This article is a response to a New Statesman piece by Sarah Manavis. It relates to the housing situation in the United Kingdom. Different factors may be in play in other jurisdictions such as the USA. The article was itself a response to a comment by a well known property…

Are we doomed to continue killing with kindness? — I used that headline (No-one Can Predict the Future) just a few days ago, on a post on my Wordpress blog, dealing with a rather different subject: the inability of an individual to predict the way in which circumstances entirely beyond his or her control might alter his or her…

A Psychologist explains the transgender experience. — I have read a number of posts here on Medium in which feminists and others debate with increasing hysteria the ‘problem’ of transgender and the difficulty they have with people born with male genitalia who identify as women. The Argumentative Penguin recently produced the kind of rationalisation of the ‘problem’…

“Workers in meat processing plants may be required to use sharp tools and heavy machinery, at high speeds, under crowded conditions, for long hours, and on slippery floors — sometimes without adequate training. Workers who incur cuts, burns, or scrapes may be at particular risk of antibiotic-resistant infections. Meat processing…

Capitalism, Socialism and Conservatism are rooted in a pessimistic view of human nature. Liberalism is different. — This is, in part, a response to essays by Henryk A. Kowalczyk. But it is also provoked by various articles attempting to identify the alleged harm done by Capitalism, on the one hand, and the potential for greater harm that experience suggests will follow the adoption of Socialism. Within these…

As we face into a veritable hurricane of wild fires, floods and droughts, the time for a major change of direction is long past. — As is usual on a Sunday morning, I went for a bike ride earlier today. The roads around here are relatively free of traffic at that time. I like to think of cycling through two different lenses: the pessimist and the optimist. The optimist powers up the hills anticipating the…

I’ve been following the debate between atheists and theists on this platform for a while. I even contributed occasionally, in comments and in a post of my own. …

I grew up as the only male in an otherwise all female household. To begin with, it was me, my Mum and her Mum. My father was away serving in the RAF. When I was two he was killed in action. When I was four the first of my three…

The portents were far from good. I had spent the day dashing backwards and forwards between the committee room (campaign office) and polling stations, becoming increasingly despondent at the returns — our own ‘exit poll’ — that indicated that I was nowhere near retaining my seat on the county council…