So I’m on a boat. Big sodding boat. Taking us from one bit of Scotland to another. Ok, more specifically, from mainland to the Isle of Islay, over in the West. And the boat, once you’ve parked the car in a very crowded, cramped car-park, downstairs, is surprisingly luxurious. It has a bar. It has – Read More-
So when you see a long, straight, smooth road you say ‘ah, a Roman road’. Not because it looks like a Roman nose but because those Latins built their roads long and straight. Shortest distance between two points, etc, etc. Then was the Emperor Hadrian on drugs? Was he drunk when he built the Wall? – Read More-
Fascism. The far right wing of the political spectrum. Then a little more to the right. Not a nice place to be. Neither is too far to the left either, it must be said, to show an impartiality that I don’t feel. Because at least to the left you get some kind of equality. In – Read More-
This picture means nothing of any value to anyone who doesn’t drive a ‘mid-life crisis’. Those who do will shout: FUCK ME, 30 MILES PER GALLON!!!!! those who don’t will bemoan the pollution and lack of economy or wonder what’s wrong with the car. And such a thing could never happen in London, which is – Read More-
I’ve had few regrets in my life (so far; still plenty of time, I hope) but one was not buying tickets for Taylor Swift in her current concert series. How could I have missed that? She played in Glasgow last night, even though I won’t be in that city til Saturday on my own ‘world – Read More-
Johnny Depp and his wife, Amber Heard, are ‘boycotting Australia’. What a massive loss to that lowly, upstart nation that it won’t be blessed with an official visit by Mr Handsome-but-in-need-of-a-good-wash and his actress wife. You have to wonder if Australia will survive. Or whether there’ll now be a mass exodus of Australian boat-people arriving… – Read More-
Britain is always keen to protect ‘the pound’ against Euro invasion as the wars which plagued the entire continent for the entire 17th/18th and 19th centuries, not to mention the 20th, have moved from the battlefield to the economic environment; the banks and boardrooms. European nations no longer try to invade one another, no longer – Read More-
Some things in life are inherently sensible. The Queen is sensible in a posh way. The BBC is sensible in an often annoying way. And in the absence of alternative data, we use ‘sensible’ as a feeling to test things out. Is it sensible to park the car there? Where it says ‘ambulances only’? Or – Read More-
How many ‘white supremacists’ does it take to murder a bunch of black people? The answer (strictly, though variations apply), is 2. One to be amazed at how all his preconceptions about black people are wrong when they invite him warmly and with love and welcome to their church, shattering the stereotypes he’s been building – Read More-
I’ve always been a bit cynical about statistics. You may have noticed this. And today this cynicism became fully justified with the headline: “97% of all drug trials back the firm that paid for them”. But who paid for THAT research? Someone must have paid the boffins at Stanford to test the test results. In – Read More-