Yesterday afternoon I went to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, to watch a Rugby World Cup match, Pool A, Australia vs. Fiji. Here is what I saw:
Constantly. People getting up, wandering along the rows, getting drinks or hot-dogs, bringing them back, making people in their row stand up to let them past, obscuring the view of people in the rows behind them. Continue reading
Posted in Bad habits
My wife, Fiona, works as a music therapist for two charities — in a school for three days a week, and usually in one or two homes on the other days. She composes, and she’s finishing up a book. She also does a lot of work for our church, and runs the house. She always has a hundred things to do, so she nearly always has a TO-DO list on the go.
Posted in Life
I was very disappointed to read about the response of Tim Farron, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, to Jeremy Corbyn’s appointment as Labour leader:
The MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale argued that Corbyn’s victory would open “a massive space in the centre ground of British politics” […] Since Corbyn’s election, some party figures have suggested privately the Labour party is starting to encroach on territory that Farron had marked out for the Lib Dems, necessitating a change of direction.
This disappoints me for two reasons.
Posted in Politics
Somehow I’d managed to avoid all spoilers. Which is great, because The Magician’s Apprentice took me by surprise, repeatedly. The moment when the boy in the field of hand-mines told the Doctor his name raised the hairs on my arms. I was genuinely creeped out.
Warning: spoilers follow the break.
Posted in Doctor Who, Reviews, Series 9
We hear a lot from Labour MPs about how the only way to win the next General Election is to take the “centre ground” — not to be seen as a left-wing party. Jeremy Corbyn, then, as a “hard left” politician, is the last thing the Labour Party needs, so the reasoning goes. Labour need to take the centre.
What is this centre?
Posted in Politics
It’s hard to believe it was less than four months ago that the Conservatives won the 2015 UK General Election with a clear majority, forming the most right-wing government in many years. I argued at the time that they didn’t win it so much as Labour lost it by not presenting an alternative — an interpretation based on the fact that the people of Scotland, who were offered an alternative political philosophy, overwhelmingly voted for it. The common narrative that Labour lost by moving too far to the left makes no sense at all to me.
Now everything has changed.
Posted in Politics
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