Is there anything quite as hilarious, yet embarrassing, as the British media moving into royal mode? The simpering fake familiarity, the cringing deference, the solemn recital of every dreary detail of royal domestic life, the unspoken obsession with class: nothing reveals our national character more ruthlessly than a royal wedding. Behind the usual forelock-tugging, something nastier… Continue reading They’re off! The Royal Brown-Nose Handicap is under way
Read moreIt seems only minutes ago that it was a good and progressive thing to be local and active. Suddenly the wind has changed. A report on the energy industry, to be published next week, will reveal that the number of onshore wind farms to be granted planning permission dropped by a half in the 12… Continue reading At last, the wind of change is blowing in favour of local power
Read moreI thought I’d post a little Friday song for the next few weeks. Here’s my first offering – a song with a message which I wrote earlier in the year. Sad Old Bastards with Guitars by TerenceBlacker
Read moreAs well-drilled as a squadron of guards, the presenters and guests on the BBC have begun wearing the new medal of concern, the poppy. Each one of them – Huw Edwards, Alan Hansen, Clare Balding, every hack, weather forecaster and speakerine – is, we are supposed to think, expressing his or her own deep and… Continue reading The emptiness of institutional caring
Read moreA new play at the Royal Court Theatre has done something rather dashing and unusual. Ignoring deprivation, globalisation, exclusion, fundamentalism, immigration, injustice and economic meltdown, it has put on a play called Tribes which explores a crisis within one liberal, arty, lightly bohemian, middle-class family – a family much like that of many of its… Continue reading It’s not their fault you’re still a failure
Read moreLast week, it was time to go back to school. For the first time since I was a teenager, I returned to Wellington College. I had been invited back by Anthony Seldon, the present headmaster – or Master, as we call him – to give what he called “a fireside chat” at the Master’s Lodge.… Continue reading 40 Years On: an unsettling trip back to school
Read moreMysteriously, the BBC weather forecast has come to represent something good and timeless and genuine in a superficial, changing culture. For millions, those moments after the TV news when a nerdy, middle-aged type prances around in front of a map, talking about weather fronts and making bad jokes, has a peculiar emotional importance. It is… Continue reading And now for the weather … it’s turning a bit brighter
Read moreHas there ever in modern history been a sillier, yet also brutally effective, term of abuse than “nimby”? It is a word which might have been formulated by a brilliant but cynical advertising copywriter or perhaps one of the more cunning spin-doctors lurking evilly in the corridors of Whitehall. It squashes any debate around planning… Continue reading “NIMBY”: a byword for lazy-minded prejudice
Read moreThe world may be awash with a daily torrent of surveys, graphs, league tables and flow-charts, but there are still those who believe we need more numbers to make sense of modern life. For them, the two little words “per cent” represent all that is real and true. To encourage even more mathematical analysis of… Continue reading The secret life of Mr and Mrs Average
Read moreThe morality gap between what people say and what they do is at its widest in matters of the environment. Those who emit concern about logging in Indonesia or coal-fired power plants in China will quite likely squeal in dismay at the suggestion that motorway tolls might be imposed in the UK, or street lamps… Continue reading The awkward ecology around eating meat
Read more
