A Twitter follower asked me if I was a vegetarian following an idle tweet about nut burgers yesterday, then presented two subsequent questions which I've often been asked in the last twenty-four years: why did I become a vegetarian, and why aren't I a vegan? (the latter query is often framed in the form "do you wear leather shoes?").

The answers are too long for the two or three sentences afforded by Twitter, so I thought I'd compose them here.

I was twenty-four years old when I first seriously thought about what I was doing by eating meat. A cousin had been vegan for a while, and that had piqued my interest. The Smiths, one of my favourite bands at the time, had recorded an album entitled Meat Is Murder. And a year or so earlier, on its opening night, Channel 4 had shown a disturbing documentary on the welfare of animals used for food.

I pondered the idea of becoming vegetarian for a while. I think the key moment was in January 1985 when, on returning home following a beer or three at a pub in Hartlepool, I dragged the New Year turkey out of the fridge and started picking at it. The ugly reality of what I was doing was suddenly clear to me: I was pulling dead flesh from the carcass of a deceased bird, and putting it in my mouth. This was something of an epiphany.

But I didn't give up meat there and then. I thought it might be too hard to give up bacon, ham sandwiches, turkey at Christmas. But I kept thinking about it and thought that I should at least try. Eventually, one lunchtime in late January or early February 1985, I removed the pieces of bacon from the top of the pizza I'd just microwaved, and decided that this would be my first meal as a vegetarian. I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to maintain this status indefinitely, and in fact it was more complicated than I'd anticipated. A lot of otherwise innocuous products like treacle pudding and wine gums turned out to contain animal products when their list of ingredients was inspected. But in fact that carefully modified pizza had been the final turning point, and I had turned my back on eating meat forever.

After a few weeks, the very idea of meat eating had become repulsive to me, in a way that I hadn't expected. There was no longer any way that I'd be prepared to put pieces of dead flesh in my mouth. Twenty-four years of eating from animal corpses in a society where it is regarded as a normal practice had desensitised me to the grim reality of it, but now I was starting to see things much more clearly. I no longer thought of meat as a kind of food that I didn't eat. I didn't think of it as food at all.

I honestly believe that most meat eaters just don't think about what they are doing. The problem is that the necessary confinement and destruction of living creatures is not really apparent in the brightly labelled packet of sausages on the supermarket shelf.

Most people, I hope, would be saddened to see a dog killed in an accident at a pet shop. Why then are the same people for the most part happy to have a pig killed for them, when they could eat something equally nutritious instead, probably more cheaply? Do they imagine that the pig has less to lose than a labrador, or would prefer any less to remain alive? Would they feel better if the dead dog were to be chopped and fried, then served between slices of bread? It doesn't make sense.

One day I'm convinced that the animal holocaust will be remembered as mankind's defining, single most enormous crime. The sheer scale of our industrialised exploitation and destruction of other creatures is breathtaking. Twenty-three million chickens are killed every day in the United States alone; hundreds of unnecessary deaths every second.

So why am I not a vegan? In fact I did give veganism a go. In 1990 I decided that I should try the next logical step, and make my lifestyle as ethical as possible, so I removed dairy products and eggs from my diet as well. Unfortunately, whereas a healthy diet as an 'ordinary' vegetarian is very easy to maintain - I've honestly more or less just eaten what I felt like - a vegan diet does need to be considered quite carefully, and I was just too lazy to do that. Friends had started to tell me that I looked thin and pale (or "fluorescent", in the words of one of my colleagues) and at the end of 1992, weary of chocolate substitute and of feeling tired most of the time, I returned to ovo-lacto vegetarianism (that's the regular, egg and dairy product-consuming variety).

So, it's a compromise to a degree, I accept that. I'm settling for a low impact lifestyle within my own comfort zone. In an ideal world, I'd have something to put in coffee without making it taste worse that wasn't extricated from an imprisoned cow. In the meantime I'll settle for the knowledge that animals aren't killed for food on my behalf, and for setting an example of a life free from eating meat that's healthy and easy.

As of today, it's 20 years since I set foot in Derby, the East Midlands town where I live. On the afternoon of 13th April 1989, I drove into town in my Talbot Sunbeam and parked it at the Friary Hotel, where the nuclear research and design company Rolls-Royce and Associates had booked a room for me, and about ten other hopeful undergraduates. I was due to attend a second interview at their premises the following day.

