Lifestyle topics
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’ »
An analysis of millions of Wikipedia articles suggests that ideologically diverse groups can not only cooperate effectively, but also produce better work than homogenous groups. How did Wikipedia succeed where much of the online world has failed? Misha Teplitskiy and his colleagues at Harvard University looked at the editors of Wikipedia articles on politics, science …
Continue reading ‘In contrast to media Wikipedia arguments are quite civilised’ »
Publicity for Blue Apron, a company selling pasture-raised, slow-growth, heirloom chickens direct to consumers as meal-kits, weekly if you want them, is a welcome development that points up the disaster that is now ubiquitous factory farming, In the Midwest, rural towns are being (have been) destroyed by huge corporations buying up land and building vast …
The idea that you cannot have a “moral compass” without religion is, in my opinion, mistaken. Morality is the set of principles adopted by the human race, from time to time and from place to place, to allow us to live together in harmony. Moses may have theatrically produced the Ten Commandments from the mountain …
The practice of “cuckooing” – victims’ homes being taken over by gangs as bases for illegal activity – is now estimated to affect thousands of people across the UK. Urban dealers typically befriend vulnerable people in rural and coastal towns, offering drugs to gain their trust. Victims often include those who are addicted, or who …
Air pollution’s human toll: children born today will have their lives shortened by 20 months on average by the toxic air that is widespread across the globe, with the greatest toll in south Asia, according to a major study. Air pollution contributed to nearly one in every 10 deaths in 2017 – bigger than …
“Joe Biden joked about the controversy that has engulfed his campaign-in-waiting in his first public appearance since several women accused him of touching them inappropriately. “Biden arrived on stage at the Washington Hilton to address the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) conference and shook the hand of the union president, Lonnie Stephenson, before giving …
In our personal drive to reduce plastic waste, we should beware easy, but false, solutions: Cutting out single-use plastic – water bottles, straws, disposable plates and so forth – is a good place to start reducing waste. But make sure you aren’t inadvertently increasing your carbon footprint. A cotton tote bag must be used …
Continue reading ‘What you can do to help cut plastic waste’ »
Despair about the state of our politics pervades the political spectrum, from left to right. One source of it, the narrative of fairness — we all have an equal opportunity to succeed if we work hard and play by the rules; citizens can truly shape our politics — no longer rings true to most Americans. …
47% of British head teachers who responded to a survey on pupil poverty say they or their staff have had to wash their pupils’ clothes, and 75% say so many children turn up hungry, they offer free breakfasts. 91% have given clothes to pupils. 96% think pupil poverty has increased in recent years. 60% say …
The sordid scandal that broke this week concerning the bribery of college employees to get the children of rich kids entry into prestigious colleges when , by themselves, they hadn’t a hope, points to a growing crisis in the higher education that isn’t going away (given the general atmosphere of corruption in government nothing is …
“Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day… Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it, …
Kim Kardashian is having another baby. Well she’s not actually “having” it herself. She and her husband, the rapper Kanye West, are paying another woman to give birth to it. “I’m totally gonna forget,” she explains. “Then a month before I’m gonna be like holy shit, we need to get a nursery.” Rent-a-womb is legal …
