There is a difference between anarchy and chaos. Anarchy implies people being in charge of themselves and willfully going in individual directions; in contrast, chaos is apparently defined by no one being in control of anything and everyone running around in circles. Britain got a large dose of chaos yesterday. On Monday afternoon, the Speaker […]

Perhaps one of the funniest yet most obscure Monty Python sketches portrayed a meeting of senior British Civil Servants. John Cleese entered and spouted off a great deal of bureaucratic gibberish, which was then translated by his colleagues into a simple problem: the government needed something new to tax. Terry Jones then said, “…most things […]

For those who missed it, the source of the present swine flu pandemic may have been found. According to the Times, the disease has been traced to a Mexican town of 3000 people called La Gloria. La Gloria has the dubious distinction of being located near a massive pig farm, which is partially owned by […]

There is a certain greyness to Monday morning, no matter how bright the sunshine nor how blue the skies may be. Upon awaking today, I awkwardly, sleepily made my way to the kitchen and switched on the coffee maker and BBC Radio 4: I caught the tail end of an item which said that the […]

The Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek once said you could learn a great deal about a country from its toilets. He cited three main examples: the lavatories of France, Germany, and Britain tell us, in his opinion, all we need to know about French politics, German philosophy and British economics. French toilets are basically a hole, […]

Today is Earth Day, and by all rights, I probably should be commenting on that. However, it would seem that a number of big ticket items are happening all at once: in addition to Earth Day, it’s Budget Day in the United Kingdom. We here in Britain will discover, at long last, how truly broke […]

I’ve never been a big fan of biofuels. Some may call me crazy, but I strongly believe there is something inherently perverse about turning crops into vehicle fuel when starvation is still rife in some parts of the world. Perhaps this issue’s apotheosis occurred during an episode of “60 Minutes” which aired last December. It […]

I’m not usually inclined to comment on a book before I’ve read it. However, I’m moved to make an exception in the case of Anthony Giddens’ new tome, entitled “The Politics of Climate Change”. For those who aren’t familiar with Lord Giddens’ previous works, he is one of the intellectual architects of the “Third Way”, […]

Recently, I was amused by a news item about what could generously be described as a “Christmas theme park” located on the Dorset / Hampshire border. Called “Lapland New Forest”, its website made some outrageous promises about a “magical” experience, frosted by realistic looking fake snow and augmented by a stunning “tunnel of light”. The […]

One of the most irritating aspects of my job is that I receive many speculative sales calls. I’m more unfortunate than most in this regard: a director who has since left the company gave away my name and direct phone number, and this information has been seized upon by unscrupulous firms like a school of […]