Small Beds and Large Bears

To the editor of Cycle, the CTC magazine:
Sir,
It’s always a shame to see factions of CTC cyclists still arguing with each other over whether one “ought” to either wear, or be forced to wear, a helmet. The argument last in a recent couple of letters pages rears its head so often that the editor might [...]

My country has no flag. Its has no national anthem, although some of its citizens are partial to folk music and Morris dancing. No seething, populous crowds cheer my country on, with loud or incoherent cries in the street. Its citizens do not rally round meaningless symbols and engineer fake outrage at nonexistent bans, nor [...]

The dust has yet to settle; yet any election blogpost is already out of date. Other more savvy political commentators than me (and probably ones with more time on their hands) like Obsolete and Anton Vowl have already digested much of the results and have largely pre-empted much of the points I might make.
When I [...]

I want to make clear at the outset that I consider this season to be, if you like, a broad church. Plenty of religious and secular versions of a Long Night celebration coexist more or less grudgingly, with some occasionally complaining about their congregation being stolen by others: the predominant Christian festival; Hannukah; Yule; Thanksgiving; [...]

Blogging at The Sun – Tabloid Lies, D-Notice links to an article on the Sun’s website, where some woman was filming her baby and there’s odd sounds on the tape. I won’t say any more than that about the particular article: not because like D-Notice I want to let you decide about it for yourself [...]

Longstanding Bedswatchers will remember my brief assignation with recruiter Ron from Ashton Carthorse. I’ve not heard from Ron since then, and often I wonder what might have happened to him, whether his mother still has that sciatica, and if Barnesy the family pinscher is still tottering around in an incontinent manner. Would that we had [...]

There’s a set of animals which, on my journeys home, have a particular quality that I’d describe—if pushed—as eldritch. Horses, deer, barn owls. All of these animals stir some atavistic sense of wonder and fear inside me, and when they fleetingly flash past me I can see how my ancestors thought of them as ghosts, [...]

Misogynist, misguided, cake-headed, fake-furred, philosophically challenged starey-eyed vegaloons PETA continue to objectify women with their advertising campaigns, also merely incidentally saying something or other about, oh, vegetarianism or whatever. Stop thinking and look at the norks, you peasants.
PETA embody everything hateful about antifeminism from the beauty myth downwards. We’ve been here before, of course, and [...]

I’ve been accused recently of harbouring a religious zeal about climate change: in fact, it’s been suggested by my attendance at a lecture given by Monbiot in the Sheldonian back in late 2006 formed the basis of a conversion narrative. This is a personal story arc whereby some particular event, involving hearing a speech given [...]

monkeyhands wonders whether first-time voters couldn’t have made it to the booths a bit sooner:
Waiting for the perfect presidential candidate before you deign to cast a vote is like waiting for your parents to stop being homophobic before you tell them you’re gay. It’s giving yourself an excuse not to act, an excuse not to [...]