Saturday Evening Posts Worth Reading.
Jimmy Fried my Hamster and other tales from International Women’s Day.
International Women’s Day is with us again, our annual chance to shriek how unfair life is…we do soldier manfully womanfully on the other 364 days of the year with narry a word of complaint. Today is our day, so let rip ladies.
Yewtree Unplugged.
Whoever named the Police trawling operation in the wake of the Savile allegations ’Operation Yewtree’ had a sense of humour. The Yewtree is famous for its slow growth and longevity, and its raucously attractive fruit which appeals to little birdies – but contains
Continue reading →On eulogising a tyrant
When I was a child, I found the obituaries page of one of the big American dailies — I can no longer remember which one it was, nor the person whose life was commemorated in words so striking
Continue reading →The Way We Were.
I was nearly tempted out of my sick bed by a chance reading of a Guardian piece which claimed to have uncovered 43,00 – that’s forty three thousand in case you glossed over the figures – cases of child abuse in a 21
Continue reading →Flogging a dead horse…
Ms Raccoon regrets, but she was daft enough to pay a flying visit to the UK last week – and naturally has returned full of genuine UK issue germs…
Normal service
Continue reading →Borgias – the Black Legend
In the Italian press this week there have been reports of “intrigue, corruption and blackmail amongst senior clergy” concerning the forthcoming Papal election:
This has been condemned as misinformation by the
Continue reading →Guido Fawkes and Jiminy Cricket!
What? You don’t know who Jiminy Cricket is? Shame on you!
Jiminy Cricket was the voluble arthropod who insisted on speaking truth to the lying and famously long nosed puppet on a string. Pinocchio’s enforced conscience, whether he liked
Continue reading →Going to Work on a Clegg.
The media are enjoying dipping their soldiers into a Clegg this morning; he is such a bumptious, Holier than thou, ‘I promise you a different kind of politics’, new metro man, that seeing him boiled and served
Continue reading →A Nicked Banksy or A Banksy Nicked?
It’s half a million quid’s worth of my property, or it belongs to the community? When did Graffiti become so valuable? When the Art world got involved that’s when.
When Banksy, the Über-cool underground graffiti merchant decide to deface the wall of Poundland in Haringey
Continue reading →Wreck the Hoose Juice…!
The peaceable Benedictine Monks who settled on the banks of the River Dart thought the place quite perfect – like many a modern day monk (who Gildas? perish the thought) they were none too fond of the
Continue reading →The NHS and Whistleblowers.
“NHS spends £15million (the same as 750 nurses’ salaries) on gagging 600 whistleblowers.” The headlines are particularly shrill this morning – and utterly misplaced.
The NHS is an inanimate object, a legal entity, comprised of human beings. Human beings that we
Continue reading →Tony Bennett and the McCann’s.
A retired solicitor who published claims that Madeleine McCann’s parents caused her death has been given a suspended jail sentence.
Mr Justice Tugendhat said 65-year-old Tony Bennett deliberately flouted legal undertakings, given in November
Continue reading →Cyber Paranoia.
I’m a National Hero – he’s a Terrorist!
China’s economic espionage has reached an intolerable level and I believe that the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia have an obligation to confront
Continue reading →His Master’s Voice.
Why should the sepulchral tone of Ed Miliband’s voice offend me so? Fill me with dread that creates a shiver the length of my spine?
I should be impervious to personal characteristics; ignoring the style of dress or hair that are merely personal choice;
Continue reading →“Come back my love” – Part 2 – “Nova Sparta”
This photograph was taken on a Wednesday afternoon in late February or early March 1985 on the river Cam in Cambridge. It is Downing College Men’s 1st VIII going at full tilt, trying to defend their
Continue reading →The Pub Policeman.
I just caught a clip of Cameron last night, whining that food retailers should have been out and about on the airwaves reassuring punters that they do know their Ass from their El Cow, and they will be more careful in
Continue reading →The Media and Propaganda.
Hollywood has long been a cost free publicity machine. Cost free in the sense that it sold its output and therefore required little or no financial input from those who wished to influence the minds of the general public.
Where
Continue reading →Secret Trials and Uncorroborated Witnesses.
“If we do not change the way we use this material in court we risk inviting a torrent of new claims. Our enemies will begin to realise that our justice system is an open goal and come
Continue reading →Happy Lays are here again!
From the Sutton Guardian this morning we learn those those living in the comedic suburb of Sutton – all those mock-Tudor houses, privet hedges, manicured lawns and Margot Leadbetter look-a-likes in Hermes scarves and Wellie boots so beloved
Continue reading →The Tax on Aspiration
Time was, when the NHS was but a twinkle in Bevan’s eye, old age was seen as a personal achievement.
A tribute to man’s ability to overcome capricious nature. The old had sidestepped the mortality rates of infantile
Continue reading →Papal Bull
Our religious correspondent has sobered up for long enough to remember that last week he was sent copies of several job applications for the position of Pope, by a man claiming to be a Butler; at the time he was too
Continue reading →Socialist Surrealism
This week we have an object lesson in what happens when you dig up the the dead Victorian body of your Great Grandparent, prop it up in the hallway in a sharp 2012 suit, and hope that
Continue reading →Matters of No Consequence
One of the most brilliant and rational minds on the planet is former futures and derivates trader, self made multi millionaire, polymath and now academic and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, of whom Continue reading →
Animal Rights, the Gay Pride and the Laugher Curve…
No sooner has the dust settled (depends on your definition of ‘settled’ of course) on the Gay Marriage discourse than we have a fresh outbreak of hysterical outrage. Dr Brett Mills of the University of East Anglia – which sought to
Continue reading →Care and Compassion in the Community.
Where’s it gone? You’ve got more chance of finding beef in your beef-burger than care in the caring profession.
Nothing about the report into the Stafford hospital was more soul-destroying than that single word in this sentence: ‘There was a lack of
Continue reading →The Star of the Libel Courts.
The cyber vigilante paedo-mob, charging across the Twitterscape with flaming torches held aloft, ever alert for the naming and shaming of a fresh celebrity (preferably celebrated for right wing political affiliations) were temporarily baffled by the early morning on-line version of the Daily
Continue reading →The Son that Eclipsed the Huhne.
The towering ego of Chris Huhne, brought humiliatingly to ground in supplication at the altar of public opinion by his Son gives me no pleasure. I am no supporter of Huhne, his crimes against constituency and country at large are too numerous
Continue reading →Meddlesome Mandelson.
Some intriguing news from Hull.
They are to revive the ancient title of High Steward of Hull. The honorary post was abolished in 1974 as part of a local government re-organisation. Historically, the office holder was expected to act as
Continue reading →Out of the Closet into the Cabinet.
I had the radio playing in the background a couple of weeks ago – French radio, naturally. 80, perhaps 90,000 people were converging on Paris to demonstrate. They had come from towns and villages across the breadth of France. The rural
Continue reading →