#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
A relentless chase. A deadly secret. No way out. That’s the promise at the heart of Silent Ruin, my brand-new international spy thriller and the first in a new series featuring Jamshed Khan. This is a character I originally created over three decades ago, now reborn into a far more grown-up, high-stakes world of espionage, danger, and consequence.
Happy Star Trek Day, and happy 60th anniversary to what I still consider the world’s greatest science-fiction franchise. I love pretty much all of Star Trek, across all its different incarnations, and there have been so many brilliant moments over six decades that choosing favourites can become a fool’s errand. Yet every now and then Trek produces something that rises above being merely fun, thrilling or thought-provoking and hits you so hard that it seems to send a shockwave through your body and soul, imprinting itself permanently on your memory and firing a phaser set to stun directly into your heart.
Next month, September 2026, marks an extraordinary milestone: 60 years since Star Trek first hit television screens, and in recent years we’ve been particularly lucky to have an avalanche of Trek on TV, from Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy, to Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy. But as we approach that anniversary, something rather sad is happening because, as I write this in August 2026, there are no new Star Trek television shows or movies currently in production.
Think you know what a speed camera looks like? The familiar yellow box beside a British road is only the beginning. Around the world, cameras can hide inside parked vans, monitor six motorway lanes, calculate your speed over several miles, distinguish a lorry from a car and even observe traffic from the air.
There’s a heaviness hanging over the world right now, a constant low-level hum of hostility and hysteria that seems to seep from every screen, every scroll, every headline and every furious finger-pointing debate, to the point where it increasingly feels as though humanity itself is splintering into suspicious tribes glaring angrily at each other across digital barricades. Fascism, prejudice, racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-immigrant sentiment, political extremism, culture wars, endless outrage, all of it amplified and accelerated by algorithms that have quietly learned one brutally simple truth about human beings: fear keeps us engaged. Fear keeps us scrolling. Fear keeps us clicking. Fear keeps us angry.
Tomorrow, something unusual happens. Lent begins for Christians. Ramadan begins for Muslims. Two great traditions, drawn from different scriptures, different histories, different spiritual traditions – and yet arriving on our calendars almost side by side. Both are seasons of restraint. Of discipline. Of reflection. Of giving something up. And so I want to suggest something radical.
A few days ago, headlines were dominated by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United. Founder and driving force behind the INEOS Grenadier, the same INEOS that is also part-owner of the Mercedes F1 team, and, oh, by the way, he is one of the richest men in Britain. His estimated net worth hovers around £17 billion, according to recent Rich Lists. This Knight of the Realm made remarks suggesting the UK was being “colonised” by immigrants. He referenced unemployment, claimed nine million people were on benefits, and linked immigration levels to economic strain.
Continue reading “Billionaires, Colonisation & the Grenadier – Shortsighted or Shenanigans?”
Whenever Lord of the Flies resurfaces, as it now has with a dramatic new television serialisation, we are invited to revisit the same bleak conclusion: scratch the surface of civilisation and out spills the savage. Remove teachers, police, governments, parents, and apparently we revert to painted faces, sharpened sticks, and ritual murder before it’s coconut milk time.
Valentine’s Day. The one evening of the year when restaurants are overbooked, hotel prices are outrageous, roses are in short supply, and otherwise sensible adults suddenly decide the most romantic place on earth is the back seat of a hatchback in a dimly lit supermarket car park. But it that actually legally allowed? Before you head out tonight, watch the full breakdown below – because it could save your blushes, and what feels harmless and romantic could, in certain circumstances, fall under careless driving, public order offences, or Highway Code breaches.
AI is not going to take your job. It already has.
This is not a rant against AI. Those of you who follow me know that I use the absolute heck out of it! It’s my illustrator, animator, assistant, researcher, sub-editor… hell, AI is my bitch. It helps boost my workflow and up my pace – it’s the VTEC that lets this one-man content engine rev harder, faster, longer.
Continue reading “AI Vs Authenticity and the True Cost of “Good Enough””