The Plashing Vole

I've been pressed up against a wall of riot shields, so I'm all for the alternative use demonstrated in this video. How sad that the...

A few more books appear in my pigeonhole today: Jean Hegland's teen post-apocalypse novel The Forest , Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep , wh...

It was God. At least, if you listen to tele-evangelist and former US Presidential candidate Pat Robertson (6 minutes into the video). He...

One of the things that's annoyed me about Iris Robinson (apart from the bigotry and corruption) is her contempt for a decent language. T...

If you're not familiar with Melvyn Bragg , he's a soi-disant public intellectual with massive hair and a smug air of false humility...

I'm a fan of Cara Dillon . She doesn't do anything spectacularly innovative with her brand of Irish folk (unlike, say, Kila ), but s...

That's the standard justification. The answer is… er, no . Company directors now earn around 250-350 times more than their employees. ...

I think not. Google has announced that it's thinking about withdrawing the censorship it agreed to when it started in China. Chinese ...

I'm happy today. Despite the fact that the Ultimate Authority of the Hegemon got a 7% pay rise (from £213,000 to £228,000) while lots of...

My MP, Rob Marris, is an excellent constituency MP. He answers letters, fights for his constituents and works hard. He's also an ultra-l...

As she's the only one as obsessed with politics as I am (though she gets a partner - that's not fair), another politics post. Everyo...

Apparently, it's not just academic staff who are constantly stressed. We only have to deal with management, government cuts and students...

Nutcase irritants Islam4UK and al-Muhajiroun are to be banned from Thursday. Hooray, many of you may be thinking: they're opposed to ev...

Morning all. It's marking hell for me again today. I've finished Communications Studies Pile 1, and now I'm moving on to Poetry....

Er… not a lot . It comes to something when a celebrated PR agent is our guide through the jungle of untruth, but he's right: Freud  to...

I know, it's hard to imagine such an upstanding publication behaving badly, but even the most virtuous amongst us have our weaknesses, a...

I don't know how often you think of Northern Ireland, or what your perception of it is. Perhaps you remember it as a place of violent se...

The government here placed a temporary 50% tax on financial bonuses above £25,000 to encourage responsible behaviour: the signs are that ban...

This is very unfair on Mr Holland , but… I've just finished his medieval history, Millennium . It's wide-ranging, thought-provokin...

Stoke City are being linked with the  Real Madrid outcast Ruud van Nistelrooy , who has clearly impressed Tony Pulis with his efforts in the...