All the hullabaloo about Eastern European immigrants makes me a bit uneasy. The United Kingdom is a very overcrowded island but it’s the big cities that are the most overcrowded of all. My gripe is that Eastern Europeans have become an easy target, the kind of folk for whom the average bloke can freely fulminate against without repercussions. The principle … [Read on]

Leaving the State of London to live in England again has advantages and niggling annoyances; I miss my Oyster card so much, never realising before how well it facilitated daily travel. The milling, mustering hoards of London are able to get about with alacrity, and fairly cheaply. Here in Oxford we are still living in the age of cash. I … [Read on]

I attended my first Oxford debate yesterday, 4th December 2014 in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in what is called, ‘The High.’ It was advertised under the heading, ‘Vision,’ with the none too pithy banner, ‘What Does the Church of England Offer the Next Generation? What is the good news it brings to society today? What God … [Read on]

I don’t know what it is about modern Britain but so many people in the public eye seem to be — invariably — loathsome in the extreme. The word has become rather clichéd but it fits so well. Loathsome gangster Frankie Fraser dies, a man who pulled people’s teeth out with pliers. Cue loathsome “tributes” and doubtless a loathsomely ostentatious … [Read on]

Because of my desire to one day own some stairs, I had to leave London as you cannot get them for under half a million. I saw a house I liked last June, and it has taken me until now, November 21st, to finally buy it and move in. Delays and extra expense were caused mainly by the solicitors hired … [Read on]

In case I should be misunderstood, I think the environment is a proper cause for concern. Anyone who has seen the mauvish-grey pall that overhangs large tracts of the country even on a fine day, or has breathed the air of an Indian or Chinese industrial city, will not lightly assert that the state of the atmosphere is of no … [Read on]

The chief hell of moving into a new home comes from having to ring up energy and systems providers on automated phone lines. The people on the other end of the phone represent exactly the same kind of British workmen sung about so plaintively in the 1960s by Flanders & Swann. ‘Twas on a Monday morning the gas man came … [Read on]