Thursday, 9th February 2012

Snow? What snow?

9:34am

It’s not snowing again. This is the fourth day running it’s not snowing again and I live in one of the most ‘badly affected’ areas south of the Wash. By badly affected I mean that all of the roads, even the single track lanes on top of a hill where I live, are entirely free from snow. It snowed for one evening only and left five inches or so on the fields; some of this has melted, some is still there. Just about enough to tell yourself that it had definitely snowed.

...

Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (1)

Monday, 6th February 2012

Terry shouldn’t be captain, but that should be Capello’s decision to make

1:22pm

The England manager Fabio Capello is both right and wrong about John Terry.

Right because it was stupid and, as Terry Venables says, ‘knee-jerk’ of the Football Association to remove the captaincy from the rat-faced little scrote. That’s up to the manager, a man disinclined to give a clamorous press what it wants. Wrong, because Terry should not be captain in the first place, nor indeed on the field of play. These days, Eric Pickles would be a more mobile and nuanced centre half for the national side than Mr Terry.

...

Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (51)

Thursday, 2nd February 2012

Do we really need to know more about Gary Speed’s death?

1:23pm

Do we have a right to know why the football manager Gary Speed killed himself, if indeed he did kill himself? I’m not convinced.

There’s a typically thoughtful and ruminatively controversial article by Stephen Glover in today’s Daily Mail. Stephen is critical of the inquest into Speed’s death, pointing out that the coroner was less than forensic in his cross-questioning of the various witnesses – particularly Speed’s wife and his close friend Alan Shearer.

Mrs Speed had said that the evening before she discovered her husband hanging from...

Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (45)

Monday, 30th January 2012

Does Labour support the benefits cap or not?

1:03pm

Does anyone, anywhere, understand the Labour Party’s position on the government’s intention to cap welfare benefits? I ask as a member of the Labour Party who is, of course, anxious to spread the message far and wide but is worried by what seem to be certain, um, inconsistencies of approach.

So, on Question Time last week David Lammy conceded that he agreed wholeheartedly with the idea of a benefits cap but thinks the various dissenting Church of England bishops are absolutely right to criticise the idea of a benefits cap and that...

Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (41)

Thursday, 26th January 2012

Breakfast/coffee/apples update!

7:30pm

Just seen this in the latest copy of Private Eye, from its Pseuds Corner column:

‘I woke up with my wife and baby of six months on the small island of Burano in Venice where we have a lighthouse. We took our breakfast on the terrace of one of the best restaurants in the world, Da Romano. I had one organic apple and fresh pomegranate juice, and a cookie made by the bakery next door. Then I started designing a new, affordable moped.’

- Philippe Starck. ...

Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (47)

More scumbags? Or more scumbags getting caught?

4:48pm

Has Britain become a nation of immoral, lying, cheating, scumbags as the increasingly pious Peter Oborne seems to suggest in his latest article? Peter, who writes for such unblemished upholders of truth and decency as The Daily Mail, suggests that these days, if people found money lying about in the street, they wouldn’t hand it in. Whereas before they would. As in: ‘Gaw, I fahnd a tenner dah the Ol’ Kent Road, officer – make sure it gets back to its rightful owner, me old china, and if not then bung it to...