Peter Bone has written an editorial for the Guardian (an interesting choice) today in which he announces first and foremost that he will not be quitting the Tories for UKIP. Now that he’s said this, it is hard to believe he’s going to just turn around and defect – yet. That last word there is […]
Archives for November 2014
RDF: the weirdest kids’ band ever constructed
When I was twelve years old, I had a band called RDF. Don’t ask me what the acronym stood for; this was the cause of many fights between band members. Who were: myself on guitar, my brother on vocals and percussion, and a kid who lived down the road named Aram who played sax. There […]
Yvette Cooper’s speech on immigration: Left and Right reach an illiberal consensus
Yvette Cooper gave a speech on immigration today. It was one of the most disheartening things I’ve encountered this parliament, and that’s amazing given, as Nick Clegg once so beautifully put, it’s a shitty time to be a liberal. I’ll summarise as best I can: according to Yvette, there is a group of “liberal […]
One Last Day at Lord’s
It had been a torpid morning’s play. Lancashire spent it very slowly hammering Middlesex into dust, the score at the lunch break seeing the northern county move into a seemingly unassailable four hundred and sixty-one run lead with six wickets in hand. William helped his father out of the seat he’d been sat in during […]
Labour only win general elections when they have a big, bold offer
In 1945, Labour won their first ever parliamentary majority under the leadership of Clement Atlee. Given the fact that Churchill, the then Tory leader, had just saved Britain in the Second World War, this was no mean feat. It was all down to their offer: that those who had sacrificed during the war would be […]
Could Labour do a deal with the SNP in a Westminster hung parliament?
Nicolas Sturgeon, in her first speech as leader of the Scottish National Party, went in hard on the Auld Enemy. By which I mean, Labour. She said the Labour Party had “lost its soul” by backing a No vote in the Independence Referendum. An interesting take on things; despite its rather liberal, shall we say, […]
The coolest band of the 1970’s was Kool & the Gang. Read before ye judge
When people hear the name of the band Kool and the Gang, they tend to think of “Celebration”, or perhaps the string of other cheesy disco hits the band produced in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Or they think of that and “Jungle Boogie”, a song that was featured on the “Pulp Fiction” soundtrack, […]
Top five 80’s songs
When it actually was the 1980’s, as in when I was a child during the penultimate ten-year period of the 20th century, I really hated the pop music of the time. In fact, I still loathe a great deal of it. But as the decade recedes ever further from the present, I become more and […]
The Far-left and the Far-right actually have a lot in common with each other
It is often assumed that the polar opposites on the political spectrum are the Far-right and the Far-left. In my experience, this just isn’t so; those at the political extremes tend to have a lot more in common than you might at first think. Here are the similarities they share. Anger at the world Both […]
Carlos Fanta: interview with a Chilean psychopath, reel one
The tape begins to roll. I ask Carlos to speak clearly into the microphone (translated from the original Spanish)…. He was born in Concepcion, just like I was. His pictures adorned my wall as a child. He was, as the Americans like to say, my hero. He virtually created the nation of Chile if you […]