Growing up as a punk rocker in the 90s, I used to hear my favourite bands bang on about how awful the peace and love brigade were. I still sort of agree, but where did this antagonism come from? — Punks and Hippies were two of the biggest and most influential counter-culture movements to spring up in the 20th century. You know- the smelly long haired stoners and the angry, spiky little buggers. Many would say that there are clear similarities between the two; the drug use (albeit very different…

I’m heading overseas next month to visit family I haven’t seen in two years. But every day, I see images of horrific forest fires and deadly floods on the news. Should I feel guilty for going? — Listen. It’s been years ok? Literally years for most of us. Whether you’ve been in lockdown or self-isolating from Covid-19, the chances you’ve been on a long-haul flight (or any flight for that matter) recently are slim. For the last two years or so, I’ve been walking, biking and taking…

We’ve all seen Zoom interviews with people sitting in front of well-stocked bookcases. But why do so many of us like to make our book collections the centre of attention? — How many books do you own? Have you ever counted? Are they lovingly arranged in alphabetical order on your bookshelves or are they strewn across desks and coffee tables? Do you take a Marie Kondo-like approach, who famously suggests getting rid of the majority of your books, presumptuously telling us…

British politician Lord Digby Jones savaged TV presenter Alex Scott over her accent this week. But was he right to criticise her or is he living in the past? The legendary linguist David Crystal in his book “A Little Book of Language”, estimates that only 5% of the population of…

With a seemingly never-ending raft of plagiarism accusations running rife in the South Korean media, has the problem reached epidemic proportions, and how does the behaviour of those at the top ‘trickle down’ to influence the rest of us? — Background Even a semi-casual observer of South Korea over the last few months will not have managed to avoid stories of plagiarism levelled at the first lady, Kim Keon-Hee.

My son keeps staring at the faded, badly rendered tattoos I got when I was in my teenage years, asking me why daddy has funny drawings on his skin. Maybe it’s time to get rid of them for good? — The tattoos I have were a product of teenage rebellion and aren’t something I give much thought to these days. I don’t look in the mirror much and months have gone by without me even noticing they’re there. …

This is the story of my visit to the DMZ, the most fortified and dangerous land border in the world, planned for the day the despotic North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Il died. — Part of many tourist itineraries for Seoul and the surrounding areas is a trip to the DMZ, or Demilitarized Zone, the border between North and South Korea once described as the most dangerous place in the world by Bill Clinton, amongst others. As I sit here writing this now, a…

Ever felt the need to get away from it all and escape to sunny Spain for a little fun and sangria? Well, buying that dream Spanish holiday home doesn’t have to cost a fortune if you know where to look… — You’ve probably heard of local councils in rural, crumbling Italian villages trying to sell off their decaying houses for $1 each to outsiders in a desperate bid to attract fresh blood to the area. Indeed, many such schemes exist in Spain too, one such being in the Municipality of Igüeña…