On Vacation

This will be my last post for an extended period, as I intend to go “on vacation” from my blog for a time. The reasons are personal; however, I will not be actually evacuating the scene, rather, I will be concentrating on my reading and my studies. If my motivation levels go higher, I will […]

Keep Calm and Carry On

I recently purchased a new mobile phone; generally speaking, I’m not one of those people who needs to replace his handset more often than he replaces his socks. However, I managed to save a fair amount of money on my monthly bill in the process and thanks to its wi-fi connectivity, now I am never […]

The Case Against Starbucks Capitalism

I don’t like Starbucks. But then again, I know what real coffee should taste like. After I graduated from University with Honours in 1994, I was given a vacation in Kenya as a reward. I remember the morning after I arrived in Nairobi: the hotel’s dining room was painted a bright yet mild yellow, and […]

In Office, But Not In Power

Beating up on Gordon Brown has all the appeal of shooting roadkill. The corpse may be twitching still, but it is still a corpse: obliterating it further is unnecessary. The Prime Minister must know on some level that his time in office has been a tragic failure, an epic tale of ambition running ahead of […]

The Madness of the New

I probably didn’t buy my car from the most reputable salesman. He wore silver dice cufflinks, had a shirt that was so crisp with starch that the collar tips could be used to gouge someone’s eyes out, and had enough mousse in his hair to keep Vidal Sassoon in profit for a year. But beyond […]

Sorry, So Sorry

There is a difference between anarchy and chaos. Anarchy implies people being in charge of themselves and willfully going in individual directions; in contrast, chaos is apparently defined by no one being in control of anything and everyone running around in circles. Britain got a large dose of chaos yesterday. On Monday afternoon, the Speaker […]

The Revolt on Platform Seven

London has lost much of its swagger over the past twelve months. When we think of economic gloom, we tend not to envisage it having a direct effect on how a city looks or feels, apart from there being more “for sale” or “closed” signs. However, there is a palpable sense that something is wrong […]

The End of the American Era

Perhaps one of the funniest yet most obscure Monty Python sketches portrayed a meeting of senior British Civil Servants. John Cleese entered and spouted off a great deal of bureaucratic gibberish, which was then translated by his colleagues into a simple problem: the government needed something new to tax. Terry Jones then said, “…most things […]

Baby, You Can Take Away My Car

There is a certain greyness to Monday morning, no matter how bright the sunshine nor how blue the skies may be. Upon awaking today, I awkwardly, sleepily made my way to the kitchen and switched on the coffee maker and BBC Radio 4: I caught the tail end of an item which said that the […]

UK Budget 2009: The Triumph of Silliness

The Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek once said you could learn a great deal about a country from its toilets. He cited three main examples: the lavatories of France, Germany, and Britain tell us, in his opinion, all we need to know about French politics, German philosophy and British economics. French toilets are basically a hole, […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.