I checked in, put my things in my room, and walked along Friargate, into the so-called city centre, to see what it was like. I remember walking into the Eagle Centre - then Derby's main shopping mall - and feeling slightly disappointed by the nondescript mundanity of it all. Derby has changed a lot over the last 20 years, and especially in the last three or four, but on the whole it's recognisably the same place, and above all it retains at its core that same trademark banality.

I remember being nervous. I knew that I was expected to talk about myself for a few minutes in front of the rest of the attendees at a "group interview", which I found quite a daunting prospect at the time. I remember making notes about my degree course when I returned to my room, intending to talk about that when the time came.

I recall little else about the time I spent in that hotel other than that I watched the old sci-fi thriller This Island Earth on the TV in my room. I haven't watched it since, but I'll be indulging in a special 20th anniversary commemorative viewing this evening.

A small fleet of cars came and picked us up from the hotel reception the following morning and conveyed us to the company premises on Raynesway. The interview went very well, for me anyway, and they offered me a position as an Analyst/Programmer, conditional upon my gaining a 2:2 or higher when I graduated that summer. I got a 2:1, and took it.

And I worked there for five years, from August that year until August 1994. I commuted from Leicester at first, where I lived with my girlfriend back then, Sara. I eventually moved to Derby at the very end of 1990, and bought my house in April 1991. And apart from a seven-year chunk spent in London, I've been here ever since.

The Friary, pictured above today, was a charming if unassuming traditional hotel in 1989. It's a slightly awful bar now. I went back there this afternoon, and recreated my inaugural walk into the town centre.

It's remarkable really that I should have spent all this time in Derby. I don't particularly like the place, I have no family connections here, no friends here, and apart from a few months I'd rather not think about in 2005, I haven't worked in Derby since 1994. I think it's called inertia.

On 5th March 1984 began one of the most important, pivotal episodes in the 20th century UK political timeline - the 1984-1985 Miner's Strike.

This was a bitter, year-long dispute, pitting Arthur Scargill's National Union of Mineworkers against the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher. Ostensibly a dispute over the closing of uneconomic mines, in reality far more was at stake. This was the rule of the mob against the rule of law; militant trade unionism against the primacy of democracy. The government had been elected by a huge majority only a few months previously; in contrast the Union which tried to overcome it had not even balloted its own members to seek a mandate for its action.

The union barons had grown accustomed to wielding the power of veto over the democratic franchise, bringing down government after government by inflicting power cuts and industrial disruption until the electors had had enough.

But they had picked a fight too far, this time. Scargill had underestimated the reserves of coal in the power stations, had underestimated the reluctance of key sections of the mining industry to strike without a ballot, and perhaps most critically, had underestimated the resolve of Margaret Thatcher's government to defeat him. She knew that this was a contest the British People could not afford to lose.

A year later, we had won, and the political landscape was transformed. The hard left unions had been neutered. Their corrosive capacity to disrupt British industry and send jobs abroad, as they had done to such devastating effect in the '60s and '70s, was greatly diminished. And they had forever lost their power to superimpose their own hard left agenda over the people's choice of government.

Spare a thought today for David WIlkie, a Welsh taxi driver killed by striking miners for taking one of their colleagues to work.

Please consider donating a few pounds to a campaign organised by the British Humanist Association to provide London's buses with a positive message of reality, aimed at encouraging London's religious to think for a change.

And who knows? This might be just the catalyst that atheists need to combine forces on a grand scale to fight against the superstitious worldview. It's clear from the comments on the donation page that many of those who donated are relieved to see the sensible point of view being promoted, and delighted to see so many other atheists out there; perhaps many will be encouraged to organise, and to help destroy Christianity and the other fairy-tale-based cults (and yes, I do realise that Christianity is dying on its miserable, deluded arse already - it can't be helped into its grave a moment too soon).

You can pay by credit card at:

Thanks! Please publish the link on any discussion fora you frequent where it may be a relevant topic, and email it to your friends and colleagues. And please do give a few quid if you can; you'll be helping to fight fear, superstition and ignorance.

