'The Meta-Blog' logo, Paul Mobbs in a workshop
A work in ‘progress’

‘The Meta-Blog’

‘Ramblinactivist’ Paul Mobbs’ work-related occasional blog – examining the troublesome and often difficult meanings behind today’s news and events rather than repeating the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the mass/social media.


Welcome to my ‘difficult’ work-related occasional blog, where I seek to explore the technical and statistical reality of the contemporary world.

This page lists the last year’s blog posts and videos. Most posts are available as both: HTML (web) pages; A4 PDF files; and occasionally an audio podcast to download. Video posts are usually a shorter page or script with a link to the video hosted on YouTube.

In addition, I also have an historical book review blog, ‘A Book in Five Minutes’ – examining older texts to see how they still have great relevance to today’s debates.

‘MetaBlog’ posts from the past year:

Title slide for ‘The Meta-Blog’ ‘Ramblin’ News’ no.4 The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.4, Strawberry Moon 2023:

“Please Sir, will we ever reach retirement age?”

As the Government threatens to raise the retirement age, again!, why is there no discussion about ‘Multidimensional Poverty’? Traditional stereotypes about poverty, based within the establishment's four-hundred year-old principle of, ‘the deserving and undeserving poor’, cannot encompass these complex relationships. Therein lies a deeper truth.

Go to the YouTube video accompanying this post.

Title slide for ‘The Meta-Blog’ ‘Ramblin’ News’ no.3 The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.3, Flower Moon 2023:

‘The Unspeakable Death of the Almighty Dollar’

For some months the ‘specialist’ media have been tracking a major structural change in the world’s economy brought-on by the Ukraine War: Not the well-publicised crisis of food or energy prices; but of who controls the world’s financial payments system, and its use to enforce Western sanctions.

Go to the YouTube video accompanying this post.

Title slide for ‘The Meta-Blog’ no.25 ‘The Meta-Blog’, no.25, Imbolic 2023:

‘The Oil Machine’ – How environmental grand narratives obstruct ‘real’ change

The ‘ecological crisis’ is a big, technical, complicated issue; and all too often, therefore, how this is presented isolates and simplifies, and more especially, relies on commonly-held tropes to convey meaning. But what if those tropes are not objectively correct?; and so as the media feedback those tropes, it increasingly distorts how we react to the ecological crisis.

Download the PDF version of this post.

Go to the YouTube video accompanying this post.

title frame for The MetaBlog No.23 ‘The Meta-Blog’, no.23, 12th November 2022:

‘The State’s Monopoly on Hunger’

Talk about ‘fuel poverty’? Talk about the 'cost of living crisis? No!! I want to talk about the ‘The State’s Monopoly on Hunger’! ‘Fuel poverty’ is a new view of the old issue of deprivation in Britain; and yet it is simply a modern dimension to the issue of well-being and inequality deliberately created by the British state as a matter of ‘choice’ – which many fail to see the significance of.

Download the PDF version of this post.

Go to the YouTube video accompanying this post.

The Free Range Network logo
Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-NC logo