Which words in current use would you ban? Lake Superior State University answers this question each year, with its famous ‘List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness’. Words are recommended by members of the English speaking world, and then selected by the university. Top of the
It’s official: this country is going to the dogs. The proof? Tesco has been insidiously infiltrating the coffee shop market with a chain of shops that look independent. The Guardian reports outrage in Crouch End, where customers were ‘duped’ by ‘independent-looking, stripped back coffee shops’. The greatest crime of Harris + Hoole – which has
The British government has been gently rattling the bars in its stand-off with Argentina over the Falklands of late: giving the Queen a stretch of land in Antarctica which Cristina Kirchner’s government disputes the ownership of is one example. But today, ahead of a referendum in March for Islanders to decide whether they want the
At first glance, it looked like very good news when David Cameron appointed Justine Greening as Secretary of State for International Development in his September 2012 reshuffle. Greening is an experienced accountant, an alumna of Price Waterhouse Cooper, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica, with zero tolerance for waste. She already proved herself an advocate of fiscal retrenchment
One of the more bizarre mysteries of contemporary British politics is the ironclad, almost fanatical intensity of the government’s commitment to foreign aid spending and the activities of DFID, the Department for International Development. It is bizarre because the Prime Minister talks about foreign aid as if it’s all about famine relief and saving children’s
One of the first things that the coalition did on taking office was to announce the date of the next election. This was meant to prevent destablising speculation about when the two parties might split apart and go to the country. It has largely succeeded in doing that. But there has been an unintended side-effect.
Even though they efface the landscape, the snows of midwinter make the deeper symbolism more apparent. The psychic differences between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, which long predate Alex Salmond, are most explicit in this season. When I was a child, Christmas Day was not a bank holiday in Scotland. It was celebrated, but
Supposedly the coffee chain Starbucks will sell you a smaller, 8oz cappuccino even though this size and its price is never published on their menu boards — you just have to ask for a ‘short’. Handy to know. In any case, I never liked using the word ‘grande’. Two syllables seems pretentious; using one makes
The sun shines warmly in south-west France, and rabbit bouillabaisse is the pièce de résistance of a New Year lunch at which Nigel Lawson is a fellow guest. The former chancellor and Spectator editor divides his time between his home in the Gers, the Global Warming Policy Foundation which he chairs, and the Parliamentary Commission
Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want
So let us return, you and I, warily and wearily, to the topic of gay marriage. Gingerly, in fact, as though with a hangover after an ill-tempered, bickering party. And, in the cold and Nurofenned light of day, let us find our common ground, and think about where it leads. I’m still for it and
Looking back, it’s baffling that someone like me — a lover of pleasure and loather of pain, a woman who pops Nurofen like breath mints and cannot sit on the sofa without six cushions wedged in at strategic angles for maximum telly-watching comfort — would have deluded myself into believing I was going to give
‘Three things of my own are about to burst on the world,’ Dean Acheson wrote to his friend Lady Pamela Berry, the London hostess and wife of Michael Berry, later Lord Hartwell, owner of the Daily Telegraph. They were ‘a leader in the December issue of Foreign Affairs… a speech at West Point… and a
I was in bed by one o clock on New Year’s Day. We did the countdown thing, for the kids, and then hung around for a while looking tired; it was only later, when my wife and I were upstairs in bed, that the real fun began. A long and corrosive argument about the mice,
Pontius Pilate is deciding the fate of Ha-Notsri (aka Jesus) in Herod’s palace. In Stalin’s Moscow, meanwhile, the Devil (aka Woland) stalks the streets. One man, the Master (aka Mikhail Bulgakov), can reconcile these opposing cosmic forces. But he is languishing in a mental asylum. Bulgakov’s Manichaean acid trip avant la lettre, The Master and
Something strange, very strange is going on. Take two sparky young, very young men, watch them launch their media careers a couple of years ago by creating zany videos and putting them up on YouTube. Witness the impish, imaginative duo going viral, followed by millions across the globe. Note that what they’re famous for are
I don’t know whose idea it was to put New Year at the beginning of January, but it seems like an odd one. Why not begin each new year on, let’s say, the first of April or May? It might bring at least a dash of new dawn-ishness — a flicker of sunlight, scampering clouds,
The question of who is going to buy EMI Classics took up most of 2012 and seems destined to run well into the new year. Given that the catalogue in question is probably the most extensive ever put together, containing priceless recordings from the earliest days of so many great artists that it would be
You know how television is becoming like the movies, more expansive and more expensive? Well, what if the movies were to meet television halfway, becoming smaller and more routine? The result, I’m sure, would be something like Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s first directorial effort since 1978’s Straight Time. If you ran past this film at speed,
I wasn’t the only one desperate that Viva Forever! would be a blast. There were hundreds of us eager to leap to our feet and holler through the Spice Girls’ greatest hits as a band of teenage lookalikes led the tribute on stage. Didn’t happen, I’m afraid. The Spice Girls are not in this show.
