Drawing on material from two out of the three strands of DD102 study materials, discuss some of the ways in which differences and inequalities can both change and persist over time. The two topics I have chosen from two strands are City Road, Cardiff from the introductory strand, which looks…
Drawing on material from the Connecting Lives strand, explain how qualitative and quantitative types of evidence can be used to support the claim that cities produce inequality. Inequality in cities exists for a variety of interconnected reasons—economic, historical, political, and social. ‘The wealthiest 10% of households had household wealth of £1,200,500…
View More Cities Produce Inequality
Poor Madge has been unwell over the past week. God, there have been so many music artists leaving us recently. I would hate to see Madonna disappear. I tweeted her best wishes to GET WELL SOON and said “A World Without Madonna is not a World.” She is an artist…
View More Madonna – Like A Prayer
I had previously read Alison Weir’s most excellent book specifically on Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine many years ago so the author was familiar to me. I chanced upon this title in my local library (Caldicot) and thought I’d give it a go. It covers the lives of several British Queens,…
View More Review: Queens of the Crusades – by Alison Weir
Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan is a famous house music DJ from Birmingham who along with his brothers, Mick and Dermot, and their mate Lee, responsible for the seminary U.K. and global nightclub brands, Miss Moneypennys and Chuff Chuff. Jim is also my mate. I knew that Jim had trained as a…
View More Review: We May Win We May Lose – by Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan
‘Kim’ is recognised as the greatest work of famous author Rudyard Kipling. This is a cult novel especially in espionage circles. It is fiction but documents the widely popular Great Game between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia, a clandestine cat and mouse conflict between the two powers fought out…
View More Review: Kim – by Rudyard Kipling
This book was written in 1990 and is thus a bit dated. The postscript announces the start of the first Gulf War after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Post World War 1 saw most of the current political boundaries drawn in the Near East or as we now most predominantly…
View More Review: The Near East Since The First World War – by M.E.Yapp
My mother is from New Zealand so therefore I’m half Kiwi. This book explores some of the Maori Myths and legends that existed mainly in oral tradition before the arrival to Aeteorora of the White European Pakeha settlers. The Maori history goes back to their ancient homes in other Polynesian…
View More Review: Maori Myths and Legendary Tales – by A.W.Reed
This book, edited by one of my literary heroes, Graham Hancock, is a collection of stories focussed mainly on the expansion of consciousness by the use of psychedelics, especially the Amazonian, ‘Vine of the Soul’, Ayahuasca. The authors range from Hancock himself to the well-renowned Dennis McKenna, to British social…
View More Review: The Divine Spark – Psychedelics, Consciousness and the Birth of Civilisation – by Graham Hancock
This book documents the rapidly growing Mexican folk faith that is ‘Santa Muerte’ or ‘Saint Death’. The iconic image of the skulled woman with a scythe gives hope to many discomforted souls on the fringes of Mexican and indeed global society. From the origins of death cults across the world,…
View More Review: Santa Muerte – Mexico’s Mysterious Saint Of Death – by Tony Kail
Time for another mix in the Wez G chillout series. It’s a beaming hot summer and it’s always nice to get some fresh, sunny tunes to while away the time… This mix goes a little more four-four than usual and might be a post-sunset Cafe Del Mar session… It’s (dolphin)…
View More Wez G – Dolphin Deep (Chillout) (DJ Set 66)
This autobiographic tale of one man’s relationship with the most sacred vine, shows Peter Gorman as a true pioneer. Ayahuasca is still very much an unknown quantity in the West and Gorman’s 25 years of experience make him a critical read for anyone considering experimenting with Ayahuasca, as the ‘Vine…
View More Review: Ayahuasca In My Blood: 25 Years Of Medicine Dreaming – by Peter Gorman
Just going back to my regular meeting with the Stasi earlier this week… (Stasi were originally the East German Secret Police) I refer to my crack psychiatric home treatment team endearingly as the Stasi as it sums up neatly what they are really like. I was discussing with David, the…
View More Your God is a False God
In ancient times, every tribe had a shaman who was the medecine man and spiritual leader of the community. Often under the influence of locally produced drugs such as Mescaline or Ayahuasca or Iboga, in ecstatic trances, the shaman would bring back from the spiritual world key knowledge that would…
View More Wez G – Shaman Of The Tribe (DJ Set 27)