Lifestyle topics
The CEO of General Motors takes home (I avoid the word “earns”) about $22 million a year in compensation (don’t you just love the American use of the word, “compensation”?). He had been laying off thousands of employees who, surprise, surprise, have had enough and are now on strike, nearly 50,000 of them. They are …
We’ve heard about sweatshop factory collapses and fires in countries like Bangladesh. We’ve seen stories about labour conditions abroad and we should by now be aware that the people who make our clothes earn so little they can barely, if at all, afford to feed their families,. On top of that people are dying slowly …
Many arguments are made with minimal understanding, or are based on false premises. Simply asking for more detail and forcing someone to take you through their thinking step by step can expose this. It’s not enough just to give evidence that something is false. To convince the other party, provide an alternative explanation to fill …
Imagine lining up all the riches in the world and distributing them evenly to adults across the globe. Every adult on Earth would end up with $63,100, according to the 2018 Global Wealth Report from the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. The figure puts global adult average wealth at a record high. But, of course, our …
“Below are comments from the writer, Alexander McCall Smith, in his article in the June 2015 edition of “Prospect” magazine, the British magazine designed for those who think and who have a sense of humour, under the title “If I ruled the World”. “Teachers too would have their authority returned to them. Children would be …
Continue reading ‘Alexander McCall Smith on teachers and the taught’ »
Letter from James Marriott, published in The Times, London, 17 August 2019 “I don’t own a home, and like many people in their 20s I suspect I never will. The proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds who own a house has collapsed over the past 20 years, from 55% to 34%. Getting on the property ladder …
Letter to The Sun: Vicious seagulls are taking over our country. The decline of the fishing industry has left less food for these feathered menaces to scavenge from the docks, so tens of thousands of them have taken up residence in inland towns and cities. And they aren’t just poking through rubbish bins. These “flying …
Continue reading ‘It’s time to stand up to “flying rats” a.k.a Seagulls’ »
You will recall that when Notre Dame cathedral caught fire there was a huge outpouring of horror and concern. One of the few things about it that warmed the heart was the rapidity with which people offered money for the re-building , which President Macron pledged would be within five years. Most notable were the …
The townspeople of Eskilstuna in Sweden live in one of the most environment-friendly towns in the world, transformed from a grimy steel-producing place to a town with buses and cars powered by biogas and electricity, low carbon combined heat and power plants and effective recycling. But it is best known for a shopping mall devoted …
From the Harvard Gazette: We are all too ready to judge the world though anecdotes, images and distorted reporting designed to sell news, rather than quietly studying the actual facts. Some examples: – Trump refers to American “carnage” in an era in which violent crime rates are close to historical lows. Bush created …
Continue reading ‘Collectively we are all guilty of perpetuating misleading “facts”.’ »
The streaming of online pornography produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as the whole of Belgium, according to a new report by the French think tank The Shift Project. Its researchers found that the energy required to stream online videos is responsible for the emission of 300 million tonnes of CO2 a year – …
Iger: too much reward for too little risk? “Something is rotten in the magic kingdom.” That’s how Abigail Disney, great-niece of Walt, viewed the pay award of $65.6m (£50m) to Disney’s boss, Bob Iger. “Naked indecency”, she called it. Not that she felt he didn’t merit a bonus for his management skill; it was the …
To The Guardian I fear the plight of the middle class is even worse than Larry Elliott portrays. In addition to being “hollowed out” and suffering stagnant incomes, much of the middle class – public and private sector – has been subjected for two decades to increasing workplace monitoring and micromanagement, bureaucratic control, corporate compliance …
Continue reading ‘Treating your workers as expendable machines’ »
Copthorne Primary school in West Yorkshire, UK, has banned its pupils from using the word “like” as a filler. In future, those who pepper their sentences with “likes” will be asked to spend five minutes thinking about how they might have expressed themselves better. The verbal tic is thought to be spreading thanks to shows …
Britain’s youngest adults have suffered a slump in their discretionary spending power, while people aged 65 and over have enjoyed a sharp 37% rise. The findings shatter the myth of millennials wasting their disposable income on fripperies. In its first ever national audit on the subject, the Resolution Foundation’s new Intergenerational Centre concludes that compared …
My father took the surrender of the Third Reich. Yes, truly. It happened like this. My father was a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force, duty officer on the day in question on a North German airfield occupied by the British in 1945. Hitler had committed suicide and Admiral Doenitz had taken over as …
Continue reading ‘Some light relief: a little unknown bit of history’ »
My wife and I have been in Sicily. During our visit we stayed at an olive farm, set in beautiful countryside. The farm produces five varieties of olive oil, plus a blend, all of which we tried while enjoying the wonderful food for which Sicily is famous. What we didn’t know while we stayed there …
The use of birdfeeders in gardens has dramatically increased the diversity of the birds living in Britain’s urban areas, a new study has found. The British Trust for Ornithology said that at least half of home-owners feed garden birds – a trend that started to take off in the 1970s – and this now supports …
Continue reading ‘A nice, harmless report that isn’t about wrecking civilisation!’ »
Nearly 25% of UK teachers say they are physically attacked by pupils at least once a week, a study by the NASUWT union has found. The report found that 89% have suffered physical or verbal abuse in the past year, and 49% say that at their school it is considered part of the job. The …
The Italian Mafia has made €3bn over the past ten years by siphoning off EU funds intended for farmers within Sicily’s largest national park, according to a former director of the park, who survived a Mafia assassination attempt in 2016. In his new book, Giuseppe Antoci claims that Cosa Nostra clans use threats to deter …
Continue reading ‘Mafia steals billions: surprise, surprise’ »
