The marvellous David Olusoga is going to interview Obama on Wednesday. I have a burning question that I’d like him to ask. Continue reading →

There is a day, just a few years in the future, when the tyranny of the motor car over our towns and cities will come to an end.  When my car is both electric and autonomous (not long to wait … Continue reading →

Choose your metaphors carefully. Brexit is like a game of tiddlywinks We played a game two and a half years ago and you lost. That’s why you want another game. Then what? Best of three? But you cheated last time! … Continue reading →

The hardest thing to bear in all of this is that no one is allowed to tell the truth: not May, not Corbyn, not the People’s Vote People, not the Daily Mail, not the BBC, not even the Guardian editorial … Continue reading →

Mrs Clown and I attended the Remembrance Day parade in Bristol yesterday. My nan and grandad took me to my first parade in Footscray in, maybe, 1972. I was in the first rank of the Bexleyheath parade as a Sea … Continue reading →

The core idea is sound. According to the author of The Three Languages of Politics, there are three separate buckets of political thinking in the USA: a libertarian bucket, a progressive bucket and a conservative bucket. For each bucket, there … Continue reading →

That Google memo business has got me thinking. The author got himself into trouble for a bunch of reasons (too much logos and not enough pathos for a start) but I thought the core of his argument, restated to be … Continue reading →

I’ve always struggled with the words progressive and liberal. In America at least, liberal seems to mean so many different things to different people that it doesn’t seem to mean anything at all. I have no idea what progressive  means at all. Interfluidity … Continue reading →

Levi Stubb’s Tears is one my favourites and I’ve wanted to learn it since I got my first guitar. Continue reading →

Actually, no it didn’t. The federal government under Obama employs fewer people than at any time in the last fifty years. Does that surprise you? Bonus question: why does the federal government grow so much under Republican presidents?