What I would like to hear in a speech on (im)migration
No-one can compare Britain's communities today with the communities of the past and not see a decline in cohesion. Time was when people had roots in the place where they lived, and a useful role to...
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Letting everyone eat cake
I watched this video on the Private Eye website, and nearly screamed. Going into a sweet shop is as far removed from the democratic system as you can get, because voting is not about you, as an...
View ArticleStop blowing holes in your plots
I'm looking at you, Pirates of the Caribbean team. On Stranger Tides was a great film, and worked well even without reference to the previous three. The silliness works well, to a point, but there's...
View ArticleAnecdotal lack of evidence
About two hours ago I got a really bad headache - one of those that makes your eye sockets burn and makes you want to run and throw up as soon as the room stops spinning. Even half an hour after taking...
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Cake!
Regardless of whether I baked them as a headache cure or a feminist statement on the worthiness of women's work (both quite dubious claims), they taste pretty damn good.Chocolate butterfly cakes with...
View ArticleA long-overdue follow-up
...to my post back in April about David Cameron's utterly infuriating immigration speech. This one's over on my history blog because it includes a quote from the olden days and a picture of Frederick...
View ArticleNothing's that amazing so no, we're not ecstatic.
Charlie Brooker's right; it is incredibly petulant of us all to complain about something excellent and free suddenly becoming a little less excellent. Louis C.K. is also right; we do have a tendency to...
View ArticleThanks, homeopaths!
..for providing me with the easiest blog-post ever. Here are my answers to this survey on the regulation of homeopathy (which contains not one molecule of balance, within bucket-loads of both leading...
View ArticleStefan Collini on University Funding Reforms
The full article is well worth a read as it goes into some detail about how the government will attempt to control student numbers while maintaining the façade of university autonomy and student...
View ArticleSuggested supplementary training for ticket-inspection staff
To whom it may concern,I wish to bring to your attention a recent encounter with Virgin-affiliated ticket-checking staff working at Preston Station, following my journey on a Northern Rail service. In...
View ArticleOn not throwing poo in the Twitter zoo
Fully aware of how oversensitive I was being, I've spent much of this afternoon frustrated, in tears, and on the phone*, because two people I'm friends with in real life, and whose general well-being I...
View ArticleSoundtrack to Skeptical Stuff
Songs chosen due to title, content or sheer bloody awesomeness. Further suggestions more than welcome, unless you suggest that I may like to get on with some proper work. If you're on Spotify then...
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What's the Evidence-Based Cure for Sexism?
For improved gender equality, swallow onecapsule twice a day, with or after meals.Seriously though, does anyone have a clue about this yet? Despite many centuries of discussion about the best way to...
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This is how easy it is. No more excuses.
There have been some delighted reactions to the news that a particular toy company has released a catalogue which does not perpetuate the common gender divisions: girls learning how to be good mothers...
View ArticleEight Signs of a Bogus Historical Narrative
On Saturday afternoon, as an attendee of the QED convention in Manchester, I sat through a panel discussion entitled "Is Science the New Religion?". At least, it was intended to be a four-way...
View ArticleQ: When is a door not a door?
A. When it's a jar of angry worms.That long-running men opening doors for women thing. Or offering them their seat on the bus. Very few people get worked up about this but rather more people seem to...
View ArticleOn Nate Phelps and "Leaving Hate Behind"
[The purpose of this post is mainly catharsis on my part, and I'm writing it in the full knowledge that describing my emotional reactions to some else's suffering is a self-indulgent frippery.]As the...
View ArticleOn the mutual compatibility of funbags and feminism.
This lunchtime, someone whose intellect I generally have a lot of respect for expressed the opinion that a woman who "goes out in a low-cut top to get men to buy her drinks" cannot call herself a...
View ArticleOld, fluffy feminist allsorts from the bottom of my think-bag
None of these things are new, I'm just putting them in an appropriate place as part of an ongoing spring-cleaning operation. The part of the spring-cleaning I've reached is that bit where I pretend to...
View ArticleThey didn’t build this – The “new” Manchester Skeptics group
If you search Meetup.com for “skeptics” in Manchester at the moment* you get the “Manchester Skeptics”. This group is described as being “a new 2015 group” but also has 132 “past Meetups”, 474 members,...
View Article"The country will never stand for that"
The sum total of my opinion on whether Labour can win an election with Jeremy Corbyn as leader is that we don't know enough to make a reliable prediction. Moving on to something that doesn't quite...
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Arrow's Laurel Lance writes to the World's Worst Advice Columnist
[Spoilers for Arrow here, in case that's something you're concerned about] I've been reading advice columns a lot recently (Captain Awkward for self confidence, Ask a Manager for work stuff, and the...
View ArticleWhy I, as a historian, really appreciate content warnings
I posted this on Facebook earlier and as it's an argument that seems to crop up every few days at the moment I thought I'd add it here. Two additional points: 1) People can be strong and capable and...
View ArticleReflections on time and on loss
[Content: grieving and death, including an oblique reference to suicide]I don't know exactly when I stopped believing in the Christian idea of heaven and started to develop my own thoughts about loss...
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