Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me! — I have written of the mouse Dylan beat to death with my briefcase: (https://medium.com/@argonaut57/the-cat-who-used-a-blunt-instrument-5e6bed465cc4) I have recounted the tale of Cupcake the Demon Hamster: (https://medium.com/@argonaut57/the-cat-who-used-a-blunt-instrument-5e6bed465cc4) But it seems that the member of the order Rodentia are not done with me yet!

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Romulan? — *WARNING: Some non-PC language, those where the days!* Captains’ Log, star date, star date…Wilson, what’s the stardate? “37771.4, Sir.” Star date 37771.4. The “Impeccable” has been seconded to Section 31 to perform a survey of the Romulan Neutral Zone, under the supervision of Commander Flick. Captain Mainwaring sat bolt upright…

Nothing whatever to do with who you are… — Tony Atkinson Born July 1958 in Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, UK. Age 65 years. White English. British Citizen. Male cisgender heteroromantic asexual. BA (Hons) Communication Studies (2/1). Five O-levels, two A-levels, one S-level, one GCSE, City & Guilds 730 Adult Education Parts 1 & 2 (Merit). Veteran. Sufferer from…

But it will be a living death for Lucy Letby — Lucy Letby, a 33-year-old neonatal nurse from Hereford, has today been sentenced to a ‘whole life’ tariff in prison. A life sentence with no possibility of parole. While working as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital, Letby attacked some 13 newborn babies, seven of whom died as…

Just privileges, and the need to fight to keep them. — Thomas Paine wrote at great length about the Rights of Man in 1791. He was not the first. A short list of ‘inalienable rights’ is a key element of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. The Magan Carta of 1215 established certain ‘rights’ of freeborn Englishmen. The 1689 Bill of Rights…

We are losing our backbone! As a species, humans have spines, backbones. They keep us upright and are the centre of an endoskeleton that allows us to use our limbs and move about. As a society, too many no longer possess a spine. That have become amorphous jellies, crawling around…

Time to celebrate those hellish things you escaped from! The terrible imposition of a universal, tax-funded, free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare system. The disaster that was the abolition of slavery in 1833. The horror of a multi-party political system, made worse by at least two parties being definitely left of centre. The threat…

My smile is worse than my frown — Seen only by those with eyes to see, I caper among you. My dance mocks yours; I make the graceful grotesque and the grotesque graceful. My voice mocks yours; I reduce your epics to limericks and answer your diatribes with odes. They call me servant, but who do I serve…

But was this Coronation a beginning, or an end? — “God save the King!” They shouted. “Long live the King! May the King live forever!” The last won’t happen, anyhow. Truth be told, not that much chance of the second, either. Charles III is 74, ten years older than I, and even should he prove as long-lived as his parents…