As our glorious dead tree press descends into ‘penny dreadful’ country, Ms Raccoon has become correspondingly more obsessed with checking the small print – otherwise known as referring to the alleged ‘source documents’.
It can be
Continue reading →On reading the small print…
A Recipe for Disaster.
Last year, 626,000 individuals sought ‘refuge’ in Europe, and that is just the number who registered their arrival in one manner or another.
We are told, and I believe, that they are fleeing from the horrors
Continue reading →Dark Days Ahead
I spent a largely unremarkable holiday in Tunisia back in the 80’s. It was so unremarkable I can’t remember whether I was in Sousse or not. It was very hot and, in the time-honoured phrase of
Continue reading →Mission Satirical
Exactly twelve months ago, I was summoned to an office by a distinguished and venerable media magnate, a room of such vast expanse that the intimidating distance between the door I entered through and the monolithic mahogany
Continue reading →You’ve Got Male
To the Choose Life shopping-list that opens ‘Trainspotting’, one could add subsequent creature comforts – choose an iPad, choose an iPhone, choose an Apple Watch, choose Twitter, choose Facebook, choose every bloody online appliance and gadget to
Continue reading →Flagged as Inappropriate
When Oasis signed to Creation Records in 1993, Liam Gallagher was asked why the sleeve of the band’s demo tape had featured a striking image of the Union Jack looking as though it was being sucked down
Continue reading →Starr Wars.
Monday, I managed to slip loose from the protective cordon that has been thrown around me – “for my own good” – and take the train down to London. It has been frustrating sitting here, behaving myself, whilst
Continue reading →How to pay your taxes without parting with a penny piece.
E’en the grateful thanks of the nation ringing in your ears! That is surely good news for the millionaires currently marching in support of austerity or summit?
‘Tis true, you don’t have to part with a
Continue reading →Lenin and McCarthy
We all know some people who talk bollocks the moment their mouth opens; the likelihood is the speaker is probably the only person in the room unaware of this fact, which is why they keep talking bollocks.
Continue reading →I shall dine on Mince and slices of Quince…
For Ms Raccoon is putting to sea in a pea-green boat. Or maybe it’s not the boat that will be pea-green but Ms Raccoon. We shall see.
I have thrown caution to the wind, and signed up
Continue reading →Not in Front of the Children (4)/25 Hour News
We started with sex and – surprise, surprise – here we go again. Race and disability can take a back seat; when it comes to Percy Filth, we Brits excel like few others. Yet, this week’s word
Continue reading →Equality of Gender.
Did you know that a thumping 50% of those who enter the Family courts emerge ‘deeply dissatisfied’, ’emotionally traumatised’ and ‘cynical about our Justice system’. Some of the 50% could even be accurately described as ‘hysterical’ and ‘paranoid’. The majority
Continue reading →Diction-Wary Corner
Surprise! Surprise! A new survey has revealed that hopeful candidates for the top jobs tend to be judged on their appearance, their speech and – most shocking of all – which school and university they attended;
Continue reading →Normal for Norfolk?
Flat, boring, Norfolk – that’s the cliché. Occasionally you may find a trendy metro-land media type describing the ‘wide open skies’, ‘amazing vistas’ and ‘sense of time stood still’ before extolling the bargain basement price that they purchased a
Continue reading →Precedent Carta
‘The good name of human rights has sometimes become distorted and devalued,’ says David Cameron as he takes to the Runnymede podium, standing not only in the shadows of John the King and John the President,
Continue reading →Miner Versus Minor
Those of us who are old enough watched it on TV just hours after it happened; footage has been shown repeatedly in the years since. This footage constitutes what used to be known as evidence. It’s pretty
Continue reading →Stress Testing The NHS (Episode Two).
Dear Ms Anna Dugdale,
I was admitted to your hospital last Sunday afternoon via ambulance – severely dehydrated, with acute abdominal pain, vomiting and sedated with morphine. Partly as a result of the
Continue reading →Stress Testing The NHS (Episode One).
Ms Raccoon has been your reporter-at-large for the past week, selflessly stress testing the NHS emergency procedures. It has not been a happy experience. I throughly dislike using a blog for a ‘poor me’ misery-memoir,
Continue reading →Not in Front of the Children (3)/25 Hour News
In the first two instalments of our look at the English language’s permanent residents of the naughty step, we examined two of the most unspeakable words linked to sex and race respectively. Now we turn our attention
Continue reading →Joe Public Enemy
Forty years ago this month, a country that had lived through two General Elections in the space of a year went to the polls yet again; in June 1975, however, voters were participating in Britain’s first
Continue reading →Too Fast to Live; Too Young to Vote
I think I can say pretty confidently that if William Hague had been a pupil at the high school I attended, his return from the Conservative Party Conference in which he’d given a star turn would have
Continue reading →Art Imitating Lies
Artistic licence is an often necessary aspect of turning life into art. Unless the subject under the biographer’s microscope has recorded every waking moment of their life, there are inevitable gaps the imagination needs to fill. Most
Continue reading →If you go down to the woods tonight…
Liverpool is an amazing place. Militant. Unbending. Not frightened to speak its mind. Especially the women. They are a terrifying breed.
What was that you said? Where was I born? Oh, Liverpool, since you ask. I
Continue reading →What's Gove got to do, got to do, with it?
The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP was appointed Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice on 10 May 2015.
The Secretary of State has oversight of all of Ministry of Justice business and is responsible
Continue reading →
The Sunday Post: Realm of the Censors
Not a pleasant image, I grant you, but imagine if Margaret Thatcher and Kim Jong-un had once grabbed a quickie, one that resulted in a bouncing behemoth of a baby boy inheriting the worst traits of both
Continue reading →Not in Front of the Children (2)/25 Hour News
OK, the second instalment of our guide to the most taboo words in the English language focuses on what, along with ‘Cunt’, is one guaranteed to break the ice at parties… Continue reading →
Blair today, Blair tomorrow.
As Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair presided over the greatest influx of eastern Europeans this country has ever seen. Despite New Labour’s promise to control numbers in its 1997 manifesto, between 2001 and 2011 the foreign-born population
Continue reading →When is a Lie not a Lie?
Part One – When is a Lie not a Lie.
Andy Coulson emerged from the Edinburgh High Court his old confident self.
“This prosecution was always wrong. I didn’t lie and the prosecution,
Continue reading →
A Branson Pickle
As far as heads of multi-conglomerates go, I’ve always found Richard Branson less objectionable than most; perhaps it’s because he convincingly wore the laidback gait of the hippy entrepreneur to mask a hard-edged business nous and
Continue reading →Charles the Last
It’s a measure of how much affection Charles Kennedy was held in by his fellow parliamentarians that many of the tributes from his peers since his death was announced this morning have actually come across as genuine rather
Continue reading →