Trump has been formally charged for his part in the hapless coup of January 6th. The attempted coup was a serious attack on American Democracy, even if it’s storm troopers were clowns and weirdoes. Over the last few years I have written about the way that people get lost on the internet. Whether it … Read more
There is a big campaign building against plans to close Railway Station ticket offices, and replace them with self service machines instead. When people talk about automation replacing human workers automatically we think of robots building cars at Nissan, but in fact it is more likely to self service check outs and ticket machines replacing … Read more
The Home Secretary once again raised the spectre of Muslim grooming gangs, and announced another crackdown. There are, in my view, problems with misogynistic attitudes in some parts of the Muslim community, but no more than you would find among socially conservative Hindus or Sikhs. Muslims do make up a disproportionate number of people … Read more
This isn’t a standard blog, it is an important historical document, that is gradually fading away, and which I thought was worth preserving as it vanishes from the internet. This is the official Vote Leave campaign’s plan for leaving the EU. Lots of people voted for different versions of Brexit, but this is as close … Read more
This is one of the oddest blogs I’ve ever had to write. It is such an odd story that I hesitated for a long time before writing it. I am only telling the story now because I suspect that what I experienced is a lot more common than we think, and happens to lots of … Read more
Jeremy Clarkson has been cancelled. For those of you who hadn’t seen him on TV since the left Top Gear he has been making a series of shows for Amazon, who apparently might not be commissioning him to do any more. This doesn’t mean that Clarkson will disappear – there is a second season of … Read more
Three stories have broken in recent weeks about security breaches at the top of Government. Suella Braverman has been reinstated as Home Secretary less than a week after she resigned for serious breaches of confidentiality with secret documents. The extent of her breaches are not yet clear, nor is the extent of involvement from MI5. … Read more
A few years ago a friend of mine got lost on the internet. He had just moved to a new city to start an exciting new job when he was suspended from work for a year. He knew no-one and was lost and alone and anxious. He spent much of his time on-line … Read more
The influence of the pandemic still seems to hang over everything. I struggled with novels, and most of my favourite reads this year were collections of short stories, which could be read and returned to. I think that the mental impact of Covid will take a long time to be fully understood. These are in … Read more
In 1987 New York, was in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. Public Authorities were largely hostile to the gay community, and drugs companies were more concerned with profit than public health – Wellcome initially priced the first AIDs drug AZT at $10,000 per patient per year. The response to this indifference was the launch … Read more