Last Friday I enjoyed a drink with some friends at the Southampton Arms. Upon arrival we had immediately headed outside, partly because the pub was extremely crowded, and partly because, like many other people, we still enjoy a drink amd a smoke. Suddenly just as the clock struck 10 several staff appeared in the beer [...]
I came home from work yesterday to find myself locked out of my house. I’d like to blame an evil money-grabbing landlord, I’d like to blame the council, the police, the state. I’d like to blame the man. But I can’t. The blame lies squarely at my door. The very door I found myself hammering [...]
She might be a Tory, but on assuming office Theresa may took a few positive steps in rolling back some of the most illiberal actions of the previous government. She put on hold the vetting and barring scheme, and scrapped ID cards. So I was a little disappointed when it was announced today that she [...]
I’m sure that today’s budget will be chewed over in the blogosphere pretty heavily over the next few days. I shan’t dwell on all the details. Not enough being done too late. We all agree. The government pushing this weird thing of high tech industries in their realisation that since Thatcher we’ve been kept afloat [...]
Like most people I like to think of myself as more complicated than one particular social, philosophical or political theory can pigeonhole. I am full of contradictions and exceptions. As Chris Rock said: “I got some shit I’m conservative about, I got some shit I’m liberal about. Crime – I’m conservative. Prostitution – I’m liberal.” [...]
Today Chris Grayling - shadow Home Secretary – revealed that the Tories plan to continue Labour’s slide into social authoritarianism, but with a social twist. As Tories go, Grayling is certainly not at the libertarian end of the spectrum. As I reported in one of my previous posts, he has pushed proposals to subject young people [...]
With 40 pubs shutting down every week, the continued news of pub closures fills 99% of me with sadness, and 1% of me with an almost unbearable smugness. I am sad not simply because I enjoy going to the pub, but because as I explained in a previous post, pubs are a social and communal [...]
Stats recently published in the Telegraph show that the number of pubs in Britain has declined by more than 10 per cent in the past decade. By the end of the year, it is forecasted that there will be just 52,000 pubs in the UK compared with 61,000 a decade ago. So why should we [...]
It would appear from this week’s NUS conference that many of the delegates consider themselves not as representatives of our concerns and interests, but instead as elders of the student community charged with sanitising our wretched lifestyles. The Telegraph reports that the NUS have decided to lobby for an end to cheap beer in student bars. [...]
Liam Donaldson – the UK’s Chief Medical Officer for the past decade – is something the crusader. The smoking ban , which he describes as his ‘greatest achievement’, does not appear to have satiated his appetite for reshaping our lifestyles. Thus he is unveiling plans to set a minimum price for alcohol of 50 pence [...]
