What does masculinity mean today? What does it mean to be a man? There are so many problems with this question. The real point of enquiry - given that gender is a construct! - should be this: who have we allowed to dictate to us what this void we call...

Karren Ablaze, writing recently for the Guardian about her new book, reflects on the twentieth year anniversary of riot grrrl - a feminist punk movement concocted of bands like L7 and Babes in Toyland, that shot female musicians into the limelight and challenged the male-dominated world...

Justin Bieber started his music career when he was just 14 and so easily falls in that bracket of stars who the more paternalist among us worry about. So, will he turn out like Michael Jackson, not ever really having had a childhood and mixing genius with utter, self unaware...

At a conference recently, I learned that cash advance lending company Amscot Financial, whose founder, President and CEO is Scottish native Ian MacKechnie, is the third largest buyer of tootsie rolls in Florida. However it is not the choice of confection that is keeping payday lending in the press of...

After the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI the rumour mill was fired up without abandon. Already circulating around the blogosphere is the assumption that this pardon - only the third of its kind (unless you count Gregory XII in 1415 who agreed to quit at the request of the council...

We in the UK are often told that GCSE's are too easy and that standards are slipping. Quoted in the Daily Mail, the nerve centre of decent, honest reportage, it is noted that secondary school exams are "as easy as falling off a log". So, could we start...

Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables, used the notion of tomber de Charybde en Scylla to describe the staging of two rebel barricades in the final scenes of his 1862 book. In it he refers to the Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple....

It was very encouraging news last week that a House of Lords amendment to the Financial Services Bill set out giving the new Financial Conduct Authority (which begins operating on 1 April 2013) the powers to cap the cost of payday loans.

But it hasn't been met with all round...

Last week I was fortunate enough to be able to be involved in a series of events, talks and workshops called Redrawing the Maps at Somerset House, London, exploring the life and work of the artist, novelist and poet John Berger (now in his 86th year).

I...

Today, Lord Parry Mitchell will be introducing an amendment on the Financial Services Bill to give the new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) the power to set guidelines on the impact of lenders' behaviour on consumers, which, as his blog post yesterday noted, will potentially include the capping of...

You may think it bold and brave of Raul Castro, brother of Fidel and president of Cuba, to tear down his country's longstanding exit visa requirement. Indeed on first reading it certainly looks this way, but at best it is a small token of what we should expect after 'reforms'...

Julian Knight has written a counter-intuitive reaction post to the news that Wonga's sponsorship with Newcastle United Football Club has carried successfully:

as someone who has written about Britain's addiction to debt for well over a decade, you think I'd be lining up to pour scorn on Newcastle's...

I have just read of two well-meaning, but ultimately wrong, academics in Germany who, in their study of the return of religion, and the return of criticism of religion, have aimed to paint a picture of what new atheism is by naming some well-known atheists in public intellectual...

11 years ago the world changed forever. On the 11th of September, 2001, four coordinated suicide attacks took place, carried out on US soil by terror group Al-Qaeda.

No doubt, year by year, we should remember those 3,000 that died, and their families. We should also look to remember the...

It's bad enough so many left wing figureheads are prepared to hold nothing back in their defense of Julian Assange, but now some are engaging themselves in conversations about rape and "the sex game", and getting it awkwardly wrong.

From December 2010 there have been new levels of hypocrisy...

The author and wit Gore Vidal sadly passed away on Tuesday at his home in Hollywood Hills of complications from pneumonia, aged 86.

While many will remember him for his extensive literary output, or his notorious public dsiputes (such as with Norman Mailer), Vidal will certainly be enshrined as an...

Journalists are ten a penny today. Every other person you meet is one, in one sense or another. And that's not because we all hang out in particularly meretricious settings with the haves (not the have-nots), but because we're all writing, all giving our opinion, all setting the tone among...

I'm sure many of you have been reading in the press recently about the chit-chat regarding whether George (Gideon) Osborne will stay or whether he will go in the next cabinet reshuffle. If you have you'll have read it not from the minds of wishful journalists at the Guardian or...

The UK's share of the 11 million 15-24 year olds who are unemployed across the OECD is 1 million. Greece and Spain fare worse with rates of over 50% of the total youth labour force, but the UK is fast catching up with the rest of Europe who have experienced...

A report launched at the beginning of June by the Victims' Services Advocates (VSA) has called for the police in London to be much more sensitive when listening to the victims of serious crimes, after highlighting findings that satisfaction with the police is extremely low.

According to the British Crime...