The social gulf was between craftsmen and skilled artisans on the one hand and labourers on the other. My father was very much aware of his dignity and status as a craftsman. Our social rank manifested itself in other ways, too. It was made plain at elections. My father naturally voted for the Liberal candidate and took good care that the candidates's portrait appeared in the front window. We all wore his favours at election times. Nearly all craftsmen and artisans were Liberal; but labourers usually voted Tory. This puzzled me as a boy and it puzzles me still, but...
Those amazing fatality stats that James has just flagged up presumably won't have any impact on America's gun lobby. As the mischievous Stephen Colbert demonstrates in an interview with a gun control spokesman from the Brady campaign, the NRA and its supporters have all the best arguments, Have you ever wondered what kind of weapon Jesus would have carried? No, I thought not. Painfully, painfully funny.
George Packer - an Obama supporter, need I add - wants the candidate to show a little more flexibility on his plans for a withdrawal:
Iraq, despite myriad crises, has begun to stabilize. With the general election four months away, Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far...If Obama truly wants to be seen as a figure of change, he needs to talk less about the past and more about the future: not the
Stephen Pollard and thousands of other tennis fans take to the streets to celebrate Andy Murray's historic victory at Wimbledon yesterday... Er, sorry, wrong caption. It's the scene in Plaza Colón in Madrid as the Spanish football team arrive home with the Euro 2008 trophy.
I have a theory that the Champions League will help as much, if not more, to build a United States of Europe than all the paperwork printed in Brussels. Can football do the same to bring the Spanish together? El Pais columnist Juan Cruz has written a fascinating piece on the reactions to that European Championship win. Definitely worth a read.
As a little tribute to Xavi and his team-mates, I thought I'd re-run my favourite clip of the divine Concha Buika. (The last one seemed to go down well.) As you may know by now, "Mi niña Lola" was the title song of her breakthrough album.
Pootergeek, his tongue deep in his cheek, has fun watching a member of the audience grab a microphone and run amok at a huge open-air concert. Fortunately, the musicians weren't too fazed:
Indeed they had seen their uninvited guest—later revealed to be a fellow American, one Shawn Carter—before, and, familiar with his somewhat basic obsessions, they applied their talents to the task of integrating his often bragging and abusive outpourings, to the extent that the most of the audience of thousands, many of them unfamiliar with black music, believed they were intended to be part of the show.
More promising noises about the new mayor's plans to restrict the spread of my-skyscraper-is-bigger-than-your-skyscraper syndrome:
Boris Johnson will only accept new skyscrapers in London if they are in clusters and "appropriate locations", such as Croydon and Docklands...Towers will not be allowed in inappropriate locations even if they have "wow-factor architecture" and big-name designers.
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