Introduction

I recently started a blog for work and realised that there a a number of issues that I was interested to blog about and discuss with the wider community that did not fall anywhere close to suitable points of discussion in that particular forum. I then began to think more about what I wanted to talk about and why therefore should I open a separate blog. Soon the whole thing started to feel very much like the need for a platform on which to stand to broadcast my views on life and the state of the world to anyone who will listen. This started to sound like a hi-tech equivalent of the Speakers Corner at Hyde Park in London where the boxes that speakers climb onto to be seen above the crowd used to be old shiping boxes for bars of soap. Hence the expression "to get on one's soapbox" being to deliver a monologue passionately (almost in a preaching way) on a particular subject about which the speaker feels particularly strongly about and rarely if ever allowing anyone to interrupt. So this would be the basis of the name for my blog - MySoapBox. Unfortunately like many clever ideas there is more often than not someone smarter or quicker than you that has gotten there first. So MySoapBoxUK seemed an adequate fall back.



Interestingly having been through all of this thought process I thought it might be good to link to a more detailed background of the name/concept of the SoapBox for those non native english speakers or people based outside the UK. So a quick trip to WikiPedia came up with the following definition of a SoapBox which interestingly enough refers to blogging as the modern equivalent of SoapBoxing.



So enough rabbiting. I am based in the UK and have lived most (except for my first 6 months) in the England. I have however travelled extensively around the world for both work and pleasure. This has included Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA. About the only regions I have yet to visit are Africa and the Middle East (unless you count a short visit to Israel).



I make no apologise for the fact that the content of this blog will focus on issues that are UK centric and are viewed from a UK perspective but that are sympathetic to the views, needs and ideals of others. Please feel free to post comment (particularly from outside the UK) so that I might get a broader perspective of life and the world.



I have no religious bias other than to be myself an Agnostic and hold a belief that all organised churches ultimately become corrupt and betray their roots and that religion and the church has been used an excuse by man since the dawn of religion to kill other men, women and children.

More people have been killed in the name of religion than all the other reasons put together.