Read the two sets of lyrics below and decide whether you are with me or not. EXHIBIT ONE Red Cadillac and a black mustacheRings on my fingers that sparkle and flashTell me, what’s next? What shall we do?Half my soul, baby, belongs to youOh, while I cannot frolic with all the young dudesI contain multitudes …
Continue reading “They gave the Nobel Prize to the wrong troubadour from the 1960s”
On the face of it, Rishi Sunak looks like the big loser from the Cummings affair over the past few days. He has fluffed the opportunity of a lifetime to use his untouchable position to display serious political weight and to position himself a long way ahead of other contenders in the next Tory leadership …
Continue reading “Sunak: golden opportunity missed or playing the long game?”
We took the privileged middle class route of leaving London in early March for our house here on the Sussex coast between Rye and Hastings. Thinly justified by distancing our older selves from two millennials then sharing the house and braving the tube to work in central London. With just sheep for company in the …
South Korea and Germany feature prominently as the standout performances by medical authorities through the coronavirus pandemic. For good reasons since South Korea nipped a terrifying early spike in cases at the end of February (yes, two months ago) in the bud with its rigorous testing and isolating policy. So much so that its deaths …
Almost 50 years ago I was briefly living and working in Leeds during the hey day of its then (almost) all conquering football team. I went one evening to a production of Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Leeds Playhouse. To call that an avant-garde play for its time would be like saying that …
For me, the greatest compensating feature of the past month has been learning how to use online learning platforms to deliver lectures and tutorials to students. I got through six online lectures during the last two weeks of the spring term and have a couple more to undertake later this month. As a confirmed technophobe …
Sure, sure, it is the classic last resort of the aging armchair critic to bemoan the decline in standards of public discourse and media reporting. And I have entered that septuagenarian closing chapter where I compensate for my lack of a serious immediate priorities (such as actually meeting work deadlines) with these little outbursts of …
I wake up this morning to an online blast of claim and counter-claim with a nostalgic whiff of the post-war era about it. A Labour manifesto promising a radical transformation of society for the majority and a Conservative warning that it will lead to bankruptcy, higher tax bills for all and a Big Brother state …
The multi-cultural melting pot of the US Presidential Election can create more twists, turns and surprises than a Brexit negotiation. And takes almost as long. Eighteen months or more. So on this side of the Atlantic people can be forgiven for switching off from the forest of names competing for air space right now – …
Continue reading “Buttigieg and Warren: is it time to get to know these names?”
This weekend, the seven-week extravaganza that has been the Rugby World Cup reaches its penultimate stage with the two semi-finals. On Saturday, a Welshman Nigel Owens will referee the match between England and the New Zealand All Blacks. On Sunday, a Frenchman Jerome Garces will referee the match between Wales and South Africa. One of …
Continue reading “An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Welshman and divided loyalties”
View from the Clapham Omnibus