The Plashing Vole

Hi everyone. I'm not blogging properly again: it's been one of the busiest weeks in years and I'm rushed off my feet. But here...

I really don't have time to blog today, but can't resist this one. When Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize, satirist ...

I'm way, way too busy for blogging today thanks to those bastards who pay me wanting me to do stuff , which seems pretty rude. Marking. ...

I watched the last half of Kick-Ass last night. I just did, OK? An uncanny likeness occurred to me, between likeable, unlikely and nervous...

Yes it is 8.53 p.m. and yes I am still in the office despite officially 'working to rule' but it's been a good day. Mostly, I ha...

Feel free to weigh in using the comment facility… I seem to spend a lot of time agonising about what makes a good academic, particularly w...

As a brief respite from my usual spleen, have some of my favourite poems.  Some Ginsberg: Burton reading RS Thomas: Some Edna St. ...

Imagine the scene. Overseas, a country has spiralled into civil war. Some very unpleasant neighbouring countries are illegally intervening, ...

Today's Media and Ethics class explored the fascinating world of Codes of Conduct. No, wait! Come back! Specifically, we looked at the b...

As so often these days, I'm in two minds about what to post here. This is the fault of a local journalist who uses anything I say as evi...

I took a break from being splenetic and incandescent with rage this weekend. No, really. Even someone as permanently grouchy and curmudgeonl...

Despite adding a CC licence to my blog and making it very clear in a post devoted to the topic, the local hack has lifted material from Pla...

Remember ' hug a hoody '?  No you don't .  How about ' greenest government ever '? False memory syndrome . Try...

This morning, I posted a short piece making it clear that the text and images I produce are freely available other than for commercial use, ...

I believe in free speech, in that I think all ideas, however bad, are proven, improved or disproved by vigorous public debate. This applies,...

My MP is Mr Paul Uppal. He is a multimillionaire property developer with a fairly distant relationship with Truth and Honesty, as I've c...

One of my colleagues posed an intriguing question yesterday: if we were asked to nominate one book that all humanities, law and social scien...

Despite having a massive headache, today has been an excellent one. I've seen two of my dissertation students who are sorted, thoughtf...