With Gen Z leading the charge 2024 is going to be another year where the cost of Christmas is loaded onto credit cards. But when did our love affair with credit begin?  Back in the 1950’s the Bank of America sent an unsolicited credit card to every one of its 60,000 customers. Known as the […]

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You won’t be surprised to discover that we spend a lot of our lives waiting for things. According to some research, we spend on average 20 minutes a day waiting for a bus or train, 32 minutes every time we visit the Dr, 13 hours a year on hold, and 38 hours a year stuck […]

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Reporting on the resignation of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a BBC reporter referred to the Church of England as a ‘fading institution’. A cursory glance at the statistics from the last few decades surely bears this out. Perhaps we should not be surprised. Over the centuries church institutions have come and gone, not […]

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Jesus once got lost. At least that’s what his parents thought. They were returning from a festival in Jerusalem to their home in Nazareth and travelling with a large company of family and friends. Mary thought Jesus was with Joseph and he thought he was with her. It took a day to realise that he […]

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Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons. One day the younger son demanded his inheritance, in effect telling his father ‘I wish you were dead!’. Surprisingly his father agreed, and the son was soon far from home and splashing the cash on parties for his newfound friends. Before long, however, the […]

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Many years ago, I volunteered at a night shelter for the homeless in Bristol. One man in particular stayed in my mind. He stood out because he was smartly dressed wearing a jacket and tie and carried a small bag of possessions. Thoughtful and articulate he explained that this was a way of life he […]

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When the USS Enterprise launched in September 1966 ‘to boldy go’ where no one had gone before, it didn’t actually go very far. The idea of exploring the Milky Way was one of pure imagination far beyond the bounds of possibility. Fast forward nearly 60 years and how much has changed. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos […]

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The premature death of someone we love is one of the hardest griefs to bear. We are left with the haunting and unanswerable question ‘Why?’ It seems so unfair and makes no sense. How could a good God allow such a thing? A while ago a friend of mine had to grapple with this question […]

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Growing up in Kentucky Abraham Lincoln witnessed slaves being herded along the highway like cattle. It made a lasting impression on him, and he became convinced that no person should ever be the property of another. But slavery was a fact of life and some 4 million were enslaved at the time of his election […]

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In the mid-nineteenth century the American financial system was facing an existential threat from counterfeit currency. Something had to be done and so the Treasury established a secret service to go after the counterfeiters. But at the turn of the century, it was a threat to democracy itself that galvanised the service into the one […]

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