Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers. Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through ‘the city of the dreaming spires’ during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university … Read more
I especially enjoy visiting the Austrian side of my family around Salzkammergut during Christmas. The highlight is Little Christmas, or the Feast of the Epiphany, on January 6th best witnessed in the home town of my relatives in Ebensee, under the watchful gaze of the Traunsee mountains, which provide a perfect backdrop to the procession … Read more
When truth is the casualty, everyone suffers. For new Americans, spending Thanksgiving in the U.S. comes as a surprise. It’s the busiest travel time of the year, ranking ahead of Christmas and the 4th of July. While some associate Thanksgiving with shopping bonanzas like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, for most it’s simply an opportunity … Read more
Rooftop Blues I could go for a quick smoke on the roof, the steel vent pipe snaking its lobed edges toward the window, hear the incidental music of engines snarl up from Richmond Street, relentless as diesel. Maybe, just maybe, I see people for what we are and want no part in it? Spilled lighter … Read more
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”62″ gal_title=”Featured Artist of the Month: Maria Julia Goyena”] ‘Inner coherence is prior to artistic manifestation.’ Maria Julia Goyena Wandering minstrels travelled through villages in the Middle Ages, telling stories with a book of archetypal images of the time in which they lived. The pages came loose and they/we continued telling the stories, with … Read more
Sammy Jay, 30, grew up in Oxford and in Ireland by the sea. He works as a rare book dealer with Peter Harrington of London, tending to their literature department with an interest in poetry in particular. He has been writing since he can remember, and is working on his first collection.
A national strike was called in Colombia for Thursday, the 21st of November. In Bogotá, it would be the beginning of two weeks of protests, parties, and panics. Iván Duque, Colombia’s right-wing president, was elected in 2018. Since then he has tried to implement the typical Latin American neo-liberal programme: pension privatisation; privatisation of government … Read more
I wrote what follows prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have been prompted to re-read all of Michel Foucault’s work, including his lectures and digressions. It seems to me that the following is worth emphasizing: The concept of the Panopticon, Foucault borrowed from Jeremy Bentham is increasingly prominent in the wake of this virus that … Read more
Bob Hope once wisecracked: ‘the choice between Carter and Regan was not so much the choice of the lesser of two evils, as the evil of two lessers.’ In Brexit-land that joke has transmuted into one about the difference between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. The Irish media, as ever, are looking at this election … Read more