Ever since the banking and financial system crashed back in the autumn of 2007/08, the buzzwords from our politicians have always been ‘austerity’, ‘cuts’, and that ‘we’re all in it together’. That has been true in the USA – where the ‘contagion’ first broke out – as on this side […]

It’s a little over four months to the 2015 British General Election (May 7).This one promises to be crucial and more fluid than any election in living memory. Ever since the failure of the international banking system in 2008, millions of people have been pushed further into poverty by neo-liberal […]

Much is being made of the centenary of the beginning of World War One. And why not? It’s right and proper that we remember the fallen; the dead; the maimed; the millions who marched off to take part in, what was till then, the most industrialised slaughter known to humanity. […]

I get sick of listening to people – who really should know better – rattling on and adopting some of the media’s constant drip-drip of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-foreigner, or pro-UKIP, anti-European line and playing straight into the hands of the far right and even not so far right. It seems […]

News that the fabled Monty Python team were re-assembling for a final assault on our funny bones for one last hurrah sent me scurrying for my collection of old Python albums. Naturally, at two million quid per ticket (I’m exaggerating for comedic effect) I didn’t attend any of their performances, […]

Sometimes, it seems that if somebody stuck a frock coat or a bodice on a dried-up dog turd, any gullible American tourist might buy it. There’s something of that when it comes to some of our TV programmes. Throw in one of the classics – a Dickens or a Shakespeare or a Bronte – and old Uncle […]

A second bite of the cherry always tastes sweet. Seminal ’70s band, The Faces, knew that better than most. They provided one of the musical and cultural links between the lost idealism of the ‘poptastic’ Sixties and the grey hangover of the new decade. The nucleus of the band, former Mod […]

Just as UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, thought it was safe to come out into the political party conference season to set out his rightwing populist stall, his party’s very own backwoodsman Godfrey Bloom MEP went and did it again. This time, as UKIP’s 2013 Conference was already underway, it seemed there […]