Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

"We're in a very dangerous slippery slope. ... Where we are is so shocking to so many people they're sitting around saying 'ah, we can't really be there.' You know, we are a group of people that don't like the truth, Andy Ostroy. We don't like the truth so we pretend it doesn't exist, and we live in some realm of denial ... I want to wake you and all your viewers and listeners up to the systemic crisis that we have right now." ( Anthony Scaramucci on The Back Room with Andy Ostroy . 31st January 2026) "Why is there no backbone anywhere ... This is not what the United States stands for, and this is what the person behind you, George Washington, would have said. This is why we have these removal procedures in place to get this insane person out of office. Why are they not doing that, Jim Acosta?" ( Anthony Scaramucci on The Jim Acosta Show . 4th March 2026) Just in case anyone's forgotten, on the 4th of July 1776, the Founding Fathe...

If the UK and the EU don't want to be walked all over, sidelined and even invaded by Russia, we and they had better pull our fingers out, come to terms with raw and unvarnished reality, prepare, rearm and immediately and unequivocally back Ukraine with everything we've got. Britain's civilian population hasn't been directly involved in a military conflict since World War Two. We've forgotten every hard lesson that six year conflict taught us. We've run down the armed forces catastrophically , let NATO fall into disrepair (possibly the greatest mistake my own generation has made) and kidded ourselves that democracy was permanently in the ascendancy. That communism/fascism and authoritarianism was finished.  The Triumph of the West by J. M. Roberts and a belief in the end of history popularised by Francis Fukuyama, founded upon the idea that fascism and communism had been defeated, epitomised this incredible naivety. To explain why I'm talking like this, I...

Every time I try reluctantly to accept that my Buffy -related saga's time has come and gone ( that's the lost story arc, Dear Miss Landau and the Dru Quartet ), something else seems to happen to make sure it stays dead and buried (a bit like a fledgling vampire, really) rather than - oh, I don't know - revitalising a faded piece of intellectual property in a new and unexpected manner, bringing jobs and employment to at least one small part of what's left of Hollywood and giving the fans what they may actually want. This time, it's ESTA. ESTA stands for electronic system of travel authorisation and is the means by which myself and others from forty-two countries worldwide are able to visit the States for ninety days without a visa. The Trump administration in, I think, its latest paroxysm of racism and intolerance intends to make the amount of hoops we have to go through to get the ESTA visa waiver increasingly intricate and probably impossible completely and corre...