The Plashing Vole

Away from the soccer World Cup, 'England' played Australia at one-day cricket yesterday, and won. I say 'England' because ...

'We're all in this together' is the Chancellor's mantra. He, like most of his Cabinet colleagues, is a multimillionaire. H...

I'm off now, but I thought I'd settle an argument before I go. I'm really bored with endless aggressive arguments between ta...

Some companies have no sense of humour at all. They do have huge legal departments though. Put those two things together and you get true st...

Farewell, Frank Sidebottom . If you don't know who he is, how to explain? A grown man wearing a papier-maché head and allowing us an ...

If you don't believe me, try the polling evidence : 59% of voters back cuts even if they lead to worse public services. Although 63% ag...

It's 5 days since I bought a book. That is the longest for many years. Of course, I've bought other things - I purchased a sabre an...

The good news is… The Hegemon is going to be in profit! The bad news is: staff will still suffer. A pay rise of 0.5% and inflation of a...

It's all go round here, I tell you. Management are absent - apparently they think better in posher surroundings, so they're having...

You've probably seen this already, but it amused me when Neal sent it: The England team visited a township orphanage today.  "It...

The usual cautions apply to this: it's a survey, and it's in the Daily Telegraph  (thanks to Adam for sending it to me). However, ...

Hello everybody, happy St. Monday to those of you lounging around in your jim-jams in front of Jeremy Kyle . I've loads of work to do...

I'm waiting for my lift, and I'm slightly bored. Neal and I watched France-Mexico last night, and were too lazy to change channel ...

For the weekend, anyway. I'm off to sunny Hatfield in a few minutes, to referee the English Youth Fencing Championships . A whole weeken...

My meander through my music brings us now to one of the great misanthropes of English music, Luke Haines , in his Black Box Recorder guise....

The education secretary today set out the rules for his big new idea: 'free' schools . By free, of course, he means that the taxpa...

I thought that the Republicans were rebounding in the US, on the back of racism, paranoia, greed and fear: the usual ingredients for rightwi...

OK, it's not as bad as driving an SUV or flying off for long weekends, but your coffee habit is killing polar bears: The carbon footpr...

The answer, according to David Cameron, is sink: Another cut worth noting is free swimming for those aged under 16 and over 60, which sits...

I have to go to meetings. My bosses are frogmarched to meetings involving 'break-out rooms', which have nothing to do with WW2 escap...