This is a recipe for some cookies which are low FODMAP, gluten free and dairy free, and hit the spot just right for me. Since developing some food intolerances (FODMAP), my food has been much more limited. With no wheat, that’s meant no cake or pastries; occasionally gluten free flour replacements can work but it’s […]
We face two choices in this life: trying or not trying. I almost wrote, trying or giving up, except that not all ‘not trying’ is giving up. Sometimes it isn’t worth the risk, sometimes we don’t have the time or energy. So instead it’s about the choices. There’s a scene in Batman Begins between Wayne […]
Without You, There Is No Us I recently read the book Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim, which is about her time teaching in North Korea. Kim went undercover as a teacher in the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, which is the only place in North Korea with foreign teachers. The […]
‘Might is Right’ is the description of power as fact, and that power as fact triumphs over justice and what might actually be Right. It’s the brutal reality of power, and sometimes also the normative justifications that attempt to legitimise and perpetuate such a situation. An easy example is the school bully who beats up […]
The Government recently published their Covid ‘roadmap’ setting out what their plan for lifting restrictions over the coming months. I thought I’d write this blog post as a way of thinking through how I think and feel about it, partly to get them out of my head. If you want to live in sunny optimism, […]
In recent political events, we’ve seen demands for the removal of the Prime Minister’s top advisor and chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, as well as open speculation that Matt Hancock could be made to be the fall guy for the Government’s failings in dealing with coronavirus. But there’s another possibility: that Boris Johnson himself gets […]
Solidarity with all oppressed people and with everyone involved in the struggle to realise a better world. ** I have a lot of emotions in me, as I write this. I expect lots of us do at the moment – the virus situation; the latest wave of racial justice struggles, the black lives matter protests; […]
In summer 2019, leftie punk rock band The King Blues released 38 Minutes. It’s a concept album about a false missile warning in Hawaii, when an emergency text was sent to everyone in warning them to seek shelter, that ‘THIS IS NOT A DRILL’, exploring how people react when they think they’re about to die. […]
I recently realised that it’s still about two strategies. Though it’s something I knew at the start of the crisis, I had forgotten it recently, but in discussion of ‘exit strategies’ and hearing an expert talk about coming out of lockdown I was reminded that there are, still, two different strategies available. I wrote this […]
