The New Conservative

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St Lucia

Two Weeks in St Lucia

I have just been on a luxurious two-week college residential in St Lucia. This was part of the Turing Scheme, the government’s global programme that provides funding for international study, work and training placements for students to widen access to worldwide opportunities. Sports students had to apply for the trip, and I was fortunate enough to be shortlisted. […]

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How We Miscount Time

“What a week, huh?” “ Captain, it’s only Wednesday.” If you’re as terminally online as I am, you’ll recognise the Tintin and Captain Haddock meme, deployed whenever the world seems particularly unsettled. Which means it gets deployed a lot these days. In the Anglophone world, we tend to think of comic strips as childish literature, those

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False accusations

Not Guilty Verdict Ignored in Feminist-Led Court of Public Opinion

Five years ago, another #MeToo attack bit the dust when one of Australia’s best-known entertainers, Craig McLachlan, was found not guilty of 13 charges of indecent assault and assault. What’s more, the magistrate awarded costs against the police – Victorian police ultimately paid out half a million dollars, which is the highest payout ever against

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Tower of Babel

The Paradox of Pride

Sometimes Fate/Karma/Destiny – call it what you will – seems to juxtapose things just to make a point. Or perhaps the human mind, always desperate for coherence, imposes its own structure on the messy reality of random chance. Thus, a couple of days after Artemis II returned to Earth, the BBC decided to screen a

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man reading book on bench

The Littlest Thing

I bought a book the other week. Nothing unusual there. One of my regular treats early in my working life was to leave the office, head to a bookshop, buy a stack and then pop to the sushi place round the corner for an early supper and a quiet read. I have been a sufficiently

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Father and son

Happy Birthday Dad x

My father died back in 2013, but today is his birthday. Like him, I’m not much of a birthday person as a rule, but I always remember his — 5/4/32 — pretty hard to forget. Dad didn’t “do” birthdays, as he put it. He rarely remembered yours, and he’d be offended if you showed up

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