O Mistress Mine!

The other stolen generation

David Cameron visits Brasenose

I am not an underclass
Disability sucks. I just thought you should know that. It’s sometimes painful, always inconvenient and inclined to bite gaping holes out of your self esteem. Most people are pretty reliable: they get up in the morning, go to work or school during the week and kick back on the weekends doing activities they enjoy once the daily maintenance tasks (literal and financial housekeeping etc) are complete. However once you are disabled, you are no longer ‘most people’. Supposedly the most damaging aspect of Disability is isolation. Sometimes this is physical – when a disability limits your ability to get out of the house; other times it is social – whe

A world without monotheism
I originally posted this comment to the Richard Dawkins forum (which gets rather bitter and nasty over time). I’m writing a novel based around the issue now, but the question originally came from one of my students. ——————————— This topic came up when I googled the question ‘what would civilisation look like without monotheism? I realise this is a strange topic to be googling on a Sunday evening but it’s been floating around in my head since a student asked it of me when I was tutoring C

Denialism and moral equivalence
Clive Hamilton wrote a piece for Crikey earlier this week in which he likened those who deny climate change to those who deny the Holocaust. He said: We think of Holocaust deniers as being immoral because we suspect them of being motivated by anti-Semitism or a desire for political advancement through stirring up racial hatred. We think of climate deniers as being immoral because we suspect them of being motivated, not by truth-seeking, but by political goals, a desire for funds from fossil-fuel companies or personal aggrandisement.

Labour rank(n)phile
Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, is to be charged with driving without due care and attention and driving while using a mobile phone, the Crown Prosecution Service announced last night… The CPS made the decision to prosecute last night after being passed a file by the Metropolitan Police on 9 November. If found guilty of driving while using a mobile phone, the MP for Camberwell and Peckham can expect three points on her driving licence and a £60 fine. Driving without du

David Cameron visits Brasenose
As many people would know, David Cameron is a Brasenose alumnus. 2009 is the college’s 500th anniversary (yes, I attend a college more than double the age of my country), and to that end has been putting on various rather pleasant events. There’s been the usual round of balls, parties, guest speakers and lots of monogrammed college stash, but on Saturday Cameron paid a visit to his old college, treated us to a (pretty decent) stump speech and took a goodly number of questions — unscripted and unexpected — from the floor.  The college used the famed