Archive for the ‘Society’ category

Smartphones require smart people

Sunday, 6 February 2022

The other week, the BBC ran an item on their various news outlets about people who are giving up smartphones in favour of “Nokia-style” phones that can only make and receive calls and text messages. I have seen similar articles before, but this one started with a young mother who had noticed how many parents […]

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Grow up!

Monday, 11 January 2021

I’ve never been much of a fan of Boris Johnson. His antics were mildly amusing when he was Mayor of London, a position that was created to be filled by personalities as much as politicians. However, his behaviour was often inappropriate and damaging when he became Foreign Secretary, and the mind boggled as to what […]

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E-cigarettes should not be allowed on buses

Friday, 17 August 2018

I have sometimes found the debate on e-cigarettes a little puzzling. Some experts argue that they are probably not completely safe, and therefore that they should not be allowed, or at least that they should only be allowed on prescription, or from chemists. If e-cigarettes were a completely new, stand-alone activity that had been invented, […]

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Airbnb: Turning homes into hotels

Sunday, 28 January 2018

The original premise of Airbnb seemed like a good one. If someone had a spare room, they could let it out as a bed and breakfast room to bring in an extra bit of cash. The person staying would be a guest in their host’s home, meet them, probably chat with them in the evening, […]

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Selfish parents’ term-time holidays

Sunday, 15 May 2016

This week, the High Court ruled that a father didn’t have to pay a fine for taking his daughter out of school for a holiday. He won due to a technicality. The law as it stands says children must attend school “regularly”. The man argued that taking his daughter out of school for a week’s […]

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Idiotic Brits abroad and their tabloid defenders

Sunday, 14 June 2015

It’s infuriating that whenever a British person is charged with committing a crime abroad, the British press, particularly the tabloids, respond in such an indignant manner. “How dare a foreign country accuse a Brit of doing something wrong. They can’t possibly receive a fair trial in another country, and anyway the crime they have supposedly […]

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Aldi: refreshing lack of cigarettes on sale

Saturday, 2 May 2015

Until last year, I knew little about the Aldi supermarket chain. Surely it was one of those stores selling strange, unheard-of, cheap brands of goods stacked up on the floor, at rock bottom prices? However, in July 2014, the newspapers featured obituaries of Karl Albrecht, the co-founder of Aldi and reportedly Germany’s richest man, who […]

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Drugs rethink means scrapping “grandfather rights”

Sunday, 2 November 2014

A government report this week found that there is no link between tough penalties and drug use. This has prompted calls from various politicians for a review of drugs laws. While it’s clearly a complex issue, it’s hard to argue with a rigorous report or with scientific research into addiction. Perhaps there is a case […]

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Proms queue diversity

Saturday, 26 July 2014

Last week when I was taking a look at what people were saying on Twitter about the first night of the BBC Proms, I came across a tweet by someone called Gavin Dixon: Time, once again, to lament the lack of social diversity in the #BBCProms arena queue. Quite literally #middleclassproblems As he refers specifically […]

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Childish disrespect

Thursday, 11 April 2013

Margaret Thatcher, her policies and legacy, are highly divisive. Let me be clear: I believe people absolutely have the right to criticise her, to point out where she went wrong, to discuss and debate the way she changed the country for better or for worse. As she was such a major public figure, I do […]

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