14 November 2019 Winner Takes All Drama in Whanganui By John Watson This winter I will be visiting Whanganui in New Zealand. It is a bustling market town in sheep country and I expect my visit to be enlivened by some really top class drama. Russell Beale for example. He is very, very, good and
15 November 2019 Good Sports Heads Down, Chaps by J.R.Thomas BASC, the “British Association for Shooting and Conservation” is one of two lobbying and representative groups for those countrypersons who like their dinner to be of the flying type and to harvest it themselves; (the other is GWCT, the “Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust”). Their
14 November 2019 Why Canvass? UK General Election 2019. By Richard Pooley Last week John Watson extolled the virtues of canvassing during an election campaign: strangers talking to each other and hearing often totally different political opinions from their own, delivered without evident rancour. Okay, he didn’t say those last four words. But he did
14 November 2019 Paradise Lost Utopia to dystopia. By Neil Tidmarsh “Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster.” –Agent Smith, ‘The Matrix’. I remember wandering through a ‘Mediterranean landscape’ at Kew Gardens twenty years ago.
14 November 2019 (Not) the £1.2trn News What is the problem with borrowing to invest? by Frank O’Nomics The first casualty of (electoral) war is truth. Just as outlandish statements in the referendum, regarding additional cash for the NHS of £350mn per week to be generated by Brexit, were impossible to justify, the £1.2trn increase
07 November 2019 Campaigning The good and the bad. By John Watson Binoculars out. Watch the opinion polls as they run the first furlong. Will Corbyn make up the deficit? Will the electorate buy the new Withdrawal Agreement? Or will they rally around Jo Swinson’s banner of Remain? Elections are uncertain territory and the process
7 November 2019 On Your Marks US Elections by J.R. Thomas The Brits have no idea about elections. Five weeks from starting-whistle to loss or triumph; what kind of excitement, what sort of a spectacle is that? In the US the race has been going for six months and more, and now is starting to
07 November 2019 Finding a Partner More choice or less? By Lynda Goetz At first sight, you might think it is easier to find ‘the one’ these days than ever before. After all, no-one is limited any longer to those in their town or village or indeed their own social circle (as they were say
07 November 2019 Thugs Wanted Career opportunities. By Neil Tidmarsh Come in, young Wallop, come in. So you’re after some careers advice, are you? Well, you’ve come to the right place, I am the school’s careers officer, after all. Thank you, headmaster, I think I can take it from here. Oh, if you could just
7 November 2019 Diary of a Corbynista Peaking Too Soon by Don Urquhart 31 October Vicky Ford, MP for Chelmsford, told us today on Politics Live : The academies in my constituency have been delivering outstanding education free to the taxpayer… There are 19 academies in Chelmsford: 2 are rated Outstanding 8 are rated Good
