Coastalblog

Not a slow news week, is it? Still, the papers can't be wall to wall imminent end of the world (though one could argue that some outlets could probably do with a spot more of it) all the time can they? Need a little levity amongst the hydrocarbon-fuelled misery, which is presumably the reason that the Graun helped to fill its pages with  this  piece, a hoary old retread of a story as old as, well, since kids were allowed in pubs where "some" (a word which does an incredible amount of heavy lifting in the press) Landlords are banning children from their pubs. It cites dreadful behaviour, disruption of trade, surly parents, I'm fairly sure I've read it a few times before (though this one does have the bonus story of a child disappearing down an open cellar hatch, which is kind of fun) This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, news, there are many pubs which don't welcome children, a situation which was largely the norm until relatively recently. I well rem...

Sitting here at my kitchen table, enjoying the early spring sunshine that still has the bones of the winter cold, it's hard to believe that nearly a quarter of the year is gone. Regular readers (if one can be a regular reader of something I publish so erratically) will be aware that I hold myself to a series of targets every year, weekly, monthly and yearly. I almosy never achieve any of them, but it's a way of keeping myself accountable, gets me down to the gym on days I don't feel like it, makes sure I keep writing, gives me extra reasons to read and watch new things. Various pluses to my existence which may well disappear into a slough of inertia otherwise. For I am by nature a deeply lazy man. I know this to be what I am like, and so take countermeasures. Unfortunately I seem to have overshot somewhat and am now working harder than at any other point in my life, whuch veterans of the Source years may find hard to believe, but that's a slightly different issue. Anywa...

Slowly but surely, the pub becomes home in unexpected ways. We've lived in for a couple of years now (though you wouldn't know it from the lack of progress in decorating upstairs, all I will say in my defence is that the job takes up a lot more of your time than you ever imagine it will), and it's a very different sort of life to the one I was used to. One curious manifestation of it now being a family home, rather than just a business with am empty flat up top, is you can't help but have life intrude on the business, be it the regulars now used to the sight of my youngest casually wandering behind the bar to pour one of his two-a-week-and-that's-it fizzy drinks or the sudden disappearance of queues for the bathroom, as we now effectively have five toilets. One form this takes is the gradual colonisation of the pub with the spill-over from my book collection. With space at a premium upstairs, duplicates or read once and unlikely to re-read books find their way downs...

I note, somewhat wearily, that creepy old men are back in the news, being creepy. Creepy old men, and their apologists and enablers, who argue that their creepiness is somehow the natural order of things. Old men would have you believe that it is difficult to not be a creepy old man. That it is a task of epic proportions. It is not that difficult. It is a matter of intention. As yet more of the grimness of Epstein unfolds, creepy old men are, sadly, a flaccid topic once again. Whether it be pursuing students thirty years their junior, or simply not asking too many questions about the background of the probably legal young woman who you've just been introduced to by your good pal Jeff. To be clear, I am not referring to criminal creepy old men, the ones who actually committed statutory rape, the ones who fucked trafficked hirls. That is not something which is allowed to get away merely with the contempt of the observer.  That deserves prison.  No , I'm referring to the hinterla...

I was completely ignorant of the fuss over the edited Trump speech in an edition of Panorama until, one moment later, I wasn't. And the reasons for my ignorance are instructive. I had no idea that the story was even brewing until the surprise Sunday night news of the resignations of Tom Davie and Deborah Turness. As I'm sure you are by now aware, this was occasioned by a clumsy edit in an old edition of Panorama, which has already been on the iplayer for a year. It's a non-story. Except people decided to make it a story. The reason I'd heard nothing of it until the resignations was that I'm not on X, where, apparently, it was all the media classes had been talking about for a week. It was an obsession of the unholy right-wing trifecta of the Mail, Telegraph and Times (who, given that they sent a bloke just last week to interview the wrong Bill di Blasio, you'd think would wind their necks in over factual inacccuracy). It was big news on GB news, all self-contain...

Ah, we're back to calling humanities degrees rip-offs, are we? What a semi regular treat that is. There is a persistent strain of thought in British public life which runs thus: things are shit, blame clever people. When a politician needs a convenient punchbag, higher education is always a quick and easy mark. Everyone hates students, right? And those lecturers, bit up themselves, aren't they? And so Kemi Badenoch, bereft of ideas, takes up the cudgels once more, because why not? It's not like she's got anything else sensible to say. Might as well try and score a few populist points. Cuh, English degrees eh? What use are they?  Yes, this week, the erstwhile leader of His Majesty's Opposition decided to wander down a tired and well-trodden path and try to score a few points off the back of the much maligned Arts and Humanities. She's not the first, I highly doubt she'll be the last. She set out plans to a somewhat sparsely attended Conservative Party Confere...