I’m currently in Slovenia and Croatia, finalising the delivery of our new Whisky stills. It’s the 30th anniversary of the Yugoslavian civil war, and the horror of the 90s makes it too easy to forget what a unique country Yugoslavia was. Although Yugoslavia was part of the Communist world it followed it’s own path, equally… Read More Mods, Punks and Marxism | Yugoslavia and Socialist Pop
This week a report by the Conservative-dominated Commons Education Select Committee said that children from white working class backgrounds have been “let down for decades” by the education system. 17.7% of white British pupils eligible for Free School Meals eligible achieved at least a strong pass (grade 5 or above) in English and maths at… Read More White privilege and schools | Why do poor white children underperform?
Terry and…. Bonus question With so much 90s nostalgia going on and England about to play Germany I thought it would be timely to offer a warning from history. The music clip includes 6 examples of footballers rapping on 90s pop records. Simply identify who is laying down the rhymes.
The UK food and drink industry is recovering slowly from 18 months of crisis. Covid closed down lots of producers roots to market as shops shut. Brexit took away export customers. The apparently endless supply of low paid workers who kept everything running has dried up. This week we signed a post Brexit free trade… Read More Australia Trade Deal | Why are we destroying UK agriculture?
One of the daftest sayings I hear regularly is “you can’t rewrite history”. History is continually in the process of being re-written. Each generation writes its own history books and it looks afresh at the past. They find new perspectives, new sources, new ideas. As new events unfold we look differently at older ones, for… Read More Woke, Statues, and History | My family and the slave trade
Dominic Cummings has been giving evidence to the Commons Science and Technology select committee. He remains unshakable in his belief in his own genius, even though it is obvious to everyone that the Government has performed loads better since he left. The Government won’t hold an inquiry into Covid until next year at the soonest,… Read More Dominic Cummings and the NHS | Do we believe him? | Does it matter?
The usual 12 multiple choice questions, plus 5 bonus questions on Eurovision
This weeks Queens Speech introduced us to another bad idea. Voter ID. On the surface this seems pretty straight forward – why not force people to show ID to vote? Most people have ID, and lots of people (including me) carry it with them every day. Whats the problem? To understand why it is such… Read More Voter ID | A disaster waiting to happen
This is Boris as a newly elected PM 18 months ago telling the world that he had a plan to fix the crisis engulfing residential and domiciliary care for older people. Since then we have had no plan, and now there is an announcement in this weeks Queens speech that “Proposals on reforms to social… Read More Social Care Crisis | No plan, no clue
The Greensill scandal isn’t going away with further revelations about lobbying and inquiries. There are still some big questions that stick in my mind; What was Greensill’s actual business? How did they plan to make money? Warning: Contains full frontal accountancy Greensill liked to describe themselves as a fin-tech company, but their business model was… Read More Greensill P2 | Credit Crunch economics