(A cut up of Katharine Birbalsingh’s inaugural speech as Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, who said it’s time for a radical shift in how the UK views social mobility) We are life for a few — thinking about people who are born into a family in social housing in…

My great great great grandfather on my mother’s side was George Hall (1808–1881). He was transported to the colony of New South Wales for life when he was 19 years old for stealing a chronometer watch (a clock ensconced in a vacuum chamber), and a…

Having lived in Sweden for 22 years, both in the far north (Umeå) and in the capital Stockholm and speaking the language fluently, I have taken more than a passing interesting in the changes to this fascinating and complex land. In recent years the idea that Sweden as a society…

I was born during the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. Today I remember nothing directly of it, although when the tanks from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam crashed through the gates of the Embassy of the United States of America in Saigon on Apr 30, 1975, I was…

(Himachal Pradesh) — Photos of the valley by Robert from England It was a 25-kilometre trek to get to Kheerganga and there was no road in those days. We set out in the morning from Manikaran following the course of the Parvati River. The river was wild, white water gushing…

Drugs and guns in Sweden — there is so much money linked to drug trafficking that those who earn see no problem in killing too. Two days ago a policeman was shot dead on an open street in Gothenburg, while he spoke to some local youth. It seems he was…

By 1803 possibly the richest and largest commercial organisation in the world, the East India Company was practically running the Indian subcontinent as a vast commercial concern. The company’s business model may sound familiar: “keeping supply and production costs low while maximising the price of goods sold in England. It…

(A CutUp in the Style of Burroughs and Gysin) The net of him is new and out of it Josef was sicker than Pilate, the author according to the wealth swords of the gladness business. Give me testament and crop not his loaves from broke birds to man actions, here is your parable and just later you three…