Category: Articles

• September 4, 2014

  Legislating liberties

  Photo: Javier at [sic]   [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2014.]     While we were (hopefully) enjoying sun and slumber over the summer it was easy to miss some disturbing international developments (or should I instead call these events disturbing steps back towards some of the worst aspects of…
• July 4, 2014

  I don’t think,…therefore I am

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2014.]   "Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars."   This is "probably a true statement" according to one in four people across the entire planet, a recent global survey has found.   It would be easy to dismiss these kinds of…
• June 5, 2014

  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

    [This review was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2014.]   In a former life as a secondary school teacher I taught several students with (the then poorly-understood) Asperger’s syndrome. One girl in a class of mine almost never did the work I asked her to do and sometimes I would get very…
• May 10, 2014

  Sahara sands and other’s lands

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2014.]      Fine, red-brown dust covered every flat surface across Europe and the south of the UK just four weeks ago. If it was ever needed, it gave the strongest physical evidence that nature does not respect borders as well as telling our eyes,…
• April 20, 2014

  Never Let Me Go

   [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2014.]   This book is the story of three unusual friends but they are distinctly different to the people in the wider world, those they call "normals," because they have been cloned only to donate their organs. This is in fact their main function in…
• April 20, 2014

  Land, bread and peace of mind

  Photo: Javier. [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2014.]   If any political slogan ever summed up the basic needs of the human animal, it was Lenin’s call to revolution in Russia almost a century ago: "Peace, Bread and Land!" Today in Europe, would these essential elements be much different? The…
• March 4, 2014

  The White Tiger

    [A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2014.]   The author sets the tone with the book opening (and continuing all the way through) in the form of a letter by the main character to the Chinese premier. It is only in the final chapter when we learn…
• March 4, 2014

  To screen or not to screen?

      [A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2014.]   As I write this, my son is hating me. Last night I took a computer game off him that his mother and I agreed was violent and told him he would not be getting it back. He is…
• February 8, 2014

  Every Light in the House Burnin’

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Feb. 2014]   Andrea Levy’s "Every Light In The House Burnin’" is the dialoue-heavy story of a young north-London girl and her Jamaican immigrant parents as their traditional, conservative family makes its way into her young adulthood.   Seemingly largely autobiographical, the book is divided into…
• February 6, 2014

  Carnal mud

    spring in winter and free wine today it was as if somewhere a switch was flicked   hungry but don’t want to eat only bitterness can be wrung from the cold   (but disaster is only a muscle twitch away)   is there a word for that sensation of "this happy moment cannot last"…