The first is at Freemania:
The really important thing about Iraq: us
Today Gordon Brown gives evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. This weekend, amid violent attacks on polling stations, Iraq holds an election. I wonder which will get the most coverage?
The rest of the world exists primarily as a mirror for us.
The second is at Skuds’ place:
A week is a long time […]
Lord Macca of Loch Kodak on his appearance on The X-Factor:
[Sir Paul McCartney] said he got some great reaction from people about his performance on the X Factor.
“We got great feedback on the streets the next day. It’s my claim to fame now.”
Via Paulie’s “Shared Items” feed at Never Trust a Hippy, I read on the Democratic Society Blog one of the best “Did Magna Carta die in vain?” comments ever [see foot of the post I link to] and, on Tory Troll, an account of yet another FAIL by frontline interviewers.
Here’s a tip for the meedja and […]
Every single “serious” newspaper in the UK led with Iran this morning. But The Daily Mail devoted its entire front page to an attack on Gordon Brown and the Iraq Inquiry, and The Express (alongside a photograph of a Euro Lotto winner cradling a giant cabbage) to asylum seekers, the largest group of whom before the war came […]
Cunningly, Yahoo! has made a virtue of the Alex Massie view of the relative lack of sophistication of “Twenty20” cricket to promote their live online coverage of the world championships.
[The video embedded below is a Windows Media file.]
Tom Freeman doesn’t see the sense in The Times capitalizing the words “Left”, “Right”, and “Centre” when its writers use them to describe political leanings. I think the newspaper is right to do so.
Language is a communication channel, and shouldn’t be a fashion accessory or status symbol; however, in this country, more than many others, it […]
For some lucky and rich people who describe themselves as Left-wing, one of the worst things about free markets is that they have given the oiks the freedom to enjoy the pleasures that were previously restricted to their betters. A real “socialist” state would provide the lower orders with more suitable goods: perhaps they would […]
Thank you very much to the PooterGeeker who sent me a Minolta SLR camera, lenses and other exciting goodies. You are star. I feel guilty writing so little lately when my readers are so nice to me.
The person who sent me that amazing gift is someone I have never met in my life, which brings me […]
Harry Windsor is a “thug” for referring to another soldier by the nickname “Paki”, according to Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, quoted by the BBC. The BBC page links to the Website of that organisation, where Shafiq also claims that the government of Israel is like that of the Nazis.
The organization’s Chairman and Patron, Muhammad […]
[J]ust how effective is it to insult someone in an alien cultural idiom? Bush, naturally enough, looked bewildered, but he ducked speedily and seemed none the worse for wear afterwards. Gordon Brown, I suspect, would have stolidly absorbed the blows; Obama would probably have caught one shoe in each hand before throwing them across the […]
I’d like to express my profound regret to everyone reading this post for any offence I might have caused by thinking of writing this post while listening to Radio 2 in the shower at the same time as rubbing my naked body with shower gel. In mitigation, my Webcam was switched off at the time—and in […]
From a letter to the Halifax and Calderdale Evening Courier by Jason Smith, the Bradford Chairman of the UK Independence Party:
GREEN’S ARREST SHOWS WE ARE BECOMING DICTATORSHIP
As unaccustomed as I am to defending Tory MPs, I feel I must speak out about the arrest of Damian Green, who was apparently held for nine hours and his […]
There’s a US marine biologist on BBC Radio 4 talking about the leatherback turtles that she and her team have been tagging. Apparently an adult leatherback grows to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Wikipedia concurs—and also points out that this makes the leatherback only the fourth largest reptile, after some crocodilians. I’m scared now.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq have reacted to the US presidential election by issuing a statement on Friday directed at President-elect Barack Obama and his incoming administration.
…
[H]ardliners have greeted Barack Obama’s election victory with a stream of racist and other insults.
