I’ve been following the recent Irish general election quite closely (those of you who’ve suffered through my various tweets and posts can feel free to put in a: “No shit! Really?” here). It’s not news that Fianna Fáil suffered a disaster of epic proportions. But I thought it might be nice to knock up a [...]

Yesterday, I blogged that many in Ireland were calling for it to abandon its current Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system in favour of the Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) system used for the Scottish Parliament, among others. This makes me sad. I love STV. It has a purity and elegance against which MMP looks [...]

On 5th May 2011, the British people will be asked by referendum if they wish to change the way they elect the members of their parliament, from the existing First Past The Post (FPTP) system to a system of Alternative Vote (AV). The “Yes to Fairer Votes” campaign list the following as some of AV’s [...]

The story of PC Mark Kennedy, a.k.a. eco-activist Mark “Flash” Stone, is like something out of a Hollywood movie: He turned up with long hair, tattoos and an insatiable appetite for climbing trees. Few people suspected anything odd of the man who introduced himself as Mark Stone on a dairy farm turned spiritual sanctuary in [...]

That we last visited the Moon in 1972 and have never since returned is usually regarded as both a disappointment and a surprise. Certainly, people at the time assumed that once Apollo had reached the Moon mankind was there to stay – just as once Columbus reached the Americas, many others followed. But something I [...]

Dear God, I should perhaps being this letter by admitting that I am myself an atheist who believes the process of evolution as explained by Darwin et al to be the the cause of life on Earth. However, I do accept that there are many people who believe that the human body is the result [...]

A Tory councillor has been arrested over claims he suggested on Twitter that Yasmin Alibai-Brown, a female newspaper columnist, should be stoned to death. You’ve probably read this in the news. If not, you can read about it on the above link, or here, here, or here. But basically, a Conservative councillor, Gareth Compton, was [...]

Have updated WordPress iPhone app to latest version, and the question is, can it handle apostophes, in words like can’t, don’t, won’t and isn’t? I’m writing this piece with them. So if they’re not there it’s because it’s stripped them out. Here goes…

There’s a lot of talk now about the coalition government move to raise the cap on university tuition fees. For what’s it’s worth, I don’t know what the solution to university funding is, although I do feel that the emphasis on getting 50% of the population to go to a university simply to do a [...]

And I discovered that my castles stand, Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand. – Viva la Vida, Coldplay Yesterday, we went out to the Downs with Jules’s mum to get some fresh air and scenery and let the dog give her paws a work out. We spent a bit of time walking along [...]