Don’t let Jeremy Corbyn become the next Rosa Luxemburg
As I write this, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is under attack from the party’s MPs, while a huge proportion of the party’s membership continue to support him. My personal views aside,1 I’m starting to become concerned by elements – I’m seeing mostly younger people but there maybe other ages too – within the Labour party who are using violent language and cult-of-personality tactics to attempt to drown out reasoned debate on the subject. I was moved to write this post after I saw a post on Facebook from a former Green Party colleague who switched to Labour in the Corbyn era: a very rational, reasoned argument for why he cannot support Corbyn any more and is supporting one of his opponents in the coming leadership...
Ticket barriers: an unnecessary bane
Recently, Leeds station opened a new entrance on the south side, to great fanfare. I live on the north side of the station and lots of my favourite places to go out are on the south side. Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought while it was being built, to be able to walk through the station instead of around it? Well, sadly, that’s not possible thanks to Leeds being a so-called “gated” station, with ticket barriers at both entrances and no right of way between them. (And as if to rub salt in, they’re shortly closing the staircase that leads to the south side from the north entrance.) Isn’t Leeds station public land? It’s certainly owned by the taxpayer. Why is it that I can’t walk across a huge public building to get from...
What I now know about warts
Warts. We’ve all heard of them; we’ve all seen them; but how many of us know what they’re all about? I realized I didn’t have a clue until I found myself the not-so-proud owner of one. In December 2011 I discovered one on my thumb. I finally shook it exactly 2 years later in December 2013, and I’d like to tell you what I learnt during that time. Warts are caused by the HPV virus. In fact, the P in HPV stands for papilloma, the medical name for warts. You may have heard of HPV as a sexually transmitted infection that’s linked to cervical cancer and throat cancer. Seems pretty terrifying? But here’s something that wasn’t clear from the outset: there’s not just one kind of HPV virus. Different kinds of HPV infect...
Ebooks for materialists
You probably won’t be surprised to know that I love music. I have bought over 650 albums over the last 15 or so years and my collection is still growing fast. Almost every one of those albums I have bought on CD. And yet, the first thing I do when I get a new CD is rip it so that I can listen to it in digital format on my iPod. I’ve often thought about why it is that I hold on so tightly to the physical medium, even though music is readily available and easier to acquire as digital downloads. I think it’s because I’m a massive materialist. An album doesn’t really feel like an album unless I can touch it. I like being able to flick through the album artwork and liner notes. I like the craft involved in packaging. And I like displaying...
Success stories reported as failure
Something I often see happening in the media is the reporting of success stories as failures. The scenario is this: Something unfortunate and unpredictable happens. The authorities / people responsible clean up the mess and few-to-no parties are harmed, physically or financially. This major success is reported by the news as a failure. Today’s story about the keys at Wembley going missing was a great example of this phenomenon. Something very unfortunate happened – a set of keys went missing at a major Olympic venue. But here’s the thing: this fact was discovered instantly, and security protocol was initiated which resulted in all the locks being changed before there was any chance of security being compromised. This proves the security systems...
Thought for the day: Andy Murray
I don’t normally write about sport (or indeed, anything, these days) but I thought this was worth a moment. The BBC is reporting today that Andy Murray’s defeat in the Wimbledon final was his “biggest disappointment yet” because he played better than ever before. And I have no doubt he feels that way. That’s our culture that does that, not logic or common sense: the better you do and the harder you work, the bigger a disappointment it is when you fail. Why? Is this a good thing?
Leeds-based non-binary nerd and sewist. I won't break my streak on Duolingo for anyone. 
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