The meltdown of the Co-operative Bank after its unwise merger with the Britannia Building Society, its botched take-over of part of Lloyds Bank (Project Verde) and the shenannigans of its former Chairman the Revd Paul Flowers, have been something of a field day for the enemies of cooperation and mutuality. The reputational damage both to […]
I was involved in a cycling accident in the summer and wound up with a broken right shoulder. It has been painful and restricted me a lot, including no cycling or driving for six weeks. One positive, apart from being able to enjoy the summer sunshine in the garden, has been taking buses much more […]
The hot days of July finally saw the debates around the implications ‘fracking’ of unconventional hydro-carbons in the UK reach out and grab the attention of the national media. As Tory grandee Lord Howell called for the process to be focussed on the ‘desolate north’ (he corrected the initial impression that he was referring to […]
Anyone who has travelled in or out of London by train towards the West Country, Wales, or north to Birmingham will have passed the looming presence of Didcot ‘A’ power station and it cooling towers. They have been a feature of the Oxfordshire landscape since 1970. But earlier this year the coal-fired power station was […]
It is a commonplace for commentators to say following the recent success of UKIP in the shire elections, that it poses a threat to Labour as well as the Tories. There is some truth in this, but a strand of thinking in the Labour Party has been grappling with some of the issues UKIP poses […]
There was a really good April Fool this year from green think tank the Green Alliance announcing the abolition of the Department for Communities and Local Government. Apart from the clue in the date of the blog, it didn’t take long to realise that it was a jape because of the wonderful comment about how […]
The Government’s much-heralded ‘Green Deal’ (1) was launched on 28 January. The objective is very worthwhile – to provide a funding mechanism to enable a lot of the 20-odd million homes in the UK which are energy inefficient to be retro-fitted with insulation and energy efficient appliances like boilers and heating systems that greatly reduce […]
The Poll Tax riots in 1990 famously brought down Mrs Thatcher and led to the hasty introduction of the Council Tax. Twenty three years later are the reforms to Council Tax due for implementation in less than a month, about to bring the Poll Tax back from the grave? From 1 April, instead of the […]
As a child in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s I was brought up in the village of Wootton near Woodstock on the edge of the Cotswolds, about 12 miles from Oxford. The village residents included a fair number of writers, artists, journalists and dons. Amongst them were Edmund and Meg Penning-Rowsell, who were great […]
Today sees the deadline for the submission of the second round of ‘City Deals’. Twenty cities and city regions are putting proposals to DCLG based around four ambitious objectives to: • Boost local economic growth • Rebalance the economy spatially and sectorally • Decentralise the powers and levers cities need to drive local economic growth […]
I have written articles for magazines for many years; some such as Vole which passed into history 40 years ago. I still write a regular column for Town & Country Planning. I started that in 1986. These days I guest-blog in various places as well as having my own blog Lord Muck, on this website. The articles posted here are a mixture of these blogs and other published writing. I will try to post here every 3-4 months. Hope you find all this stimulating and do respond!
I have spent four years documenting the people who live on Divinity Road and their surroundings. Here is the result.
My new book records a year in the Covid-19 pandemic through the masks that people wore.
