The Nth Columnist

We're all doing the EU Hokey-Cokey, whether we like it or not. Wait long enough, and the same old things come back round. Fashions come, go and return - we seem to be in a bit of a 90s Nostalgiafest at the moment, for example. This is bad enough, as there is nothing worse than one's youth and young manhood being repackaged as History, but I am damn glad that there is currently no serious attempt to bring back the 70s. Cheesecloth shirts. Flares and platform shoes. Really BAD hair. The great smell of Brut. And, for me, the sheer terror that was any form of group dancing. The Hokey-Cokey in particular - you have no idea how much I hated that bloody dance. My seven-year-old self couldn't grasp why anyone would ever want to do it - I mean, what for? OK, here's my left leg in...now you want me to take it out..right...and the same process with my right leg....why are we doing this, and why do we now need to do this again? My Eyes! My Eyes! They're Bleeding! I...

We're in the middle of a serious housing crisis. Here are two ways we could fix it. It's long been a maxim that the best place to invest your money is in bricks and mortar. That's probably never been truer than in the housing market in the UK for the last thirty years or so. Have a guess how much market prices have increased since 1970. Go on. 10%? OK, 25%? Hmm.. let's try a bit more....100% Nope. In fact, average house prices, in real terms, have gone up an eye-watering 346% since then. And that's the national average - it doesn't take into account regional variations. For example, in my home town the average home has gone up in monetary value by 6% in the last six months alone, and it is estimated that house prices may go up by 43% once the new Crossrail scheme becomes active in 2017. To put that in context, a property 'worth' £200,000 (just about a two-bed place) would be 'worth'  £288,000 within the space of a few months. For...

English is a funny old language.  Being a long-term TEFLer, I've always enjoyed its idiosyncracies and foibles - the variable pronunciation of 'ea', for example, or the way that consonant combinations lurk in the linguistic shadows, waiting to mug any unsuspecting language learner (try getting students to say 'dwindle'. Or 'lengths'). Languages are in a constant state of evolution - by the time I've finished writing this article, at least one neologism or new meaning will have entered the English language. Words themselves have a habit of shifting meaning over time, in much the same way that rivers meander sinuously across a flood plain through centuries of ever-flowing movement. 'Enthusiast' started off as having heavy religious connotations, before becoming pejorative and then ending up as a way of describing someone with perhaps a not-too-healthy interest in a hobby, as in 'train enthusiast'. Likewise, 'silly' originally mean...

I’ve been reading Boris Johnson’s biography of Winston Churchill, ‘The Churchill Factor’, and I have to say that I’m quite enjoying it - it’s zippy, well-paced and entertaining, written with Johnson’s typical brio and zest. I’d certainly recommend it - if you like your history having a bit more emphasis on the ‘story’ bit. Johnson, being a journalist, knows how to write, and as the saying is, he doesn’t always let the facts get in the way of a good yarn. To be fair, he does state, quite early on, that he ‘isn’t a historian’, which should be enough to put the reader on their guard. He is also, quite clearly, a bit besotted with his subject: The book teeters on the edge of fanboy fiction, and it’s also obvious that Churchill, journalist, politician and serial self-publicist, has been a profound influence on journalist, politician and serial self-publicist Boris Johnson. He races through the life of his subject, placing Winston under the relatively lightest of scrutiny and conveni...

Welcome to the Nth Columnist, my new home for matters domestic, political and things that are probably best filed under 'other'. Why'The Nth Columnist'? Well, let's face it - all my blog writing up till now has had a largely journalistic flavour, so I felt that a title that reflected that would be a good idea. It's also a reflection of the idea of outsider politics - despite the fact that life itself is very much a political thing, it seems that getting one's voice actually heard above the hubbub is increasingly difficult. And, let's be honest here, 'The Joy of Raki' wasn't getting that well read. I'll be including some old posts from there on here in due course. As to what you can expect from this, it will largely be a continuation of ideas explored and written about in the Joy of Raki, with the exception of the Turkish stuff - I'll be dedicating a new blog to that, once I've narrowed down my choices of name. Hope you enjoy!