Rediscovering our animal nature
Apr 17, 2021
politics & wellbeing
The trouble started after Eden. We began seeing ourselves as separate from the natural world. Destined for an afterlife. We need to accept our mortality.
The high streets of Hampstead
Apr 15, 2021
politics
High streets everywhere were already changing before the pandemic. Hampstead is lovely, but no exception.
The beneficiaries of the status quo are in no rush to change
Apr 15, 2021
politics
If we are serious about the Paris agreement, we have to disrupt that cosy relationship between business and government.
Among the many things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
Apr 14, 2021
wellbeing
— Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Animal Farm: Special illustrated edition
Apr 14, 2021
arts & politics
Rereading Animal Farm after half a century, I am struck by how much I dislike it.
Nuclear-armed rogue states
May 24, 2016
politics & views
Who more flagrantly breaches the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Iran or Britain?
The Sixth Extinction
May 24, 2014
politics & views
The Earth’s fossil record shows five mass extinctions, in which many or most species disappeared over a few months or centuries. We are now nearing the end of the Sixth.
Food of love
Aug 4, 2013
arts
My favourite creation myth: God made humans just so he could listen to the music we make.
War on Terror
May 24, 2013
politics & views
The “War on Terror” is a monstrous sham, a catch-all slogan spun onto the 9/11 attack and now available to justify domestic repression, violence
Terror is a tactic
Sep 3, 2012
politics & views
Terror is a tactic used successfully by states and groups alike. Its essence is violence to civilians; any weapon qualifies.
Global worming
Aug 4, 2012
politics
Like every species on a roll, we’re gobbling everything in sight until we are fighting and starving in our own effluent.
Art of the possible
Nov 16, 2011
politics
Is democracy melting away with as little fuss as the polar ice?
Liveable London
Oct 6, 2011
Bike campaigning in London is caught in a trap. The public approves of gentle, healthy, eco-friendly cycling, but it hates cyclists – scofflaws who
Two kinds of London cycling campaign
Oct 5, 2011
The recent proposal to rename the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) to ‘London Cyclists’ has been most helpful. There are two quite different kinds of
Poetry and film
Sep 3, 2011
My two favourite media.
What we learned in Kyoto
Jun 21, 2011
A couple of days riding in and around Kyoto reversed views on cycling I have formed over decades. Also, it showed me the part cycling might play in
Landing
May 19, 2011
At Immigration in Osaka a man in a US-style uniform – peaked cap, battledress-style top, white gloves – directs people reaching the head of the
Heading East
May 19, 2011
Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris: the French don’t wander around munching and slurping like Americans and English do. They sit down. Still don’t
Big Brother fears over new medical database for all
Mar 19, 2010
politics
Managing whom we trust and with what information is just part of life.
Sooo mid-twentieth-century
Nov 24, 2009
Parliamentary democracy? Sooo mid-twentieth-century. Who needs MPs to say what the people think when we can read their emails, intercept their phone
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