I was dismayed, though not too surprised, to hear on a BBC News report last night that a Roman Catholic school has banned its pupils from receiving a vaccine against the cancer-causing HPV virus on its premises. A governor for the school has gone on record as saying that the vaccine would "encourage sexual promiscuity".

In other words: cervical cancer is very much a friend of the Catholic Church. It prefers that young women face the risk of fatal illness in engaging in sexual activity, as a useful deterrent against breaking its backward rules.

Christianity. Has a more loathsome, twisted, downright immoral superstition ever defaced human society?

Thinking people understand that Christianity is backward, ignorant and intrinsically false. We must never forget that it is no less pernicious.

Ten years ago exactly, I had just emerged from the Piccadilly Line at Heathrow Airport, having travelled there from my flat in South London. It was a Saturday morning. I was about to embark upon my first business trip to Tokyo.

I was excited, but apprehensive, because this trip meant that I'd be seeing my brief romance from the summer of 1996, Minako. She worked in our Tokyo office, and I'd met her when she came to London for training. I'd mostly spent my time since then pining for her quite honestly, and I'd longed see her again, though I thought I probably never would. Now I was about to, but I knew that it would be awkward. And it was.

The following is an email sent on 24th August, the Monday I arrived at the office, to my friend, a young woman from Tokyo living in London, with whom I was in a 'sort of' relationship. By 'sort of' I mean that weren't actually in a relationship, but we hung around with each other and slept together a lot.

Well.. so much to tell you about..

Had a great flight here, all the usual BA business class comforts - the only irritation being that the person I was sitting next to (an elderly Japanese gentleman) appeared to be the rudest individual on Earth and never uttered a word of thanks to the attendants when they brought food drink newspapers etc.

Yet to my surprise just after we landed he perked up and wanted to chat.. turned out he's a golf-course designer and had come to Britain to examine our courses at close hand.

During the flight, just as it started to grow dark, I got up to stretch my legs and wandered back to the galley to take a look at the view from the window. I exchanged smalltalk with the flight attendant there, a cutie from Yokohama called Naoko, and she asked me if I would like to visit the flight deck! So I said yes, I'd love to (of course) & she phoned the captain and we went up there. So I sat in the cockpit talking to the pilot & copilot for 15 minutes or so.

I think they were bored and appreciated the chance to have a chat.. they showed me all the instrumentation and I asked intelligent questions about the auto-pilot - to my amazement and discomfort, the co-pilot claimed that it runs on an Intel 80286 (a 10 year old processor used in PCs in the late eighties).

Anyway the best thing was the view from the 'windscreen' - the front windows of the 747 - Siberia, in the darkness, with lights twinkling from distant oilfields in the distance.

I took the Limousine Bus from the airport, and was so impressed by Tokyo on the way in. I know you know this already, but miles and miles of futuristic industrial landscape.. kind of unreal.

Got to the apartment about midday (I had a long wait for the bus) then I made the mistake of speaking one tiny Japanese phrase to the girl on the front desk as she was having difficulty speaking English. After that, she refused to speak English and it was hard work I can tell you.. but we managed to communicate somehow. I was surprised though because they must get a lot of Westerners staying there. Well, so far the Firm has failed to send me anywhere where I haven't managed to get by in the local language, including Manchester (I'm a native Northern English speaker as you know).

The apartment is great - very modern, very new, everything (including the air-conditioning) remote-controlled.

Yurie dropped by about an hour after I got there - not actually to the apartment but to the front desk, where I talked to her over the phone. She asked me if I'd like to go to a party & the Town Festival with her that evening, so after taking a couple of hours sleep, I did.

The party was kind of low-key - at an apartment at Azabujuban (where the town festival was). Yurie said that it wasn't a typical Japanese party, as most of the people there didn't know each other and it was sort of 'open-ended' with people turning up and leaving at random times - maybe because half of the people who lived in the flat were Swedish. They had a balcony with a great view of the city, and I was struck by the constant chirping of the insects.. reminded me of Spain. The festival was very crowded, but fun.. jazz bands playing and people selling food from stalls by the roadside.

It's so amazingly warm and humid here, isn't it?

Minako is here.. it's really odd to see her again after all this time.. I'd mostly forgotten what she looked like. Actually we are at desks diagonally next to each other, though she has been away from her desk most of this morning.

