Education, Education, Education

I’m not a big fan of Georg Friedrich Handel’s operas. For those who aren’t familiar with his favoured genre, baroque opera, the music contained therein usually has two modes: recitativo and aria. Arias are the actual “songs”, while recitativo is dialogue which is sung in a somewhat staccato manner. The latter, particularly if it’s in […]

In Office, But Not In Power

Beating up on Gordon Brown has all the appeal of shooting roadkill. The corpse may be twitching still, but it is still a corpse: obliterating it further is unnecessary. The Prime Minister must know on some level that his time in office has been a tragic failure, an epic tale of ambition running ahead of […]

UK Budget 2009: The Triumph of Silliness

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, […]

The End

Whenever I see an exhibition or documentary about the Roman Empire, a question springs to mind: when it was over, did the people of Rome know it? After all, “the end” in their case didn’t mean the sun didn’t stop rising and setting, nor did it imply the spring would not arrive after winter, indeed, […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.