Blog
Post Office closures the end of an era
I live in a village with a population of around 2,000 and when I moved here 16 years ago it had three shops and a butchers. Now it has one remaining shop - it is a Spar store with a post office which is well used by our local community - and under threat of...
Why must Brown wait another 42 days?
After waiting 13 years for his moment of glory, why must Gordon Brown wait another 42 days before he can become Prime Minister? What is the reason for this delay?
The missing – Estelle Mouzin
A blog has been set up so nobody forgets Estelle Mouzin who vanished without trace in January 2003 when she was nine years old. She was returning home from school in Guermantes, France, a village with a population of 1,392, near...
Where have all the sperm donors gone?
Did you realise there are just over 200 registered sperm donors in the UK, despite a male population of more than 22 million men? I wrote about this crisis last August after Bourn Hall Clinic turned to a donor bank in Denmark to make up its...
Baggage carousel ads at China’s airports
Former dull, grey baggage carousels at Beijing airport in China are now adorned in colourful advertising as it embraces consumerism. The airport has 15 baggage carousels and traffics 48 million visitors annually. Then it occurred to me that this would be the perfect...
Will movie smoking ban be kiss of box-office death?
There was a time when it was considered cool to smoke in films, but now it is to be censored along the same lines as sex, violence and swearing - suitable only for over 18s in America where it will be R-rated. As the non-smoking film maker Marshall Merskovitz...
The missing – Louis Mackerley
Louis Anthony Mackerley looks a fine young man in the latest picture produced by age progression techniques, an invaluable tool used for missing people searches. Louis hasn't been seen since June 1984 when he was seven after returning home from school in Allentown,...
How green really is Gordon Brown?
I thought I smelt a rat when I heard that Gordon Brown had earmarked Oakington Barracks, close to where I live in Cambridgeshire, as the first of his planned eco-towns. The site is currently used as an Immigration Reception Centre which...
The missing – Philip Cairns
Philip Cairns has been missing for 20 years, but investigations are still ongoing. The 13-year-old vanished while walking back to school in south Dublin in October 1986. Every year, on the anniversary of his disappearance, his family make a fresh appeal for the...