She gave a quick wave when we made eye-contact, a kind of 'oh hi' wave, very low-key (she knew I was coming so there was no big surprise) which considering the emotion when we last parted is kind of sad I guess.. but it's too late to care now. I don't know.. I thought it would be very difficult to see her again, but instead it's just been sort of 'matter-of-fact'. I'm so glad to have seen her again though because I've been haunted by the idea that our farewell at Heathrow two years ago would be the last time we ever saw each other, and I feel as if an evil spirit has been exorcised. I think I've been feeling sorry for myself for two years, as if I was the victim in a tragic play of my own making, and I can feel the weight slipping off my shoulders now. To tell you the truth I don't even find her that attractive this morning, although she is wearing a truly dreadful yellow dress with a brown flower pattern, which probably helps. The memories are still powerful though, but I think this visit will help to put them in their proper place (the past).

What else?

I showed Yurie the photos I took of her in NY, and she has confiscated them.

The phone number of my apartment is 34246885 - I guess you know the area codes etc, and I can't remember them just now. The office number is diverted from 0171-823-3972 as I'm sure I told you.

Well, as the robot waiters in Yo! Sushi say, gotta go.. gotta job to do..

Hope to talk to you soon,

James x

I took quite a few photos while I was there. I'll try to scan some of the negatives this weekend, and publish them here.

It's a crying shame that the heart breaks
And you've only yourself to blame
And you'll never go to Heaven
You'll never do it again

^{Francis Dunnery, 1986}

Not many people, I suppose, would go to the trouble of coating their bicycle handlebars with anti-climbing paint. Yet that's what I did this morning, albeit not willingly, or particularly deliberately.

As usual, I pushed my bike aboard the 0808 train to Nottingham at Spondon railway station this morning. Unfortunately a few moments after I did so, my sunglasses slipped from my head and dived into the narrow gap between the open train doors and the platform. I stared down at them for a moment, briefly contemplating the probability that they would still be there on my return visit to Spondon station this evening. It didn't seem very high.

So, not really wanting to part with my oldest pair of Ray Bans^TM, a cynical gift offered as an enticement to purchase computer equipment from a particular supplier during my early days as a system administrator at Rolls-Royce fifteen years ago, I hurriedly left the train with my bike so that I could retrieve them.

Once the train had left, I determined that it was safe to descend onto the track. The level crossing 50 metres further up the track was allowing traffic across, and there's no live rail. I jumped down, and picked up my sunglasses. By the way - jamesgibbon.com doesn't condone or recommend this sort of thing, which is illegal, and potentially highly dangerous.

The platform is slightly lower than waist height. Or at least it is when you're standing down on the track; normally it's slightly lower than shoe-sole height. I pushed down firmly on the edge of the platform to propel myself upward to safety, and that's when I found out that those attractive white lines which decorate its edge are composed of anti-climbing paint, some of which now adorned the palms of my hands.

The next train due to condescend to pick up passengers at Spondon wouldn't arrive for another hour and ten minutes, so I set off to cycle to Derby railway station, about three miles away.

And that's why my handlebars are presently equipped to deter unwanted climbers.

I have to say that anti-climbing paint seems a perverse choice for a railway platform. I can well understand a need to deter people from jumping down onto the tracks, but it doesn't do that. It only deters people from climbing back onto the platform again. Not really what you want.

I realised today while browsing through the BBC News website that it's exactly a year now since NuLabour's tail-end Charlie took over the reins at Number Ten. If I remember correctly, he was keen to get the top job so that Labour could be "renewed", and promised to do his utmost to bring about "change".

Well - he's delivered, big time. He's renewed Labour in a rather unedifying image of governmental incompetence and electoral hopelessness, and an absolute collapse of public support for his wretched party over the last year is just about the most welcome change I could have asked of him.

A by-election was held yesterday at Henley, Boris Johnson's old constituency.

Now I grant you, the Labour Party was never going to win that one; your average resident of Henley doesn't need to sell electoral support for state handouts.  But Labour didn't merely lose, they were beaten into fifth place - behind the Greens and the BNP! The Conservatives attracted more than 18 times as many votes as Labour.

NuLabour is currently 18 points behind in the polls. Thanks, Gordon!