Month: October 2025

Politics

Standing Orders

Mystifying as they may seem to a casual onlooker, there are certain procedural rules that everyone in the two Houses of Parliament […]

Mystifying as they may seem to a casual onlooker, there are certain procedural rules that everyone in the two Houses of Parliament must follow. These are called Standing Orders ~ ‘standing’ because although they are amended frequently, they continue to be observed from one Parliament to the next. They necessarily began to evolve with the establishment of the first Parliaments in the 13th and 14th centuries.

There are separate Standing Orders for each House and for Public and Private business, making four sets in total. They cover the steps for debating, asking questions, putting motions, joining committees, making statements and amendments, and even the timing of sittings and the etiquette of taking seats in the House. In addition to this guidance, there is a Code of Conduct for personal behaviour.

Prior to 1854, when there were procedural reforms, the Standing Orders were indulgent by omission and so few that they took just one sheet of paper, but there are now hundreds of pages for the new MP or Lord to absorb. There are also the unwritten ‘conventions’ to take on board. However, there are numerous staff members to assist with all of this, as well as provide debate packs, analyses and briefings.

(Image: House of Commons at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

30/10/2025
3 min
6 days
209 words

Law

Finding Treasure

After so much history on these small islands, it is not surprising that people actively search with metal detectors for buried treasure […]

After so much history on these small islands, it is not surprising that people actively search with metal detectors for buried treasure and often find it. Does the saying “finders keepers” apply? No. Indeed, under the Treasure Act 1996 it is a criminal offence not to report finding treasure within 14 days of realising that your find qualifies as ‘treasure’ and you could even be fined and/or spend three months in prison!

As all the land ultimately belongs to the Crown, anything valuable buried in it is of interest to the authorities. In England and Wales it is the Portable Antiquities Scheme to which reports must be made; in Scotland the Treasure Trove Unit; and in N.Ireland the Treasure Registry. A major museum (e.g. the British Museum) then assesses the item (it must not have be cleaned by the finder) and a reward may be paid. The largest reward for any of the 10,000+ finds since 1996 was £4,300,000 for 2,584 silver pennies dating from the Norman Conquest dug up in a Somerset field in 2019.

Gold and silver content, rarity, untraceable ownership and age (over 300 years) are the key factors in designating an item as ‘treasure’. Fossils, bones and artefacts from wrecks fall into other categories.

(Image of Roman coins found in Shropshire: Benedict Pond at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

27/10/2025
3 min
1 week
217 words

Inventions

The Slide Rule

When a football commentator uses the term “a slide rule pass”, what is meant is that the ball was kicked with great […]

When a football commentator uses the term “a slide rule pass”, what is meant is that the ball was kicked with great accuracy, sometimes through a narrow gap, to a running team-mate’s feet. Even though electronic calculators superseded the slide rule in the 1970s, its great importance in mathematics over the previous 350 years has thereby left at least one cultural imprint.

In fact, the engineering feats behind the Industrial Revolution, including James Watt’s steam engine, would have been impossible without this tool to achieve solutions to complex equations quickly. A succession of at least ten Britons devised and developed it, so that by the mid-1800s there were 40 different versions of the slide rule, including a spiral one. Thereafter, other countries, and plastic, took it on.

Notable among the Britons are John Napier (1550-1617), who invented logarithms and Napier’s Bones in 1617, followed by Edmund Gunter (1581-1626) who invented logarithmic scales for use with calipers in 1620. The big name is William Oughtred (1574-1660) with his invention of a circular slide rule with two scales c.1622 and one for calculating excise duty on ale, wine and spirits in 1633. Other scales were gradually added and other uses applied, including Henry Coggeshall’s (1623-90) slide rule specifically for carpenters in 1677.

(Image of slide rule in use in 1966: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service at picryl.com / Public domain)

23/10/2025
3 min
2 weeks
228 words

Geography & Environment / History

Henges

3,000-4,000 years ago, henges were all the rage across Britain (and elsewhere too). A henge is an ancient circular or oval ditch […]

3,000-4,000 years ago, henges were all the rage across Britain (and elsewhere too). A henge is an ancient circular or oval ditch surrounded by a bank of the excavated soil with one or two causeways into the inner area. The remnants of at least 80 henges have been discovered here, the most famous being Stonehenge, an example of a henge containing massive stone slabs round the circle, along with some lintels. Most other henges have timber posts, some of them huge.

