heritage, Zarah Sultana is one of four sisters, her grandfather having emigrated from Maipur in the 1960s. Sultana attended Holte School [more…]