Eclectica

 So we have a king Charles the Third.  Charles 1 had his head chopped off by Cromwell when they realised he was so arrogant and treacherous ...

 "Nearly two out of five people polled in an annual Reuters study have reported sometimes or often avoiding consuming news. The survey...

 "An internal Pentagon investigation has found that a 2019 airstrike that killed up to 64 civilians in Syria did not violate US rules ...

"In Europe, BAE Systems and Thales are among the big winners from the Ukraine-arming spree. BAE makes ammo and artillery shells, as we...

I have been using Mozilla’s Firefox browser for many years. Its privacy features are outstanding. They are far better than those of Safari o...

In the UK gas and electricity prices have increased enormously from the 1st April 2022. I will be paying an extra £2450 more per year, There...

When NATO was formed in the late 1940s it was to counter the threat of massed soviet armour rolling into Western Europe.  Though that was ne...

 The “Daddy, I want a pony” tactic goes roughly like this: Little girl: Daddy, I want a pony! Want pony! Want want want pony!
 Dad: Uhm, no,...

 In 1939 Britain and France feared that Germany was going to invade Poland, so they guaranteed its independence.  It was a very foolish thin...

During WW1 the British Royal Navy blockaded Germany. It has been estimated that over 600,000 Germans died as a result. The most effective pa...

 Who started the First World War?  No, it wasn’t Germany. It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They wanted to attack Serbia but they knew tha...

I just got the renewal notice for my car insurance. It is over £50 less than last year. Why? The car is the same. The drivers are the same. ...

 "Over 40 member states have monitors in the Ukraine monitoring mission. The head of the mission is Turkish, and almost all members ha...

Caspar Milquetoast is a character created by H. T. Webster in 1925. He appeared in a cartoon strip called The Timid Soul. Webster descr...

When Ford introduced production lines in his car plant it had an immediate effect on output. “Production time for a single vehicle fell from...

The tech giants have demonstrated that they are able and willing to censor senior politicians and silence political discourse. Thats both w...

Why have governments been so keen to legislate against civil liberties in the name of protecting us against terrorism, but remain so very re...

Yeah, don't worry about it.

Are the  domestic chores getting you down? How about a shot of Dexedrine?[Brand name for dextroamphetamine].  The advertisement claims that ...

The foundations for the Certosa di Pavia [aka the Carthusian Monastery of Pavia] were laid in 1396. Over the centuries patrons came and we...

The Grand Balcon Sud is a path which runs high along the side of the Chamonix valley from Brevent to Lac Blanc. There is another very goo...

High Seas Fleet Scapa Flow is a sheltered anchorage in the Orkneys, to the north of the Scottish mainland. During the First World War it...

It often comes as a surprise to those outside academia to discover how relatively unimportant teaching ability is considered in many univers...

I am currently reading Michela Wrong’s ‘ In The Footsteps of Mr Kurtz ’. This excellent book is about Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime in the Con...

Bastides are small fortified towns which were built in France from the 13th century. Many survive to this day, particularly in Lot and the ...

There are lots of dangerous underwater creatures. The most dangerous is not the shark, as most people imagine. I have dived with sharks man...

Your word for today is NED. It stands for non educated delinquent and is a generic term for the creme de la creme of young Glasgow males. NE...

The photo below shows Easdale Island. It lies off the west coast of Scotland, a few miles south of Oban. It is one of Scotland's slate i...