Marmite

For those who think the sky’s about to fall in should they a) break a nail, b) be mis-gendered, c) lose an egg-and-spoon race (or just take part in an egg-and-spoon race if you’re vegan), then look away now. You’re only gonna get mad.

Here’s a blog to jumpstart the old brain cells, or kick them into touch. A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in how we think about and understand life, the universe and everything. The replacement of Ptolemy’s earth-centred universe with Copernicus’ sun-centred system is one example; Newtonian mechanics given the heave-ho by Einstein’s relativity is another. If you prefer, it’s when the ultimate answer is no longer 42; it’s 51.

I’ve been struggling with my latest blog. Since Easter weekend! That’s usually a sign I should abandon it and start something new, but on this occasion I was so irritated, I had to get back on an even keel by flushing all the cr-p out of my system, a bit like a textual enema.  Most discussions I have with those who hold opposing views, either in the pub or by email, are constructive, productive and enlightening. Where I struggle is when, as happened on Good Friday, I'm confronted with statements akin to ‘the Earth is flat’ or ‘1 + 1 = 3’ and the more I - politely - present my iron-clad facts and logic, the more I'm dissed, impolitely. There's only one conclusion: They can’t handle the truth! That’s my First Favourite Frase, with apologies to Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

This blog title sounds incongruous, but we’re used to the mantra ‘death is part of life’; ‘change is part of stability’ is simply a non-morbid variation. John Lewis losses One thing that got me thinking about this was the current predicament of John Lewis and the possibility, floated by Chairman Dame Sharon White, that a necessary cash injection might be needed from outside investors, which is at odds with the long-standing model of employee-only ownership. The company lost £234m last year and has to do something, but those who ought to know better don’t even want to consider Dame Sharon's obvious and sensible idea.

If you read the title as “The Bitch is Back”, I respect your interpretation – yes indeedy – and will explain why below. For those of you who mourned the (temporary, as it happens) demise of my blog, thank you. For those who celebrated wildly, you’d better grab another bottle to numb the pain. In the end, I had to resuscitate the blog to relieve the pressure cooker and give my hard-bitten tongue a rest, not that I bit it all the time, as some poor so-s can testify. Note the new blog address. I promised someone I’d remove all the old material from public view, and I have done. A promise is a promise for a’ that (well it is Burns Night this week). I know I also promised to stop blogging but, heck, no one’s perfect, not even me, even though my siblings nicknamed me Little Miss Perfect when we were young. Now that we’re old I still lord it over them. Much to catch up on, and it’s difficult to know where to start.  How about the choking hypocrisy of the Tory party rallying around Fishy R...