The New Conservative

Martin Rispin

British Museum

Horrible History

The year is 2034, the British voting public have again made their decisive choices in the general election – all seats have been won by unopposed LibLabConGreenSF ‘Grand Coalition’ candidates (except for maverick aged Reform MP Nigel Farage in Clacton-on-Sea). No part of the ‘Grand Coalition’ can agree who should be Prime Minister, and the […]

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Mother Earth

May Gaia Be With You

Why do Church of England (CofE) churches and their ‘with-it’, ‘down with the kids’ modern clergy employ ambulance-chasing tactics to try and attract those who really have no interest in any brand of organised religion whatsoever? Similarly, what’s behind their apparent ambivalence towards traditional King James Bible and 1662 Prayer Book-preferring Christians, who just don’t

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Nostalgia

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a very peculiar animal. It’s apparently OK to be nostalgic about the very recent past, say the last twenty-five years, but even then there are things and people who are considered ‘off limits’. It goes without saying however, that it’s definitely ‘far-right’ to hanker after the more distant past, even if this is

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Walthamstow Village

The March of the Gentrifiers 

(Photograph: Simon from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) Sounds like a long-lost B&W episode of The Avengers doesn’t it? (the real1960s UK TV version, not the US cinema crap.) If, like me, you don’t watch TV or take any newspapers (thanks Covid), you might still get your fix of what’s

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Premium bonds

My Word Is My Bond

State-sanctioned ‘theft’ from the deceased takes many creative forms: Inheritance Tax, intestacy rules, not honouring ‘in perpetuity’ freehold burial plot deeds, and sneakily it seems even pinching their Premium Bonds (PBs)! Living PB holders may lose out by not using other investment vehicles, but these lack the monthly thrill of imagining a big £5,000 to

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Pensions

The State Pension Maze 

Do you know at what age you’ll finally get some state supplied weekly lucre? (WASPIs please don’t answer!) N.b. some sources say retirees will be written to, inviting a claim; others say it’s entirely up to the would-be retiree to instigate their claim. Similarly, do you know how many (qualifying) years of National Insurance payments

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Tattoos

To Tattoo or Not to Tattoo?

When I was a kid in the 60s, the only tattoos I was aware of were those on bonafide sailors, usually anchors, even in my children’s picture books and on TV’s Captain Pugwash. Also lowlife types often had ‘blue birds’ on their necks or ‘love’ and ‘hate’ on their knuckles or ‘mild’ and ‘bitter’ over

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Humber bridge

Never Dull in Hull

They say ‘It’s never dull in Hull’. Whoever ‘they’ are, clearly haven’t yet clocked the dreadful weather that this east coast city is routinely prone to (yes, the Humber Estuary is part of the English Coast, so Kingston upon Hull is actually firmly on the English coast, albeit with no beaches but lots of lovely

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The Insurance Racket

The Insurance Racket 

Keen-eyed readers may have noticed my absence of late – nothing more serious than taking a chill pill (actually a long holiday). I have finally stopped reading any of the other sceptical sites (except I’m still obviously reading TNC as it isn’t so predictable, and has a spark of humour and originality) and am generally

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Bureaucracy

Non-Statutory Guidance

How incredibly helpful of the Government, even in its dying days, to have nipped the trans/schools issue in the bud by providing ‘Non-Statutory Guidance for schools and colleges in England over Gender Questioning Children’.  Let’s first set aside these three telling facts:  1 That we have, in name only apparently, a UK government who feel

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