The Greatest Albums of 2017
To liven things up a bit this year I’ve decided to turn up the hyperbole. These aren’t the best albums of the year like last year. These are the greatest albums of the year. Bearing in mind this is taken from the stupidly narrow selection of albums that I bought this…
Stop Mucking About
Well, that was funny. An election that went contrary to everything I predicted but has essentially left us in exactly the same position that we started from. The most important constitutional issue of a generation has reached a critical point and we are still none the…
Would a progressive alliance work?
Another day in an unwanted election campaign and another blog post. I’ve barely touched this blog in years and now I’m posting on consecutive days. I must have a fire in my belly, a fire for POLITICS (I haven’t). Since the election was announced I’ve seen lots of…
It’s an election
Give me an unexpected political event and I’ll give you a largely incoherent mass of political predictions that, more often than not, won’t come true. Whilst I say unexpected political events, many were predicting the General Election of 2017. I wasn’t. I was busy…
Brex-t Steps
Back to blogging not particularly well thought through ideas about the EU Referendum. It’s like the old days. The halcyon days of late Summer 2016 when it looked like the country was willing to sacrifice everything we have on a vague promise of a return to the…
No Such Thing As Free Advice
This is more related to business than the usual vague music and culture thing I’d blog about but I’m wary about putting it on my business site because….. well you never know. It’s nice to see that Birmingham appears to have achieved something…
Best Albums of 2016
Well that was a year wasn’t it? A proper shit show as far as small minded politics and the fragile mortality of light entertainers goes. But a good year for albums, a very good year for albums. I’ve bought 125 albums that were released this year, more than…
Is there an ethical basis for ignoring the Brexit result?
I’m not proposing a middle class revolution but I do wonder if there is an ethical basis for ignoring the EU Referendum result. So that’s my question, is there? I’ve read many different blog posts setting out the potential legal hoops that might be brought into play…
What are the benefits of the EU?
One of the consistent things I keep seeing about the EU referendum is that there is a lack of people setting out what the benefits of staying in the EU are. I think there are a number of things that affect this. There’s an assumption that people understand what is…
Sovereignty
As the EU Referendum gets closer the one point of contention that is most irritating me is the question of sovereignty. One of the main platforms of the Leave campaign is the insistence that membership of the European Union has meant that the UK has somehow reduced…
Where does our tax come from?
As we, rightly, get vexed about the scale of tax avoidance uncovered by the Panama Papers I think it’s about time we turned our attention to the problem with the tax that is paid. Whilst there is clearly an issue with some people earning income within the UK, and…
Rubbish Savings
Yesterday Birmingham City Council passed a budget for 2016/17 intended to take another £90 million worth of cuts. That’s an eye watering number but to be honest it’s so large and has happened every year for over five years now. I can’t really…
