Category Archives: Uncategorized

European elections: saving the Lib Dems from wipeout

Winner Lib Dem Golden Dozen Blogs – 9 December 2012 The Liberal Democrats have just selected their candidates for elections to the European Parliament in June 2014.  These elections are important to the party – it takes itself seriously as … Continue reading

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Posted in Politics UK, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

My heart attack

Last Monday, three days ago now, I lay, conscious, on an operating table at St George’s hospital, Tooting.  A tube had been inserted into my artery in the right arm at the wrist, through which dyes and then wires were inserted.  … Continue reading

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Posted in Public Services, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

My day at the Olympics

Yesterday I joined London’s Olympic party, when we went to see the gymnastics at the North Greenwich Arena, better known as the O2 (but the company isn’t an Olympic sponsor…) or in its prior guise as the Millennium Dome.  It was the … Continue reading

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Copenhagen: home from home

A question sometimes arises among Britain’s beleaguered Europhiles.  Should the sceptics get their way, and the UK drop out of the EU (and no doubt losing Scotland with it), where do we emigrate to escape this sclerotic mean-minded land?  There … Continue reading

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Football: after optimism fails, England fans try low expectations.

I’m not a football fan, in any of its forms.  I don’t follow a football (soccer) club.  But I do get swept into the excitement of the big international championships that take place every two years: the European Cup and … Continue reading

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Are introverts on the autistic spectrum?

I haven’t blogged on psychology so far – it’s not a subject I know much about, academically at least.  But this blog by Sophia Dembling in Psychology Today (thanks to Nic Prigg @nicola_prigg on Twitter) has really set me thinking. … Continue reading

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Time to wake up to the de-industrialisation of advanced economies

Trying to understand the global economic crisis?  This article from Joe Stiglitz is required reading. I have flagged it already on Facebook and Twitter, but without much in the way of reflection. In fact it has produced an epiphany moment … Continue reading

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Posted in Economics & Finance, Politics UK, Public Services, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Capitalism, crony capitalism and neoliberalism. What’s in a word?

Are the Occupy protesters on to something?  Or is theirs just a hopeless battle against abstract nouns? I have been rather exercised about some abstract nouns recently.  First was the word “Neoliberalism” selected by Simon Titley of the Liberator as … Continue reading

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Could the hacking scandal threaten David Cameron?

Am I being too sanguine?  I asked this of myself a week ago after posting on the Euro crisis.  Now I’m asking myslf the same thing over my recent posting on the hacking crisis.  Could there be a lot more … Continue reading

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What will the hacking scandal change?

I’m afraid I’ve been swept along by the drama of the hacking scandal, even as the Euro heads for meltdown, the US for financial suicide, and famine ravages the Horn of Africa.  I watched the Murdochs before the Select Committee … Continue reading

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