When the United Kingdom has its very first collective national mental breakdown in 1997 after the tragic and untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales; people essentially decamped to either Team Charles or Team Diana. Personally speaking, I was firmly on Team Neutral. I didn’t like him, his constant infidelity or his Bertie Wooster persona….
Of all the politics modules I studied at university, a second year course entitled ‘Models of Democracy’ was one of the less enjoyable and interesting experiences. Based on the book of the same name by David Held, the module covered the development of democratic ideas starting with the Athenian period in Ancient Greece. It also…
When I was a teenager, my biggest ambition in life wasn’t to do well in my education; or to marry and start a family. It was to learn to drive a car. The layout of my old school meant that the teachers’ car park was situated between the playground and the main cluster of school…
Were you ever sold a mortgage by someone you thought you wouldn’t want to socialise with? Was he a bit of a loudmouth with a cocky ego and plenty of spiel? Even so, was the mortgage package still ideal for your circumstances and pocket? If it was, it doesn’t really matter whether the mortgage advisor’s…
One of the things that always makes me cringe when I’m watching an international football match between England and Germany is the crass behaviour of many of the England fans. If they’re not singing ’10 German Bombers’, they’re making stupid references to the Nazis, or else claiming with great gusto on how “England won the…
After a stressful week, I came home last night wanting some light comedic relief. So I decided to watch one of my favourite episodes of the classic ‘Fawlty Towers’ series entitled ‘The Builders’. The plot revolves around Basil employing the services of a cowboy Irish builder called O’Reilly, whose men proceed to make a number…
By Martin Cruttwell What is a vote? “By dividing people through the party system, we can achieve what has been so well planned” Bankers Magazine of America 1924. When Prof. Matt Goodwin’s substack asks “What has happened to our political class” the answer is they have retired. The old controllers of the “collective” who had…
They attempted to curtail the rise of the AfD in Germany (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-69003733) and mooted a possible ban. Macron is apparently considering the use of emergency powers in the event Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party wins the forthcoming national plebiscite in France (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-macron-considering-using-frances-emergency-powers/). In the United States, a politicised court has stymied Donald Trump’s desire…
Back in the 1990s, I recall watching a comedy sketch by the fantastic Jasper Carrott, in which he recalled growing up in Birmingham during the ‘Swinging Sixties’. His opinion was that if you remembered just how ‘great’ and ‘swinging’ the Sixties were, you were never really there. It was probably fantastic if you were growing…
When I was growing up in the 1980s in London’s largest geographical borough, the opulence and general orderliness of life there was so pervasive, the question of feeling unsafe on the streets of Bromley rarely encroached into one’s consciousness. Bromley, at the beginning of the 1990s, was listed as the eighth richest local authority in…
‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ is one of my favourite wartime movies. This 1957 classic, with an ensemble cast including Sir Alec Guinness, is far more fiction than reality in terms of its depiction of the construction of the Siam–Burma Railway. Nevertheless, it is a tour de force of cinema, winning 7 Oscars including…
Did you know the United Kingdom now leads the world in the number of acid attacks on people? Whereas we once gave humanity things like pop icons and penicillin, we now give them revolting and scary statistical facts like this! In 2017, the number peaked at 941 attacks before dropping steadily until 2022. However, last…
If there are any followers out there who’ve read about my scholastic childhood before, I’ll first offer my sincere apologies as I’m going to recite the story once again for the purpose of this article. I was baptised into the Church of England. My father, an Anglican, made an informal prenuptial agreement with my Mum,…
The press-release has been prepared by Dr. Naresh Goswami. Literary Excellence Award to a patriotic writer In a grand festive and cultural event organized at Khanapara, Guwahati, Assam, the esteemed research scholar, Salil Gewali, was honored with the prestigious “LITERARY EXCELLENCE AWARD” by the All-Assam Gorkha Students’ Union. Renowned for his acclaimed book — “Great Minds…