The Plashing Vole

We think that the Daily Mail's quota of bile is damaging to the public sphere, but it's nothing compared to what goes on in the US. ...

From Daft.ie Full planning permission for 300,000 homes, 8 prisons, 5 public hospitals, one city metro system, 10,000 schools with extens...

We've reached the Boo Radleys in the tour of my hard drive. I'm very protective of this band. I love their early shoegazey noise-p...

After the hipster folk of Bon Iver, we come to Bonny 'Prince' Billy - a bit of a counterculture pin-up, one of those singers who...

Two of my excellent students made this video for the fight against education funding cuts, and I know virtually everyone in it. (I make ...

Wow. I'm getting a new office phone. It's got rubber buttons with numbers on them, a mouthpiece and earpiece linked by a handle, and...

I read recently of the delightful Japanese word 'mu' and its Chinese equivalent, 'wu'. It means - simplified - that a yes or...

It's ramshackle and unwieldy, but it's the best and fairest healthcare system in the world - and the Tory / Lib Dem government is r...

Family Guy. Occasionally they hit the spot.

So awfully kind of George to offer we Irish a few billion quid to get us out of a hole. Although it's perhaps a small way of making reco...

This is from a quality article in today's Guardian . It makes sense to me. The current frontbenches, in all political parties, illustr...

I just had some postcards made up of this quote from the great Aneurin Bevan . I'm toying with sending one to Paul Uppal (who's poin...

I may have mentioned that some of my students cheated… in my class on Ethics and Philosophy. Richard Quinn is a professor in Florida. He t...

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the most over-the-top party since Nero: Howard J is an American and knows no limits. In honour of Hallowe...

Ed reminded me in the comments that I've not gone on about my music collection for quite some time. So in his honour, I'll get back ...

Another genius Tory Scum wheeze : let ISPs determine the speed of access to certain sites based on whether they've been paid to do so. ...

Vince Cable, with his usual charm, has let slip the real reasons why every student in the country will have to pay £9000 per year for a wor...

Amidst all the other teaching I've been doing, I spent the last week immersed in Shakespearian texts. I'm not a Shakespeare speciali...

The only television programmes last night which didn't mention next year's royal wedding were those with 'Nazis' in the titl...

…as I'm giving a lecture on New Media next week, but here goes. I don't understand the internet, and how people use it. Today I...