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They don’t speak for us: the mental health establishment, “stigma” and, now,...
You know something? I really hate this preoccupation with the concept of “stigma” in relation to mental illness. It’s trivial, and middle class – “but, my dear, there’s simply nothing worse that a...
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Radio 2 listeners’ favourite albums of all time
The BBC’s “album season” (an earlier strand of which led to me counting down my 7 favourite albums of all time in February) reached its juddering climax last Monday, when Radio 2 announced its...
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Am I a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ if I don’t celebrate Margaret Thatcher’s death?
Years ago, Chumbawamba (one of my favourite bands of all time, writer/performers of my fourth-favourite album of all time) recorded an EP that was to be released when Margaret Thatcher died. You had to...
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This could be the stupidest article The Guardian has ever published
I realise it’s up against some pretty stiff competition, stupid articles being pretty much The Guardian‘s stock-in-trade (or stocking trade, as they would probably mangle the phrase). But I genuinely...
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From the BBC: how not to eat healthily for £1 a day
The BBC have published an article by one Brian Milligan, which purports to show that it is possible to eat a healthy, varied diet for less than £1 a day. The article is – and I’m being polite here – a...
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BBC bias and impartiality
So, my last-but-one post – the one about Brian Milligan’s not entirely convincing attempt to persuade us that it’s possible to have a delicious, varied, nutritionally balanced diet for £1 a day –...
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‘Vicious’ bingo
Here’s a fun game that everyone can play – I call it Vicious Bingo. Pick a review of ITV sitcom Vicious – really, any review at all – and then award yourself a point any time you come across one of the...
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My contribution to the Great Grammar Debate
That perennial focus of heated debate, grammar, has recently risen to renewed prominence. This is partly the result of the announcement of the inaugural Bad Grammar awards, and partly the result of the...
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Mental health campaigns can backfire
Mark ‘One in Four’ Brown has written a typically thoughtful and interesting blog post for the BBC to mark Mental Health Awareness Week. In it he wonders whether a standard tactic deployed by...
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Evil and atheism
Well, that’s a heavy enough sounding title, isn’t it? I sometimes feel I should write more posts with titles like ’7 Reasons Why Kittens Are Nice’, or ’3 Tips for Baking the Perfect Apple Pie’....
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I don’t think Alan Turing should be pardoned. This is why.
Alan Turing, if you need a quick primer, was a British mathematician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. In 1936 he published a paper, On computable numbers with an application to the...
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Online abuse and freedom of speech
In the light of this recent spate of grotesque online abuse – which has seen high profile women on twitter receive the most horrifying threats of sexual and other violence – we’re being encouraged to...
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Extreme OCD. Oh.
I try to avoid self-diagnosis, I really do. In my most recent post I tied myself in lexical knots in order not to suggest that I had received a diagnosis other than the one I received ~10 years ago...
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Nate Silver, Scottish independence, and the tactical nous of the SNP
During an appearance at the Edinburgh book festival– –which is like the Edinburgh fringe, only with fewer puppet-based “re-imaginings” of the Chartist Movement, and more books– –Nate Silver was asked...
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The ultimate Pet Shop Boys quiz
Just a quick bit of throwaway fun, this. There might be some proper blogging in a bit, or there might not.* In the meantime, think of this as a small burst of coherent clicks in a sea of static – just...
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Some small thoughts on death, oblivion, etc.
Yay! It’s another cheery post from Aethelread, your ever-ready source of good times and non-stop party fun!! It’s the autumn, so I’m feeling small, and old, and filled up to the brim with desolation....
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Oh, just bake off
I am not remotely embarrassed to tell anyone who wants to know that I am a long standing fan of The Great British Bake Off. I was there, bright-eyed and expectant-looking, for episode one, series one –...
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In case you thought I was over-egging the TV cruelty thing…
In my last post, in the course of wondering why people are so horrible about The Great British Bake Off, I expressed dismay at the ubiquity of cruelty in TV. It occurs to me that might have seemed...
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A quite difficult quiz in The Guardian
The Guardian published a quiz about language – specifically one about errors that have crept into its own pages. There are, obviously, rich pickings to be had here, given that newspaper’s propensity...
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John Cole: what his death reveals about present-day political reporting
John Cole, sadly, has died. He became the BBC’s political editor when I was eight, and retired when I was nineteen; his was thus the face and voice of political reporting during the period of time when...
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