“Shall we go straight in?”

Kingsley Amis rated this the most depressing question. This is of course complete nonsense. “Shall I press the button now, Mr Putin?” depresses me a lot more. Even, “can you have a family of seven refugees to live with you?” is far from uplifting.

Bohemian Rhapsody

South Bohemia is populated with a lot of forestry and pasture and only a few people. On a six hour circular walk this is what we saw.

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Categorised as Travel

Lead In Your Pencil

source This is a picture of miners in festive dress outside a graphite mine in Český Krumlov. I did not know that graphite is mined and I did think that it was used in pencils but only about 1% is.

Český Krumlov

Service in Prague is done with all the Gallic charm and urgency of a Parisian waiter in an empty bar. However, other aspects of life here are more appealing; food and transport are cheap and the country is beautiful.

Walled Gardens

Walled Gardens is the title of Annabel Goff’s memoir about her childhood in the south of Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. (Since describing William Waldegrave’s book as a memoir I now find that it is an autobiography: the former is a description of one part of a person’s life, the latter the whole thing,… Continue reading Walled Gardens

To Jeremy In Islington

This summer I have been trying to interest Jeremy Corbyn in this blog. No good hoping that he will like my politics so I have put in pictures of manhole covers on three occasions. So, Jeremy, now that I have your attention I have some advice for you.

A Matter of Interest

Are you feeling, like me, that your shares haven’t being doing much for a while? A few are up, quite a few down, at best “flat lining”.

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Categorised as Business

Nudge, Nudge

The Nudge Unit has been around since the 1990s and is now grandly called The Behavioural Insights Team. It has subtly and cheaply influenced my behaviour this week.

PR Rant

It is not boring to rant about PR voting. First-Past-The-Posters (FPTPs) may deploy this as an argument, as well as saying that it produces weak government, is unsuited to a two-party system, seldom produces a single party majority and gives you halitosis (not really).

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Categorised as Politics