One rule for Marr, one for the rest

I wondered for some time while reading what the injunction obtained by Andrew Marr against anyone revealing what he’d been up to was all about. Even <I>Private Eye</I> were gagged into silence. And then it all become mcuh clearer …
Find out what Marr, Alice Miles and Jacky Ashley all have in common … and why [...]

The land of the self interested

After spending the last week in the USA, some of the arguments surrounding President Obama’s healthcare reforms have been little short of disgusting, reflecting the obsession of many, largely Republicans, to hold on to all they have and hang the rest. They seem to fail to understand – or perhaps they simply don’t care [...]

Mbeki … Africa’s embarrasing disgrace

In an era when politicians worry increasingly about their legacies, President Thabo Mbeki should worry more than most. Inside his own country he will be remembered for his disgraceful refusal to acknowledge the devastating AIDS crisis and the untold suffering and mass of orphans his pigheadedness caused. On the world stage, his [...]

The filth that is the Daily Mail

Ok, we know Polly Toynbee is a self-important old bag who changes her views with the wind, but she makes some very good points in the Guardian about Paul Dacre, the utterly odious Daily Mail editor who last month had the gall to bang on about press freedom.
Dacre, whose foul-mouthed outbursts are legendary and who [...]

Packing it in

Plastic packaging. Not the gentle and limp easter-egg kind, but the shrink-to-fit hard kind designed to be impenetrable unless armed with wirecutters and a lot of time. Secure packing is one thing, but why the need to pack things so tightly that they cannot be opened. When you eventually manage to cut your way [...]

Getting Britain tidy

Full marks to Bill Bryson for using his fame as an author to champion something that we should do as a matter of course – keeping Britain tidy.
Anyone who travels through the suburbs or the country, areas where local authorities do not spend large sums on endless mopping up after the slovenly, cannot help but [...]

Zimbabwe’s people prepare for another bashing

The Zimbabwe situation rumbles on and with each passing hour it seems more likely that Robert Mugabe will not go quietly. The signs of aggression are growing and the best bet now is that there will be a second round in the presidential elections – even Mugabe cannot avoid that – but it will [...]

“Thatcher has died”

I was born at the end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and, subsequently, don’t hold as strong an opinion of her as those older than me. But the news that a new play is to be shown – The Death Of Thatcher – confirms how out of control modern art is, how desperate they are to [...]

Old slapper of the year … it’s official!

Heather Mills’ 19-minute GMTV rant has been voted the “Most Cringeworthy Moment of 2007″ by internet users. The shameless publicity seeker was voted into first place in MSN’s Review of 2007 poll, with 31% naming her live outburst as one of the year’s most defining moments.
Mills made headlines when she appeared on the GMTV [...]

Another recruit for the Bishop of Rome

Tony Blair has finally come out of the closet and announced his conversion to Catholicism. The two are well matched. Actually, perhaps even Blair doesn’t deserve that. In a week where it was announced – and soon disproved – that Catholicism is the No. 1 religion in the UK, you have to ask why. [...]