As Herman Melville said about whales, pretty much, in Moby Dick - he was so fascinated he was able to write a whole chapter on the prepuce of just one species of cetacean. I got really interested in … (View Post)

Roman Empire also counts - Rome was founded in 753 BCE, conventionally, and fell conventionally in 476 CE if you want to go on geography. If you insist on emperors in the modern sense, the principate… (View Post)

Doesn't work, alas, - *at present*. State pensions vary from person to person; the pay depends on years of credit accumulated (at least for the older system). And DWP don't do P60s or take part in th… (View Post)

The Tories were once a party which prided itself on fiscal rectitude. (View Post)

Very taken with a couple of them in the Liffey when visiting Dublin some years back. (View Post)