It’s Budget day in the UK. Gordon Brown has produced a boring budget with one absolutely brilliant strategic move: he promised to reduce the number of civil servants by 40 000 and move 20 000 of the remainder out of London to the provinces. As an employee of the Medical Research Council there’s every chance I might […]
Read MoreMarch 2004
Still Lives
I like this and I like these too.
Read MoreThey’ll Kill Us Anyway
Even the BBC man described the shift in the Spanish vote as being “a disturbing development” in European democracy this morning. Then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw put in a clumsy performance when he was interviewed about those same elections by John Humphrys. I wish Radio 4 had interviewed Mark Steyn instead. We’re on the plane. […]
Read MoreThings Your Folks Should Tell You
This site seems to carry a lot of good advice.
Read MoreA Modest Proposal
You’ve got to admire his originality: A British academic has provoked controversy by calling for female drug addicts to be paid to take contraception to stop them having children.
Read MoreForty-Seven!?
Cricket doesn’t often feature here, but this is too strange a result to ignore. What are the Windies smoking? (It was pretty tough choosing the freakiest sports story to feature here, on a weekend when Villa won 0-4 away and Man U lost 4-1 to Man City.)
Read MoreCohen Does It Again
As I always write: Nick Cohen is Left wing; I frequently disagree with him; his journalism is often superb. In today’s Observer he defends human rights against the “War on Terrorism” crowd, attacks poor little rich boy terrorists and worries about the dangers of anti-Muslim racism. Nothing has been sillier in the past few years […]
Read MoreBang To Rights
I see Amber’s unbelievable Texan miscarriage of justice story and I raise with a British one. WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit? An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the […]
Read MoreFalling Pregnant
Teenage pregnancy rates in Britain continue at more-or-less the same depressingly high level they’ve been at since the 70s. The BBC covers the question of why. Whenever there’s a debate about this you get the usual answers: on the Left concerned types talk about how more sex education is needed; on the Right concerned types […]
Read MoreBlue Murder
According to Oxford Today, BBC Oxford has produced a popular online murder mystery game, introduced by Colin Dexter. One piece of advice I have read: don’t view the last clue until you’re sure whodunnit. I don’t know the answer myself, but I suspect it would also be wise to cover up the public poll results […]
Read MoreFully Mobile
Met up with the Kids of the Campus in the end last night—in the street. How very now.
Read MoreOi, Levy, No!
Judith, according to Claire, your email account is bouncing her messages!
Read MoreUnanimity At Last
So far, my friends seem to be as one in their disagreement with my rant about The Passion (and gay marriage). Wow.
Read MoreMake a Joyful Noise
One of Claire‘s friends sent this one. It’s pretty childish I know, but anyone even vaguely familiar with the language of pornography will find it hard to stifle a snigger at this real parish Website. It reminds me of the days when the girls of Philadelphia’s Beaver College [since renamed for some reason] would visit […]
Read MoreHarsh
Yesterday Amber sent me a New York Times article about the latest development in a shocking story from Texas that she’s been following for quite some time: 46 people, almost all of them black, were arrested on fabricated drug charges in Tulia, Tex., their ordeal will draw to a close today with the announcement of […]
Read MoreMeep Meep
I was supposed to be out with a bunch of Genome Campus types, but, thanks the relaxed mores of the youth of today, I was only txted the co-ordinates of the rendezvous point when I had given up on the party and was wandering around Tesco’s, looking for the Parmesan. I’m now ‘Blogging as I […]
Read MoreNeighbours (again)
The latest on Johann Hari’s Website is a sad tale of a Palestinian schoolteacher who has Israeli soldiers occupying the upstairs part of his home. “I will never lose my optimism,” Khalil said the last time I saw him. “There are people on both sides who want peace. The real battle is not between Israel […]
Read MoreWakka Wakka
I hate slapstick. John Sessions once described it as “people being very stupid, very slowly, over and over again.” As I watched the trailer for the new feature-length Starsky and Hutch and a succession of surreal pratfalls flickered past, my desire to see the film itself slowly seeped away. Then I came to the end […]
Read MoreLion’s Shear
If Nicole Kidman invited me up onto her sleigh for some Turkish delight, I might be tempted to join the forces of darkness.
Read MoreOn Suffrage
In Afghanistan, you should let your women vote because they will, after all, vote for who you tell them to. [via FARK]
Read MoreFilling That Sling
In Singapore, before you can have maternity leave, it seems you need procreation leave.
Read MoreIt Was The Money Not The War
Someone who ought to know makes a plausible case in the Financial Times today that Libya’s turning over of WMD had little to do with the war in Iraq.
Read MoreIt’s the Christianity, Stupid
Yesterday Claire sent me a link to Christopher Hitchens’ recent piece about Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. My thanks to Claire. I’d already read this article, and the one that it in turn refers to, about whether or not the Jews killed Christ; but I reread them and thought about the questions they […]
Read MoreAagh!
Usually I have to ‘Blog hurriedly in between other stuff. Today I’ve been at home pretty much all day so I’ve had plenty of time to post things properly to PooterGeek. My ineptitude has expanded to fill the time available to it. Somehow, every time I wander over to my keyboard to do so, I […]
Read MoreRevealed: The Hell of Captivity
Leading Right-wing pro-war daily The Guardian exposes the shocking truth: He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida […]
Read MoreTalking of Fairy Stories
In today’s Observer there is a report on Disney pinning some hope of recovery on hugely expensive productions of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The correct versions of my last two posts are now up. The content isn’t hugely different, but they are now easier to read and make slightly more sense than the ones […]
Read MoreKerry Backer
Gene is a hawkish Lefty and a frequent poster of pro-Israeli comment at pro-war Labour/Marxist ‘Blog “Harry’s Place”. Yesterday he defended US Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry there over the issue of “defense”.
Read MoreMore Plastic Dolls
Kibo reminds us why Darth Vader isn’t scary any more.
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