The Plashing Vole

I'll display my unashamedly nostalgic side now. I was caught up in the Britpop craze, having started to buy music while at university fr...

Given a time-lapse video camera, a Sigur Rós CD and a healthy dollop of aesthetic appreciation, Sean Stiegemeier has produced something wond...

I dismissed the judiciary yesterday as reactionary and out of touch. Today's Guardian diary has a piece which illustrates my point rath...

I know these are the most dreaded words in the English language, with the possible exception of 'I'm not racist, but…' (which I ...

An extremely unpleasant aspect of modern industrial relations is employers turning to the courts to prevent workers withdrawing their labour...

The inanity of rolling news begging for our views is beautifully captured by Mitchell and Webb. The height of stupidity has now been reach...

2 weeks since I asked Paul Uppal MP a few basic questions, such as whether he lives in the constituency he represents. Still, he's a bus...

Turns out that your addiction to porn and gossip magazines is deeply-rooted in our primate brains. A study involving male monkeys and frui...

Messers CURTIS and ELTON, before they became Infected with the Curse of NOT BEING FUNNY, expressed all that is Good about Politickal Humour ...

Now, there are other Wombles available. For some reason, Ulster Defence Association loyalist terrorists and their friends call themselves wo...

Today's album is Belle and Sebastian 's Tigermilk , with their BBC sessions thrown in. I have everything else the band has done, but...

Clive Bloom, whoever he is, thinks that humanities research is a total waste of time , 'hobby' activity conducted 'in a comfy ch...

Those dedicated social engineers The Russell Group (the twenty or so very rich research universities which consider themselves 'top'...

If you've ever thought that youth politicians are freaks, you'll love watching this. They're all odd, but watching triumphant, s...

Recently, I had cause to critique The Wombles for their hegemonic capitalist tendencies. I was, of course, mostly joking. Though Michael de...

Deputy Welsh Minister: David Jones, MP for Clwyd West. He doesn't, of course, speak Welsh (that's for peasants) even though he repre...

This was a present from my fencing mate, John, who has a much more eclectic musical tastes than I. I'd never heard of Berlin, whose real...

Mark recommends this: And Ben thinks this will raise my spirits.  Thanks to both of you.

Trapped between election depression and marking hell, I feel my 'hinterland' is disappearing rapidly. I'm reading dissertations ...

As the rest of the world seems to be going back to the worst aspects of the 1980s, I've decided to trump them. You may have noticed, fro...