The Plashing Vole

I'm off on my holidays. Camera, big pile of books and some clean undercrackers. No phone, no email, no Twitter, no Web. Just rain and th...

I've been reading over the last couple of years about massive global corporations playing the system to avoid paying any  tax. Vodafone,...

I got an email this morning from a student who failed her first assignment and partially plagiarised the re-sit. Because I'm in a preach...

Do you ever shop in Marks and Spencer? I'm ashamed to say that I do: for hats and salted capers. In my defence, all supermarkets are evi...

You're probably expecting a pithy, contrarian comment on the Royal Baby from me. Nothing doing. I have so little interest in the affai...

Robert McCrum is a very important man these days, in media circles at least. No, make that 'in liberal bourgeois media circles', whi...

Amazingly, the Prime Minister and his government want to ban access to internet pornography. Yes, the politician who is best friends w...

Good stuff and bad stuff today. The good stuff is that I've signed up for a bike under the tax-free Cycle to Work scheme, which means I...

Another sticky, but only partly frustrating day. Lots and lots of marking, plus toweringly angry emails from students who tell me that their...

It's far too hot to slave over a hot keyboard to bring you much in the way of blogging delights today. And anyway, my temper rather over...

In case you've missed the obscure rustlings in the Tory undergrowth, there's a new and only fitfully literate manifesto out from th...

This particular Monday is more painful than most: I celebrated my 38th birthday yesterday by pretending I was still young and fit enough to ...