Have you ever read the Kama Sutra? I have and I recommend it. It is not as most people think a sex manual. It is a guide to right livelihood (‘Dharma’). Much as Shakespeare’s seven ages of man:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. Read more…
On the 24th of June 2013, a press release and book launch was given by five of the British Medical Association council who had broken rank to talk about how the National Health Service was being eroded from the inside and how the trade unions were putting gagging orders on their members. Read more…
A tremendous advantage enjoyed by societies with a well developed informal public life is that, within them, poverty carries fewer burdens over that of having to live a Spartan existence.
There is less stigma and less deprivation of experience suggests Oldenburg. There is an engaging and sustaining public life to supplement and complement home and work routines. For those on tight budgets who live in some degree of autsterity, it compensates for the lack of things owned privately. For the affluent, it offers much that money cannot buy. Read more…
It wasn’t hard for me to think up a title that would best describe my unconventional lifestyle in Scotland’s capital city.
I always swore that I would never write about my illegal hunting activities. It was my elder brother Peter who pressurised me into writing about my life because he thought it was worth sharing with others. Whatever the reason the deed has been done and I have shared my hunters life with the publication of a book. Read more…
Community life amongst tract housing is a disappointing experience. The space within these housing developments have been barely equipped with little else but a stage for isolated family living.
The processes by which potential friends might find one another and by which friendships beyond the family domain might be nurtured outside it are severely hampered by the limited features and facilities of the modern suburb. Read more…
“The challenges of ensuring that we pass on a world fit to live in (from an environmental perspective) will require, arguably, significant transformations in the ways in which we live. To what extent can government facilitate those changes through its current systems/structures?” Susan Brown, University of Manchester Read more…
John Robertson, member of the Cross Party Energy and Climate Change committee went on public record saying: “The biggest opacity is the profit making itself, if you look at the bill you get through the door, the understanding you have of it. There is a need for the companies to explain how they make their profit and where; also make it easy for the consumer to understand their bill. We can see what is happening on the retail side, but not on the generation side of the equation.
The companies are jealously guarding their information. It is strange that you have six large companies, who all charge roughly the same, have roughly the same increases in price, and yet they are all meant to be in competition with each other”
If the public have a problem with the energy companies, they are first directed to Ombudsman Services, which suggests itself to provide ‘independent dispute resolution for the communications, energy, property and copyright licensing sectors’.
Ombudsman Services is funded by the companies it handles complaints about, which raises questions about conflicts of interest and influence. According to WhatDoTheyKnow.Com, a website which covers Freedom of Information requests to 15440 authorities, Ombudsman Services is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Read more…