Pranny – there’s a word I haven’t heard for a long while. It’s great to have these words in the back of your mind when someone has been irritating you and you can sum them up like that. More effective than the mor […]

I don’t know if this proposed boycott would have any impact on the Israeli government, and it’s not clear what the supporters want to achieve – two state solution, the abolition of Israel? Just a righteous f […]

I realise I may be out of touch with what’s hip and happening in the world of The Afterword, but when I saw the title I genuinely thought that this thread was going to be sad news about Shakin Stevens and Lulu p […]

I bought a new Marantz amplifier a couple of months ago, as some of the outputs on the old one had failed – it was 15 years old. What struck me was that they now expect you to integrate it with more than j […]

My point was that you really need to have people who are prepared to enforce a constitution. It is not a mechanical process which ticks over on its own as a system of checks and balances. America is just one […]

No constitution is itself a guarantee of justice, it depends on people enforcing it. But following the release of some of the Epstein files, police in the UK have arrested two prominent unelected public figures […]

Is it the forties? The reference to a war of annihilation makes me think it would be post H Bomb, and the tone is reminiscent of someone like Bertrand Russell or H G Wells.

Andrew was arrested by Thames Valley Police and the Metropolitan Police are investigating Mandelson. The allegations are different and so may require different types of investigation, and they may also have […]

In the documentary series a couple of years ago which focused on each of the Stones, Charlie showed his collection of around 100 drum kits which had belonged to his heroes, mainly jazzers like Art Blakey. They […]

I’m in London. So if you think that it might be fixable – I thought it wouldn’t be – I will google to see if I can find a reasonably local repair shop.

It’s a Marantz. The problem is that all of the sound comes out of the right hand speaker. Whatever processor works out which channel certain sounds should come out of has stopped working and it is sending all of […]

Thanks for all of the advice. I was in fact referring to Marantz. That is the make of my current CD player, and I also have a Marantz amplifier. As I have always found the sound quality good across a wide range of […]

On a slightly related point, my CD player broke down the other day, after about fourteen or fifteen years, and so I have been looking for a replacement. What has surprised is me that the cost of a fairly standard […]

I think Springsteen has shown courage by recording this, as he must be aware of the backlash he might get from Trump and his supporters. But it’s hard to know if it’s going to change any minds or just provide som […]

On a melancholy note, Carl Reiner created the show drawing on his own experiences as a TV writer for an egotistic comic, who went home every night to a normal suburban life. Dick van Dyke’s family in the show were […]

I think the idea is that if you pour boiling water into an unheated tea pot, some of the heat goes into warming the pot, so the water drops in temperature. If the pot is already heated, the water remains nearer to […]

Zack Polanski is 43, so although he may be a new face to a lot of people, he’s not that young. He has been in politics since 2015, as a Liberal and then Green, and has been a member of the London Assembly since 2 […]

As far as the letter post goes, isn’t this an example of Woolworths Syndrome, where everybody bemoaned their closure while admitting they never went in there. The only time I use the letter post is to send b […]

I think I can say Alistair Green has summarised my reaction;

They do sound too contrived, but fact as ever outdoes fiction. This an advert for a cafe which I often pass advertising an evening of “vulva casting and kombucha”. It sounds like something they thought up as a sid […]