That post title probably ought to have a question mark at the end.
It is ridiculous to suggest that there was a single reason why Obama won it — or why Clinton lost it — but I’m going to do it anyway. I really think that a lot of it came down to timing. Politicians tend, when [...]
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An observation
31 May 2008 – 9:13 am
If there’s one lesson I hope everyone concerned has learnt from the current US election cycle: it’s a really stupid idea to disenfranchise a whole bunch of your constituents for any reason. I’m thinking of the debacle surrounding the Democratic primaries in Florida and Michigan.
Of course it has only become such a thorny issue because [...]
Lies, damn lies and religion
8 May 2008 – 5:20 pm
There’s an article in today’s Times about the rapid decline in church attendance in the UK. The particular angle they’ve chosen to take is that within a mere 30 years, the number of people going to mosque every weekend will outnumber those going to church. This is illustrated by a dramatic graph with the Christian [...]
Irony of the week
16 February 2008 – 9:36 am
The Chinese government expressing their sadness and shock at the idea that anyone would be crass enough to sully the Olympic spirit with the grimy taint of a political agenda.
Kidneys! Kidneys! Get your kidneys here!
13 January 2008 – 11:42 am
I’m fascinated by this story—that the British government is considering changing organ donation to an opt-out system. So the surgeons would be able to presume consent unless the patient had specifically asked that his organs not be used.
I think it’s such an interesting ethical question. In some ways it would so clearly be a good [...]
marking the 200th anniversary of abolition
16 March 2007 – 5:01 pm
March 25th is the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Slave Trade Act which abolished the slave trade — though not slavery itself — in the British Empire. And like everyone else, I think, I’m unsure how we, the British, should mark it.
Celebration doesn’t seem quite the right tone to strike: it’s a bit [...]
Continuous Revolution
8 March 2007 – 8:44 am
After only 650 years of a two-chamber parliament, MPs have voted for both Houses to be fully elected.
I just hope we don’t come to regret this headlong rush towards mob rule.
Fucking bootiful
6 February 2007 – 12:28 am
It takes a lot to make me have sympathy for Bernard Matthews, whose company represents everything that’s worst in industrial food production, both the way they rear the turkeys and the revolting processed foods that they make from them. But I did get a twinge of sympathy when bird flu started killing all their turkeys.
I’ve [...]
The Sun on the North Korean nuclear test
10 October 2006 – 4:00 pm
The Sun may be an awful sexist homophobic reactionary rag, but it has its moments. Today’s front cover: a photo of the Kim Jong-il puppet from Team America:World Police, with the headline ‘HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE KOREA?’
Crappy journalism in action
24 August 2006 – 1:00 pm
I nearly posted a link to this story on the BBC website about cows having regional accents because I thought it was mildly interesting. But the internet linguistics police quickly debunked it.
The BBC story starts by saying “Cows have regional accents like humans, language specialists have suggested.” What actually happened was that a PR [...]
You said what now?
1 August 2006 – 8:43 am
I thought I must still be half-asleep when I heard it on the radio, but no, today’s news is Blair signs climate pact with Schwarzenegger.
The fact that Arnie is Governor of California is one of those things that still always comes as a bit of a surprise.
Non-news story of the week
18 July 2006 – 12:16 am
From the BBC: “A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.”
Well duh.
shook foil
8 July 2006 – 10:02 am
I know why the phrase ‘like shining from shook foil’ is in my head — because I was putting some foil over a dish of coronation chicken. More peculiar is the other thing that’s been going around my head this morning:
“Bush and Saddam sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”.
I think it’s unlikely that either of [...]
ARMED POLICE RAID FARCE
23 June 2006 – 6:43 pm
As the Evening Standard news-stands put it. Which conjured up an image that I don’t think they intended.
Bomb-sniffing flowers
15 May 2006 – 10:22 am
Scientists in Denmark, the US and Canada have all been working on producing a genetically-engineered plant whose flowers will come up red instead of white in the presence of underground explosives. The idea, of course, is that you can use them to to test for the presence of landmines by dropping the seeds from the [...]
Brilliant BBC fact-checking
2 May 2006 – 6:49 pm
BBC London, reporting on some building developments which are being held up by protests from English Nature, announced that the three key bird species were ‘Dartmouth Warbler’ (actually Dartford Warbler), Woodlark and Nightjar. But the really amusing bit was that the Nightjar was illustrated with film of some Wigeons. It’s always slightly unnerving when journalists [...]
noozpapers
22 April 2006 – 1:28 pm
One of the minor joys of the brave new electronic age is the ease of buying the UK papers abroad. Not because I desperately want to keep up with the British news - I mean, really, whatever the fuck David Cameron has just said about the NHS can wait a couple of weeks, by which [...]
LOL!
3 April 2006 – 5:13 pm
From the IHT, via Londonist:
School officials in a Florida county said they were concerned about terrorism when they decided to keep a high school band from marching in a London parade, and now British officials are telling travelers that Fort Myers is no safe haven, either.
Local officials fear that the dispute could cost Lee County, [...]
Government ‘harassment’
2 April 2006 – 10:26 am
I came across an animal liberation website which stated that “government harassment of activists has continued to increase this year”. Harassment in this case seemed to mainly consist of people being convicted of arson, criminal damage, blackmail and so on. Describing that as ‘harassment’ just seems so… whiny. Sometimes it’s right to decide that you [...]
Ashley Cole and gay footballers
9 March 2006 – 2:31 pm
Ashley Cole, who plays at left-back for Arsenal and England, has sent his lawyer to complain to Google because at the moment, if you search for ‘Ashley Cole’, it says:
See results for: ashley cole gay
Possibly even more bizarrely, from a legal point of view, he’s suing the News of the World over a story that [...]