What should we talk about today?
The world according to Kirkey
Being deceived, duped, conned, or shafted isn’t pleasant. But if you have been you are in damn good company. In 30 BC, according to Plutarch, Cleopatra misled her protector Epaphroditus and committed suicide. Prime Minister Anthony Eden was duped by Harold Macmillan during the Suez Crisis of 1956 resulting in the latter getting the top … Read more
If you prefer Kellogg’s cornflakes in the morning your libido may take a knock when you realise that the cereal mastermind Dr John Harvey Kellogg, allegedly, maintained that his creation would alleviate the desire to wank. It is true that he was, according to many historians, a little prissy when it came to engaging with … Read more
History will cite an impressive timeline of inventions that have shaped humanity. Stone tools made an appearance around three million years ago. A tad over a million years later the control of fire is thought to have been harnessed by our distant cousin Homo habilis, whilst in 1300 BC the industrialisation of iron smelting kicked … Read more
There remains a degree of uncertainty over who the following words are attributable to, although being long gone I am sure that none of the ancestors of Benjamin Franklin, in a letter written in 1789 about the American Constitution, or Christopher Bullock, in his novel The Cobler of Preston (1716) or indeed Edward Ward, in … Read more
On March 23rd, 2020 a relatively redundant word, save outside of the confines of high-security prisons, became mainstream: Lockdown. This new phenomenon led the majority of the sixty-seven million inhabitants of the United Kingdom to self-isolate at home to mitigate the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many businesses went into stasis and an anxious resignation … Read more
I am Gok Wan’s alter ego. If his utterly stupendous fashion sense is North I am South. Where he burns I freeze. Thus, without M&S I guess I would have to resort to wrapping myself in a refuse sack. I am also tight. Vouchercloud is my primary App and my wallet bursts with store discount … Read more
Dear Anti-Vaxxers, Hope you are well (due to a vaccine). You are right that ordinarily a vaccine takes around ten years to develop. In ordinary times only a handful of research institutions are targeting a specific virus, often simultaneously investigating other life-threatening scenarios. The law of duplication means that if, say, three people are doing … Read more
As an ex-cop and having reviewed the televised account of Mr Cummings I am puzzled as to why, given his keenness to talk about the matter, he did not initially attend a local Metropolitan police station and offer an explanation? Out of force enquiries are not unusual and he would have been afforded all of … Read more