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Waking up and smelling the coffee

Having been smug and secure for decades in my conviction that politics is a simply a game played by politicians, I’m rapidly coming to the view that the EU may be the perfect and least hypocritical example of all. The one thing that can be said for the EU powers-that-be is that at least they make [...]

August 18, 2015 // 0 Comments

Remembering VJ-Day

Yesterday was ‘VJ-Day plus 70 (years)’. I spent it in the company of my father, nearing ninety, who had indicated his intention to watch BBC’s live television coverage of the commemorative service at St Martins-in-the-Field attended by the Queen and Prince Philip and then the equivalent [...]

August 16, 2015 // 0 Comments

Lessons learned by a bloody nose

Next week will mark the seventy-third anniversary of the disastrous Dieppe Raid on 19th August 1942 by British and Canadian troops. For some time the Russians had been lobbying Britain and the Allies to open a second front in north-west Europe in order to relieve the pressure they were under from [...]

August 13, 2015 // 0 Comments

Turning the world upside down

Today I wish to address the issue of ‘gender equality’ and in doing so acknowledge that my views may not make me universally popular. There’s nothing I can do about that … The context is (or are) two articles that appear upon the website of The Independent newspaper today. I give you: [...]

August 9, 2015 // 0 Comments

And here’s a ‘V.A.T. on the house’ from me, Arfur …

Way back in the 1980s and early 1990s, though I never really bothered with it once Terry McCann (played by Dennis Waterman) had departed, because – well – Arfur without Terry wasn’t the same was it? – Thames Television’s series Minder was a staple of my recreational [...]

August 7, 2015 // 0 Comments

Uncertain outcome

Who knows what the outcome of Labour’s party leader election campaign will be? As a keen observer of politics but (I like to think) with no political views of my own, arguably – to me – the identity of the next Labour leader should be of no consequence. I think it probably is, but [...]

July 31, 2015 // 0 Comments

Back in harness!

The rumours that I had become exhausted or ‘politicked out’ by the General Election on 7th May were correct. There is only so much political process that any one person – well, this one – can take and, naturally, we had a surfeit of it leading up to polling day. I like to think that I was [...]

July 30, 2015 // 0 Comments

Life as it is lived

Earlier this week I had lunch with an old business colleague, whom for present purposes I shall call Peter, in what might formerly have been termed either my ‘manor’ (that’s certainly how Arthur Daley would have described it), viz. London’s West End, specifically the area around Soho and [...]

July 17, 2015 // 0 Comments

Never again if I can help it

For someone who knows precious little of Britain north of Watford I have had a huge adventure these past 36 hours, namely a trip to Cleethorpes and Grimsby in north-east Lincolnshire to visit relatives. The journey up took an epic seven hours, broken only by a half-hour stop at the Newport Pagnall [...]

July 15, 2015 // 0 Comments

Some things always remain

Yesterday my daughter and boyfriend travelled to the coast in order to join me for lunch. They live sufficiently far away that I don’t go to visit them that often, but then that’s a product of my old age. I regard spending a total of seven hours in a car for a four-hour visit somewhere as a [...]

July 12, 2015 // 0 Comments

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