As I woke up this morning, before even saying good morning to my loved ones or embracing my kettle for the all important first cuppa of the day, I found my self in my usual morning ritual of reaching for my phone to scroll my social media. Instead of an Adonis like husband next to me, my iPad lay on my pillow and I thought to myself…... maybe my good friend Wayne was right. Are we all social media obsessed? Well I think many of you will agree on the answer to that but the nex

It's Black History Month in America right now and the same event takes place in the UK throughout October, but why is black history limited to a month? As a young black male Calum has been musing on the subject. During my time in education I learnt about white history a lot. Shakespeare’s stories, Henry the viii, Romans, Saxons and so on, but when it came to black history all I was taught was a brief summary of slavery. How is it the norm that as a kid growing up all I knew a

There are many known differences between the US and the UK: coffee vs. tea, driving on the right vs. driving on the left, fries vs. chips, etc... Whether you spend a week or a few months in London there are some less common differences you’ll start to notice: refrigerating eggs vs. not, “pants” vs. “trousers,” bars vs. pubs etc… I have been in London for about a month now and I get to have a very interesting perspective. I notice a lot more unknown differences between America

From the time I was born to the present day I have always had to contend with two cultures whether I was aware of it or not. My parents were not born in England and came to England in the 1960s as young adults – they followed the Windrush Generation an initial wave of post-war immigrants who arrived in England from the Caribbean. Before this time English natives had never seen immigration on this scale, of people who looked nothing like them and this in turn caused racial ten

Is technology affecting our health or is it improving it? With our heads down, constantly looking at a screen and lights ablaze from either a laptop, tablet or a smartphone reflecting our latest findings on Google, tech is constantly at the tip of our fingers. So, is it any wonder that many think we are losing touch with the world and our surroundings? It got me to thinking about ways that we can get re-acquainted with the world to refresh our minds and I could think of no be

In episode 6 of series 11, our star guest Ellie Goulding states in response to a question about body image “before it was the pressure to be skinny and now it is to have curves”. Throughout the decade’s people have been influenced by external factors but with the rise of social media we are exposed to many more of these every day. We are influenced, exposed and open to more critics than ever before, with inescapable comments on how we look in comparison to someone else. In my

Last time I got a haircut, the hairdresser and I talked extensively about squatting – no, not the exercise, but the act of occupying an unused building. That’s how he got into cutting hair, he told me - by experimenting on his squat-mates – they lived in an abandoned warehouse in North London and had no jobs, so they didn’t really care how they looked anyway. It’s estimated that there are over 600,000 empty properties in the UK, so with housing prices rising and an increase i

Liar liar pants on fire, half way up the telephone wire. People assume that lying is bad, however is a part of our lives. I’m sure everyone remembers that friend at primary school who told overly elaborate stories, (a personal favourite: ‘My swimming lessons are in a pool with a shark in!’). We’re taught from an early age that lying is wrong, but as you get older, it all becomes a bit greyer – think of Father Christmas… Our lives are populated with untruths, we all know that