A unflinching audit of the damage done by fourteen years of Conservative government.What went wrong with Britain? presents a comprehensive account of the devastating legacy left by the Conservative government. Shining a light into every dark corner, the book exposes the full extent of the damage inflicted on the country’s economy, social fabric and political integrity.When the Conservatives were voted out of government in July 2024, they left behin...

This book offers a fresh view of postwar British politics, very much at odds to the dominant view in contemporary scholarship. The author argues that postwar British politics, up to and including the Blair Government, can be largely characterised in terms of continuity and a gradual evolution from a period of conflict over the primary aims of government strategy to one of recent relative consensus. This book provides a provocative and challenging account of the historical background to the...

A twelve-year-old schoolchild was arrested at his school and questioned by an antiterrorist police squad, because he was organising a picket of the offices of his member of parliament, who happened to be the current prime minister of Great Britain. He was protesting against the closure of a youth club. Starting with this absurd example of overzealous antiterrorist legislation, Kerr, who has a nose for both the absurd and the shocking, develops his concerning arguments about the gradual ero...

Bob Burns is an old-fashioned kind of Scottish sleuth, more interested in catching villains than creeping to get promotion. But, when his enquiries into a brutal and bizarre murder are blocked by his bosses, he wonders if he should risk losing his career by carrying on his investigations? Encouraged by an attractive, though maverick, forensic scientist and assisted by a keener-than-bright young constable, Bob does it his way. The trail leads the trio from Scotland to Mallorca, where intrig...

Addresses by S.N. Goenka and four others from the second "Insights from an Ancient Tradition" conference, held at the Vipassana Meditation Center (Dhamma Dhara) in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, USA, September 3 - 4, 2000. The MP3s include questions and answers at the end of each talk. The conference followed a ten-day Vipassana retreat. It was designed so that participants could explore at the intellectual level what they had experienced while meditating.The four presenters at th...

When the sleepy Scottish village of Cuddyford is colonised by well-heeled retirees and big-city commuters, Jigger McCloud, a Jack-the-lad local with an eye for the ladies, isn't slow to make a quick buck at their expense. Life seems rosy for Jigger and his odd-but-loveable family, until he tries to scam a mysterious foreign millionaire, who arrives on the scene with plans to develop the area in unappealing ways. The folk of Cuddyford, native and otherwise, promptly close ranks. Comic shena...

After three years of hard work, the Kerr family are selling their orange farm and saying goodbye to Mallorca. Their adventure comes to an end with a paella feast with friends, full of bonhomie yet tinged with sadness. But returning to Scotland proves to be just as big an adventure, with quite a cultural shock in store. Welcomed back by family, the Kerrs make plans to start a deer farm on a remote hillside – the beginning of a period of challenges and change, of buying and restoring houses ...

Doogie O'Mara, a young Scottish veterinary student, applies for a gap-year job as a tour rep in Africa, where he also hopes to find time to study the wildlife. Instead, he finds himself on Mallorca, thrust in at the deep end of the madcap package tour business. Gannets are the only form of wildlife encountered. But these aren't the sort of birds he can treat. These are laden with fun-seeking holidaymakers! Problems are bound to arise, and they do, as does the bewitching influence of Mallor...

Julie Bryson and rookie detective, Andy Green, once again aid Scottish detective Bob Burns. When Andy becomes the unwitting recipient of a drop of £100,000 in used notes, the trio become enmeshed in a web of murder, intrigue and Caledonian skulduggery, as the action shifts to Sicily, New York and a remote Hebridean island. The arrival of a Sicilian blacksmith as the island's new laird leads to some hilarious misunderstandings as the line between the good and bad guys becomes increasingly b...

The droll Scots detective, Bob Burns, is once more aided by forensic scientist and ladyfriend, Dr Julie Bryson, and abetted by overly-keen Andy Green. Working undercover on a cruise liner bound for the Canary Islands, Bob and his two sidekicks have plenty to cope with. The discovery of a severed finger in a passenger's quiche lorraine sparks an investigation full of greed, guile, deceit and double-dealing. Does the finger belong to an alleged man-overboard victim? Was the man-overboard vic...

Having battled and succumbed to the manana pace of rural Mallorca, spring sees Peter Kerr and family relaxing into a supposedly simpler way of life, growing oranges on their little valley farm, Ca's Mayoral.However, even after the trials, tribulations and triumphs of their initiation, Spain has not yet finished with them. Embarrassing subtleties of the language, brushes with the local police, the unfortunate outcome of a drinking session - surprises are aplenty to test the resolve,...

"Look! The weather has come from Scotland to welcome you to Mallorca," beamed Senor Ferrer. To our new neighbour's delight and my dismay, a cold mantle of white was rapidly transforming our newly acquired paradise in the sun into a bizarre winterscape of citrus Christmas trees, cotton wool palms and snowball oranges.It's the stuff of dreams. A Scottish family giving up relative sanity and security to go and grow oranges for a living in a secluded valley in the mountains of the Medi...