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Black market in white goods

The great comedian Jackie Mason many of whose best jokes were observations of Jewish people once remarked: “A Jew can put 7 companies together but cannot assemble a hoover …“ How true I thought. I took delivery of a flat pack bookcase last week and its assembly was beyond me. I sat [...]

March 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

Another fine modern mess

Recently I had an extraordinary brush with the way the digital world works – so remarkable that it invites the comment “You couldn’t make it up!” It ran as follows (and here I will add that I am avoiding identifying any of the parties in order to protect both the innocent and the less [...]

February 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

Robert Maxwell

I neither knew nor had any dealings with Bob Maxwell but I knew well two he did. A recent biography by John Preston called The Fall has received good reviews but I do not really want to spend the time reading it. However the BBC serialised it over 5 episodes and it was read by actor Henry Goodman. [...]

February 24, 2021 // 1 Comment

The human presumption

All species live life “in the moment” – in basic terms, each morning they awake, seek out food and sustenance, “do their thing” and eventually go back to sleep again, all against the background of what the specific conditions are on any given day. It is one of the crosses to bear of the [...]

February 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

Coming home to roost?

Overnight – in my terms at least, given my standard waking schedule involves me going to bed at 8.00pm and getting up for my day shift somewhere between midnight and 1.30am – the big “breaking” news has been centred around the massive row developing between the EU and Britain over the [...]

January 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

Into 2012 and beyond

Surveying the UK newspaper websites overnight – with the latest developments and reactions thereto on the advent of Lockdown Three dominating most of the coverage – I found myself moved once again to reflect upon some of the fundamentals underlying the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. I [...]

January 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

Keeping a perspective

As most Rusters will be only too well aware, we oldies often have to make difficult decisions in order to negotiate a careful balancing act between – on the one hand – expressing our bewilderment that the young seem to delight in disregarding or overturning all we know and can teach them about [...]

November 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

Yet more on yesterday’s announcement

Without wishing to overload our readers with more views on yesterday’ s official announcement I too was initially utterly confused. This government would not win any plaudits for clear English but after an hour of poring over the official announcement I reduced it to one paragraph: The [...]

November 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

Cyclists and phones

From time to time stuff happens. For example, every day I witness both cyclists (and/or  grown adults riding what I believe are called “e-scooters”) riding on roads and thereby annoying those at the wheel of genuine road vehicles … or else along pavements and then simultaneously annoying and [...]

November 10, 2020 // 0 Comments

All over the place

Regular readers will have noticed that on The Rust – rather through an osmosis-like process than editorial decree – we have tended to shy away from too much day-to-day coverage or indeed comment upon the Covid-19 crisis. This development has occurred for the obvious reasons – not least the [...]

November 8, 2020 // 0 Comments

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