I was extremely disappointed with the results returned when I typed the question above into Google – so I thought I’d do the calculations myself. Obviously what’s below is a very general standard, and there will be significant variations dependent on qualifications, actual life expectancy, inheritance leading to earlier retirement, whether you have time off [...]

Man I smacked down my dinner tonight – Sometimes there’s just nothing like a good old plate of baked beans and eggs on toast – In fact a couple of times a week  it’s the perfect evening meal (given that I generally eat my fruit and crudities at work) – Nutritious (being a veggie I [...]

Teaching this topic this week – thought I’d share a web – based lesson I put together… For A level, and general interest… Results statistics 2012 Break down of stats by region, FSM and ethnicity – not very accessible 2010-11 Latest stats – PDF 2009 Results – A bit older but the easiest to follow! [...]

    Saudi Arabia is well known for its high levels of gender inequality – and this week, Janice Turner pointed out that it is the only nation, in ‘flagrant disregard of the Olympic Charter, that will not be sending any women to the games. The rational for this is that exercise, according to the Saudi [...]

Two nice articles illustrating the madness of health and safety… both concerning coffee…. In Bournemouth, a bus driver ordered passengers off a bus after a woman spilled some coffee. One woman spilt a third of her cup of coffee while getting on the bus, and then a further ten people were told they couldn’t get [...]

This is a not-so-brief post on why I think Fashion is pointless – from a Buddhist point of view. It starts off with an allotment analogy but ends up with 6 reasons why I don’t like Fashion. (NB this first draft is quite abstract, I’ll jazz it up with a few pop. Culture references laters….) [...]

In this blog post I summarise Dambisa Moyo’s views on the problems with Aid as a strategy for development – she is talking about Official Development Aid rather than Emergency relief aid. I’m mainly drawing from her writing at the end of chapter 3 and the whole of chapter 4 – and I offer up [...]

Believe it or not, I actually remember being 17 quite well – In between the bits where I generally revelled in my own wonderfulness, it mainly involved a lot of ‘misplaced youthful aspiration’ about my potential for doing great and wonderful things such as ‘travelling the world, astrally visiting other planets, joining Ashrams in India, [...]