Archive for month: May, 2015

Bring on the banjos

25 May, 2015 (20:36) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

I WOULD like to talk to you of banjos, for the banjo is our chosen symbol for the week. It’s an instrument that for years has been unloved, on the fringes, unregarded, nothing but a jazz percussion aid. Mark Twain, who said absolutely everything that Oscar Wilde didn’t, famously remarked: ‘A gentleman is a man […]

Time out

18 May, 2015 (20:58) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

WE are going to have to address the question of time, seeing as I’m late yet again. This was supposed to be a blog to read with your morning coffee, for the Crab’s sake. It has become something to read with your evening cocoa. But time just doesn’t work, does it? Brother Mellors and I […]

Reasons to be cheerful

11 May, 2015 (20:47) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

I’ve been telling you for years, not weeks, that the southern English are the worst sort of electoral cowards. The sort that would run scared when faced with even the emptiest of threats (‘The SNP are coming! Lock up your principles!’); stand obediently to one side while the weak are bullied; the sort that would […]

Do the right thing

4 May, 2015 (19:17) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

Think of the people who will be happy on Friday morning if all goes badly and the Conservatives win. David Cameron. Goldman Sachs. Rupert Murdoch. Paul Dacre. George Osborne. Cameron’s election chief Lynton Crosby, one of whose firms stands to make vast profits from privatised NHS contracts. God forgive me for writing the foul name […]