One of my friends in my CLP, Dave Worton, passed away recently. Sadly, I can’t say I knew Dave as well as I would have liked. When I was the CLP Treasurer, Dave was very helpful to me; he often had the tea made by the time I reached his flat on the top floor [...]

I’ve added some social bookmarking buttons to the blog; the ones on the right are for the whole blog and if you look at an individual post (by clicking on its title or where it says ‘permalink’) you’ll see buttons for that particular post. The code for this script comes from a particularly good website [...]

One of the issues raised in the recent debate on abortion was that of viability. The argument proposed by the promoter of the 20-week amendment, Nadine Dorries MP, was that science had moved on in great bounds since the Abortion Act of 1961 to such an extent that births before twenty-four weeks could be ‘viable’; [...]

Robert Earl Keen is one of my favourite singers. I heard this song, Shades of Grey, for the first time last night. There’s a studio version on last.fm. xD.

At last night’s University Cogers, one of the speakers came up with a brilliant line that, given that religion is much discussed nowadays, seems apt to quote “No man knows more of God than any other, though many believe they do.” The Society of Cogers is the world’s oldest free speech society; it is in [...]

I’m updating my blogroll and RSS feeds. Below the fold, in no particular order are the blogs that are currently on my RSS reader; does anyone have any suggestions for blogs that they write or enjoy reading that I might add? xD.

Like many young people, Mehdi Kazemi came from Iran to study English in London in 2005. While here, he discovered that his boyfriend, back in Iran, had been charged with sodomy and hanged. He applied for asylum but was refused, although the Home Secretary agreed to review his case. He has now been granted asylum [...]

Despite the efforts of Nadine Dorries and some other MPs, the results of this evening’s votes in the Commons are positive. There has been no restriction on abortion rights and the discrimination against same-sex couples implicit in insisting on ‘the need for a father’ has been removed. I think that Dawn Primarolo has won some [...]

In order to counter the remarkable batting of the Australian Don Bradman, the English Ashes team of 1932-3 decided to bowl directly at the batsman rather than trying to hit the stumps. Bowling ‘in the line of the body’ quickly became Bodyline. It was a effective tactic – England won four of the five games [...]

James ‘Nourishing Obscurity’ Higham asks: “Which individual has had the most influence on humanity worldwide since WW2, such that if they had not been around, human history would have had a significantly different outcome” I don’t really subscribe to the ‘great man’ theory of history, but I think someone who doesn’t have enough prominence and [...]