According to a poll which appeared in The Times this morning, the voters have expressed a clear preference for a hung parliament. This desire apparently arises from popular disgust with Labour’s intransigence and the slipperiness of the Conservatives. Presumably, there is also a widely-held opinion that a purposefully inconclusive result will lead either Mr. Brown [...]

According to legend, Winston Churchill once sent back a pudding he was served with the following critique: “it has no theme”. As I watched BBC Parliament last night, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this story. If the election is comparable to a pudding, it is admittedly a bland, soggy one that appears to [...]

I live in a quiet, semi-rural area in which change comes slowly; the recent demolition of an old telephone exchange and the remodelling of the Butter Market required a great deal of discussion and numerous planning applications before they were allowed to proceed. An understated affluence is also a feature of the area: the designer [...]

This is the fifth general election I’ve experienced since my move to the United Kingdom; I recall the topsy-turvy contest of 1992, which led almost inexplicably to John Major’s triumph. I remember that glad morning in 1997 when New Labour took office; it was a bright, unseasonably warm May day and the event was covered [...]

Last week, I attended an evening seminar at the Management school of my university. The lecturer was, in a former life, a senior manager in a pharmaceutical firm. What he had to say about the state of the industry was not particularly comforting: apparently, the industry’s present business model is thoroughly broken, and indeed, many [...]

Personally, I don’t believe Gordon Brown is a bully. Genuine bullying is systematic and contains a certain logic: sore points are identified, salt is poured into wounds, and the resulting humiliation provides the assailant with a warm glow. If the recent accounts from Andrew Rawnsley are true, this is not how Gordon Brown has behaved: [...]

Shortly before Christmas, I had dinner at a Thai restaurant located near Canary Wharf. The cocktails at this establishment are more well regarded than the food, and the service is more infamous than famous, facts which the proprietor may have been trying to ameliorate by leaving a brightly packaged Christmas cracker on each placemat. I [...]

Travellers to Britain are advised that they may run into a type of person colloquially known as an “eccentric”. These individuals can be identified by their penchant for wearing purple and green striped blazers during Wimbledon fortnight, a bowler hat in the middle of July, or more commonly, by their insistence on sitting in train [...]

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the news or those who live outside the United Kingdom, the biggest news story which is exercising the British public lately has nothing to do with economics or the Winter Olympics; rather, it is a matter of life and death. A quick recap: the documentary maker Ray [...]

I don’t recall the last time a Winter Olympics began with the death of one of the competitors. Yesterday, an athlete from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, crashed and died during a practice run on the luge track: officials believe that he failed to steer his sled with sufficient care on what [...]