Because, previously, when Al-Qaeda in Iraq referred to Kurdish-speaking bomb victims as “Kuffir to be slaughtered”, they […]
TIGER WOODS WINS 2008 US OPEN DESPITE KNEE INJURY CAUSED BY ILLEGAL KARATE ATTACK FROM EVIL MAFIA GOLFER ROCCO MEDIATE. OBTAINS CRUCIAL PAR SCORE ON SUDDEN-DEATH HOLE USING “CRANE KICK” BEFORE COLLAPSING ON THE FINAL GREEN IN AGONY, MUTTERING “I DID IT FOR YOU, ELIN!”
LEWIS HAMILTON CLINCHES WORLD F1 DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP IN HIS MCLAREN, “HERBIE”, DESPITE […]
I don’t read or link to “Comment Is Free”, The Guardian’s cesspit of a group blog. Sadie saves you, me, and everybody from ever having to do so again by republishing a comment from the site that captures the spirit of the place. Under an article about rape, a reader writes:
“rape is never a woman’s fault”
That […]
Further to my last post about this, Russell Brand makes a proper apology to camera here. I can think of several politicians (amongst others) who could learn from it. He doesn’t mess about with words like “inappropriate”, which these days is used to describe everything from ironically referencing a passage in the Koran to trying […]
Andrew Sachs has just been on BBC Radio 4, walking around London Zoo with Tim Samuels and reminiscing about how he used to sneak in there during World War II. Sachs was born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1930. He and they fled Germany in 1938. He witnessed Kristallnacht—“Goodness, those Stormtroopers are going to get into trouble […]
Imagine several million small children across the planet waking up on Christmas Day to discover that six of Santa Claus’s reindeer had had pixie dust blowouts at 30 000 feet over the North Atlantic, leading to a catastrophic loss of power and Santa’s sleigh plunging into the freezing ocean, killing all on board and scattering the […]
You could argue that Mick Hartley won this game when he collected
Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal.
from The Huffington Post, but I think quoting Naomi Wolf is cheating. Here’s a good one from yesterday’s International Herald Tribune. Roger Cohen writes:
From an inspirational notion, however flawed in execution, that has […]
This afternoon, I walked through my door and picked up this week’s local free newspaper, The Brighton and Hove Leader. Amongst the insert spam included today was a glossy advert for Forbes TV rentals, inviting me to hire a flatscreen TV in time for the Beijing Olympics 2008 and a brochure inviting me to come […]
I keep meaning to write something about the response of the liberal Left media to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States—there are parallels with the way parts of the Right responded to Bill Clinton’s sexual incontinence—but, as I bring my fingers to the keys, I […]
It was quiet here last week because I had a lot of things on—to the extent that I had to stop off at the 24-hour Tesco superstore in the small hours of Saturday on the way back from singing at a gig to do my week’s shopping. I’ve read some extreme tales about the goings […]
One of the nicest things about blogging is being able to congratulate other bloggers on (what you believe to be) good blogging, so it’s unfortunate in a way when you are seen as part of a gang because, if you congratulate another supposed gang member, then doing so looks like cliquey back-slapping. Worse, if the […]
Woman E, demonstrating again the superiority of film over digital portraiture
From the BBC News Website:
World motorsport boss Max Mosley has won a legal action against a Sunday newspaper over claims an orgy he took part in had Nazi overtones.
The High Court ruled the News of the World did breach Mr Mosley’s privacy, awarding him £60,000 in damages.
I […]
In an effort to push through an extension to the number of days the police can detain you without charge (if you are suspected of being a terrorist), the government—sorry: “Gordon Brown”, because all current and future legislation is the work of a single overbusy Scotsman—is suggesting that it will compensate innocent suspects held under […]
The top of the BBC News page about a possible new cure for baldness carries an image of an anonymous baldie:
The bottom of the same page has images of Nick Robinson and Terry Wogan:
Yesterday, as I was running to the gym past a bunch of army cadets waiting outside a local youth centre, one of the boys […]
