The UK election on July 4 2024 has an upbeat tr Jupiter in Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius running through most of the campaigning. Though there are ominous signs of aggravation from Mars in Taurus from 9th June which makes a high-risk, ruthless square to Pluto on June 11th and aims for the explosive/destructive Algol … Read more
Election UK July 4th – day itself plus Sunak and Starmer charts. Details tomorrow. Mars moving into Taurus on June 9th squaring Pluto and then aiming for Uranus and Algol conjunct around July 16th – all looks fraught, especially since Mars is moving through the UK’s deep and dark 8th.
The International Criminal Court seeking arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders over the Gaza conflict has outraged Israelis and landed western leaders in a tricky dilemma, despite their recent warnings to Netanyahu about pulling back. The ICC prosecutor Karim Khan’s move effectively puts Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on par with … Read more
Never again. Lessons will be learnt. The cop-outs from monumental institutional failures follow a sickeningly repetitive pattern. Lies and cover-up costing the taxpayer billions in compensation and delays in payouts even after promises have been dragged out of a reluctant government. Tory and Labour, politicians and civil service – a culture of institutional arrogance, evasiveness … Read more
Crime novelist Ian Rankin has a new incarnation of his best-selling middle-aged detective Rebus in a prequel TV series with a hunkier lead casting of a younger version in Outlander actor Richard Rankin. Ian Rankin is now the most widely-read crime novelist in the UK, as well as having his novels translated into many languages. … Read more
Golf is having a moment with various eyebrow-raising headlines from Saudi’s sportwashing to Rory McIlroy’s divorce and Scottie Sheffler’s Louisville arrest on the way to the PGA. The beginnings of golf are lost several centuries back though in 1457, King James II, in an Act of Parliament banned citizens from playing football and golf … Read more
Kevin Spacey unceremoniously dumped by Netflix in 2017 over allegations of sexual harassment and shunned since despite being cleared by courts in the UK and the US of allegations is being supported by fellow thespians who insist he has been badly treated. Stephen Fry accepted Spacey had been ‘clumsy’ and ‘inappropriate’ but should not be … Read more
Slovakia is in turmoil after an assassination attempt on its pro-Russian prime minister, Robert Fico, by a disturbed, possibly politically-motivated pensioner. Slovakia is a landlocked country in Central Europe, bordered by Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic from which it split in 1993. A developed country with an advanced high-income economy, it is … Read more
‘Dazzling, beautiful, hypnotic and unsettling’ was how the ‘wicked Anita’ Pallenberg was described by her friend Marianne Faithfull. The epitome of the 1960s sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, she ricocheted amongst the Rolling Stones, from Brian Jones, to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. She did stupendous quantities of heroin, indulged in a fascination for … Read more
Alice Munro, the Canadian Nobel Literature Prize-winner, renowned as the master of the modern short story and compared to Chekhov, has died at 92. She drew on the lives of her neighbours for stories which became parables about the tests of character faced by people everywhere and managed to invest the humdrum events and parochial … Read more