How and why they were built is unknown. One theory is that henges enclosed ’roundhouses’ with wattle walls and thatched roofs. The large ones ~ the ‘superhenges’ with multiple concentric circles inside ~ could have accommodated entertainments, meetings, rituals, ceremonies or other group activities.

Other, less convincing, theories suggest that they marked territory in the new farming age or they honoured dead ancestors, or were used as calendars. Considering the enormous number of man-hours required to dig and haul, their location near rivers or sea often in small clusters, the roundhouse idea seems the most logical, but one of the two henges discovered in Norfolk (called ‘Seahenge’) had the mystifying feature of an enormous upturned tree stump in the middle. Cowboy builders, maybe?

(Image of one of many Wiltshire henge remains: Alan Denney at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

18/10/2025
3 min
3 weeks
216 words

Geography & Environment

Sir Edwin Lutyens

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), born in London, had a glittering, award-winning career as an Architect for the wealthy, yet his style and […]

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), born in London, had a glittering, award-winning career as an Architect for the wealthy, yet his style and use of traditional materials still have an appeal to British tastes across the board. Indeed, there are new homes being built today called ‘The Lutyens’ and it is possible to seek out original Lutyens-designed properties for sale, since his output was prolific, continuing from age 20 until his death at 74, with no holidays.

His largest project was the planning of New Delhi, including the Indian President’s official residence and one of the smallest was the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the focus of Remembrance Sunday. He was also responsible for Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, the largest of its kind, at 1:12 scale of a royal palace.

Lutyens met garden designer Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) when he first established his practice and their shared artistry and passion for rural craftmanship underlined hundreds of collaborations. The rise of the upper middle-class provided a ready market for Lutyens’s imaginative and impressive country houses, often featured in the glossy magazine ‘Country Life’ (1897-). His 800+ projects also included the last castle to be built in the UK – Castle Drogo – and he was working on Liverpool’s R.C. Cathedral (unfinished) when he died.

(Images: A Lutyens house (Goddards) by Mark Perey at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0, bust of Lutyens by Sjukmidlands at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

15/10/2025
3 min
3 weeks
232 words

Entertainment

Black Sabbath & Ozzy Osbourne

Rock group Black Sabbath can lay claim to initiating the sub-genre of ‘heavy metal’ with its high-volume, down-tuned, dark-themed, crashing guitar-and-drum sound, […]

Rock group Black Sabbath can lay claim to initiating the sub-genre of ‘heavy metal’ with its high-volume, down-tuned, dark-themed, crashing guitar-and-drum sound, over which the singer has to compete. Sabbath was formed in 1968 in Birmingham by local 19- and 20-year-olds John ‘Ozzy‘ Osbourne (1948-2025, vocals), Tony Iommi (1948-, lead guitar), Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler (1949-, bass guitar) and Bill Ward (1949-, drums). They lasted ten years with perhaps their best output being their second album (as so often happens), ‘Paranoid’ (1970), the title track having reached no.4 in the UK charts.

The rock-and-roll lifestyle saw their demise, but Osbourne went on to have a successful career as a media personality and a solo artiste, managed by his wife, Sharon (1952-), who had grown up in the music business and married Osbourne in 1982. The public saw a glimpse of their ups and downs in the reality TV show ‘The Osbournes’ (2002-05).

Osbourne’s first solo single, ‘Crazy Train’ (1980) became his signature tune. He was nicknamed the ‘Prince of Darkness’ but several of his songs are anti-war. Another nickname was ‘The Madman’ with songs such as ‘Bark at the Moon’ (1983). Sabbath have occasionally reunited and headlined quite a few of Osbourne’s ‘Ozzfest’ tours from 1997 to 2018 around the USA, UK, Japan and Europe.

(Images: Black Sabbath mural in Birmingham photographed by A J Paxton at geograph.org.uk, Ozzy Osbourne by Keith Burkett at Flickr.com / both CC BY-SA 2.0)

12/10/2025
3 min
3 weeks
235 words

Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.