Coming to a workplace near you, perhaps — masturbation breaks. The policy was first recommended by a psychologist at Nottingham Trent ‘University’ and has now been supported by Dr Cliff Arnall, who is a life coach. These brief moments of respite in the working day would, according to old Cliff, result in less aggression, higher
In Competition No. 2997 you were invited to submit an obituary for planet Earth. It was a smallish but varied and heartfelt entry. John Whitworth earns the bonus fiver and his fellow winners are rewarded with £25 apiece. Honourable mentions go to C.J. Gleed, D.A. Prince and Duncan Forbes. In an obituary There’s
For one who has, since boyhood, regarded the secondhand bookshop as a paradise of total immersion, it is quite shocking to discover Albatross, an unknown imprint from the English literary past. Before Albatross there was Tauchnitz, the Leipzig firm which for 100 years cornered the market in English language books outside the territories of the
War Horse, by way of book and play and film, has brought the role of horses in war into the public consciousness. Even before it, there was the erection of an Animals in War Memorial on Park Lane, paid for by an impressive list of aristocrats under the leadership of commoner Jilly Cooper. But what
Every nation has the right to control its borders, but we in the West are getting a bit too comfortable dehumanising other humans for failing to fill out forms in triplicate before fleeing the carpet-bombing of their cities. In recent months, Theresa May has rejected Calais’s child refugees; Donald Trump has seemingly tried (unsuccessfully, twice)
The human urge for personal hygiene has had many improbable side-effects, and I can confidently assert that through the ages, sponge-divers have punched consistently above their weight. Bronze-age tools, 10th-century Islamic glassware, a Byzantine ship whose plunge to the bottom was cushioned by the fourth-century Roman wreck it alighted upon, anchors, amphorae, sculpture: if it’s
In the 1860s, when British visitors first began to explore the high altitude pleasures of Kashmir, it was not just the beauties of the valley and the cool, pellucid waters of the Dal Lake which took their breath away. Living there was a legendary relic of an earlier age, who quickly became an object of
On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes, the great French intellectual, was run over by a laundry van in Paris. He died from his injuries a month later. This book — Laurent Binet’s second novel — proposes that it was not an accident; that Barthes had just come from lunch with the Socialist candidate for the
It’s an important subject: the existence of a permanent and significant minority within London’s life. Gay men and lesbians have always been there, leaving — or taking care not to leave — traces of their existence. But for the historian, a difficulty arises: often the only evidence lies in their occasional brushes with the law.
Good beer in good company. What could be better? But, as delightful and simple as that scenario is, it’s phenomenally easy to bugger up a good pub. There’s less agreement, however, about what the perfect pub should look like. Back in 1946, George Orwell set out in his classic article, The Moon Under Water, 10
The original EdStone may have been broken up and discarded soon after Ed Miliband’s 2015 defeat, but its memory lives on. In fact, the Conservatives have even managed to spin a tidy profit from it — auctioning replica versions to party donors. So, last night at the Ivy Chelsea Garden’s champagne-fuelled summer party, Mr S was
Oh dear. Does anyone in the Labour party have a head for numbers? Mr S only asks after Jack Dromey became the third Labour politician in recent days to come up short on being asked about basic Labour policy figures. In an interview on the Daily Politics, Dromey came up short as he attempted to explain
Every politician in France is on manoeuvres. Vast chasms have opened up in the anti-Le Pen coalition and the country faces another two-round election for the National Assembly in June. It’s likely that a fractured and dysfunctional legislature will emerge, complicating or even making impossible the program proposed by president-elect Emmanuel Macron. Nonetheless, Macron will still be hoping
As I watched the water creep across the kitchen floor, powerless to prevent a mini tsunami, I had an inkling of how it must feel to be the victim of flooding or burst pipes. By the third time the water invaded my kitchen, I was at the end of my tether. It later transpired that
Anyone with a trip on the horizon is likely to make a checklist of essentials to pack, but what about spending money? Holiday cash is often last on the list even though leaving it to the last minute can be a costly mistake. Not only could you miss out on a decent exchange rate, but
I didn’t see a ferret, reverse or otherwise, during Labour’s campaign launch or after. I heard some quite silly, grandstanding, questions from Laura Kuenssberg. And I heard a Labour leader who sounded a bit like…..well, a decent Labour leader. None of this is to deny the patent catastrophe of Corbyn’s leadership of the party hitherto,
Last week it was Diane Abbott who was caught on the hoof by Nick Ferrari when she took to the airwaves to unveil Labour’s policing policy. Unable to give the correct figures regarding how much her party’s plan to put more police on the beat would cost, the shadow home secretary seemed woefully unprepared for office. Today
The golden girl of the National Front has gone and with her go the grassroot hopes for an alternative to Marine Le Pen. The decision of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to withdraw from political life wasn’t entirely unexpected, rumours first emerged earlier in the year, but it is nonetheless a heavy blow for the party rank
What to make of the shocking news that Donald Trump has fired the director of the FBI James Comey? Senior Democrats are calling it a ‘Nixonian’ cover up of the Bureau’s probe into Trump’s links to Russia. It is easy to see what they mean. The abrupt move has strong echoes of the famous ‘Saturday
How was last night’s TV squirm-athon? The sacrificial victims handled it pretty well, at first. Theresa May and her unknown husband, Philip, were roasted live on a BBC sofa. The idea, presumably, was to make them seem relaxed, normal, unexciting, not too posh, at ease with themselves and, above all, genuine. Dull Phil sported a