If Jerusalem is going to be built “in England’s green and pleasant land”, it’s going to be built in bubble wrap. Before entering, indeed before getting close, we will be warned repeatedly of the metaphoric city’s sharp metaphoric edges and its slippery-when-wet metaphoric steps. Just in case.

We will be told to get there by driving [...]

“Dying is an art,” wrote Sylvia Plath. It is an art she claimed to do “exceptionally well”. Whether her son, Nick Hughes’s recent death by suicide was art or not, we shall never know… it wasn’t a public affair.
Jade Goody’s death, on the other hand, was a public affair. As loathed as I am to [...]

Sometimes we need to criticize that which has the best intentions, as we see the worst results. Last week, the world (well 88 countries, at least) turned off its lights… for an hour… sending us into a dark age of social consciousness.
The World Wildlife Fund asked citizens of the world to “vote for the earth” [...]

I love self-help books. They make me feel warm and fuzzy and motivate me to change my life. They let me know that everything is OK and that although I have many faults, I have never exploited the weak and desperate, the lonely and confused, the struggling and needy by writing a book that I [...]

“Imagine a world with no possessions”. Had John Lennon been thinking of possessing music, it may be an imagining that has just become reality.
Thirty-eight years since Imagine, the possibility of there being no musical ownership is very real indeed thanks to a small, free computer application called Spotify.
Spotify (an awful name, made from combining spot [...]