Written February 2025 I thought I’d put down a few words after a really fantastic weekend spent in Torquay. Not words I ever thought I’d write to be honest but life is full of surprises. Anyway, my wife and I spent 48 hours from Friday late afternoon in the wonderful, if dated, surrounds of the Livermead House Hotel in Torquay for the inaugural English Riviera Backgammon Congress. It was my sixth (I think) tournament and Ruth’s second. It was organised with backgammon friends who we have been playing with for some time in Tavistock and Plymouth and so was a...
Written 17 October 2024 The government has announced that Parliament will debate a private members’ bill on assisted dying in the coming session so as this is an issue I have taken quite an interest in for some time I thought it would be good to set down a few thoughts on it. None of these will be original, this is not definitive and I expect to change my views over the coming years (as my views have changed up till now). First off I think people on both sides of the debate are almost without exception motivated by principle...
Written 24 April 2024 I read this some weeks ago and have been meaning to put some thoughts down on it. The writers are people I came across on Twitter and podcasts during the long, interminable Brexit wars of 2016-20. They were among the few decent commentators I found on the whole sorry spectacle, certainly ahead of any elected politicians, mainstream SW1 think tankers or media journalists, largely because they had a coherent analysis of the nature of both the EU and the UK and the relationship between the two. Analysis is the key word really. There were few on...
Written 18 April 2024 I’ve now finished my second reading of Ulysses so some more thoughts. Approach I got myself a copy of the 2022 Oxford edition with the introduction by Jeri Johnson. This seemed like one with enough notes, explanations and a good foreword to be useful without being unwieldy. It also includes a map (which is not very legible to be honest) and the two schema. It’s got lots of typos in it as it basically replicates the 1922 edition as actually published. It could be easier on the eye print-wise but it’s a nice book. In parallel...
Written 26 May 2023 I went with my wife to see this last night at the excellent Plymouth Arts Cinema. Described as “Japan’s submission for this year’s Oscars…set in a chilling, near future in which the country has gone to extreme lengths to manage its ageing population and consequent economic distress” I was very much looking forward to it. I’m interested in end of life and demographic questions as I see them growing in importance over the coming years as well as providing a real insight into fundamental shifts in societal values currently underway. Plan75 is a joint Japanese/French production....
Written 12 December I heard about this book rather in passing while listening to an an episode of Demitry Kafinas’s Hidden Forces podcast. It is a big read and took some time to get through. It covers the history of the oil industry from the second half of the nineteenth century. What a story it is, huge in scale, immense in its impact on humanity and central to any serious reading of economics and politics. Of course everyone professes to know how important oil is, but this book really does convey that its importance is far more foundational than we...
