Toyah Wilcox, venerable punk pop star, actress and all-round entertainer, has been one of the pandemic hits with her wild and wayout YouTube Sunday Lockdown Lunch videos with her husband Fripp, musician and founder of the rock band King Crimson – 4.3 million views. They’ve been together extraordinarily for 35 years given that both … Read more
Jordan Peterson, the controversial Canadian psychology professor who became a love-hate figure for his anti-political correctness views, condemnation of academic “safe spaces” and his refusal to use transgender preferred pronouns, has a new book coming soon. At one point he was described as an “icon of white supremacy and hate speech.” In a publicity … Read more
Pious sentiments about ‘democratising finance’ and sticking it to the rich guys may come badly unstuck for small chat-room investors who sent share prices soaring recently for a moribund Gameshop and lacklustre AMC theatre group. In the process they cost short-sellers a small fortune, before moving on to send the price of silver soaring to … Read more
Myanmar has returned to its dark days of military oppression with the army seizing power, claiming that recent elections giving an 83% victory to Aung San Suu Kyi’s party and trouncing their own party were fraudulent. They have installed their commander-in-chief as leader and detained senior politicians. The country was ruled by the military from … Read more
New brooms in Washington will bring changes though with only a slender majority in the Senate perhaps not as many as the progressives would like. Chuck Schumer, 23 November 1950 11 am (from memory) New York, is the Senate Majority leader. He’s a charming Sun Venus in Sagittarius with a few obstacles and disappointments … Read more
Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve, has been confirmed as the first ever female US treasury secretary in a bi-partisan Senate vote of 84–15. As such she will be responsible for guiding the economic response to the pandemic. When at the Federal Reserve she was known for focusing attention on the impact of … Read more
Alexei Navalny’s suicidally courageous return to Russia after recovering from an attempted assassination by poisoning brought tens of thousands of his supporters out onto the streets in unsanctioned demonstrations. They were adding their voices and feet to his protests against high level political corruption, spotlighted in a YouTube film, released a few days ago and … Read more
Vincenzo Muccioli was the charismatic leader of a drug rehab community in Italy, curing heroin addiction by offering community support and craft training in a model farm. His followers regarded him as a saviour though he did practice ‘tough love’ on the addict inmates. How tough only became evident after a brutally beaten dead body … Read more
‘Suffer little children to come unto me’ – for a religious organisation that flag-waves compassion as a guiding light, the Catholic Church in Ireland spectacularly failed to walk its talk. The brutal and inhumane treatment of unmarried mothers over decades has been exposed in a heart-rending report. Overall 60,000 women over 80 years were put … Read more
“A mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being … relentlessly ugly. … But her books? Brilliant.” So said Patricia Highsmith’s publisher. And PD James remarked that without the catharsis of fiction she wondered whether Highsmith might have become one of the murderers she wrote so lovingly about. A new biography relating the chaos and degradation … Read more