Newspapers

Yup. This is a news website article about a scientific paper  In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding? In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”. If the research is about a potential cure, or a

This so-called story is fast becoming an ideal case study for any student of politcs and the British press. Neither party comes out of it looking especially good. I’m sure James is correct: the press wins (or loses, if that’s how you view it) either way. If Hague ignores the innuendo then it’s fodder for bloggers and diarists (and eventually columnists) and if he addresses the matter then that means that it’s “officially” a story fit for public discussion. Heads gossip wins, tails Hague loses. If the rumours about Hague’s relationship with his young and now-former SpAd were true then, yes indeed, you’d have a scandal that would cost the

From today’s Telegraph letters page: Comparatively ungallant nickname for a military hero SIR – Those with experience of the old Stock Exchange floor will readily recall some of the nicknames (Letters, August 22) bestowed upon its habitués. Among them were two brothers, both with highly distinguished military careers and both winners of the Military Cross, one with bar and one without. The latter acquired the sobriquet of “The Coward”. Quentin Smith, Dunley, Hampshire [Many thanks to AH for the tip.]

Meanwhile, in other Glasgow news the city’s evening paper makes its readers an offer they can’t refuse. I believe this exhausts my annual quota of posts making gentle fun of Glaswegians. [Hat-tip: Kevin Schofield]

But not because of the argument Iain Dale makes here: Just a thought on the graduate tax. We already have a graduate tax. It’s called income tax at 40 per cent. This is an off-hand comment, sure, but it would also be a better argument if it were true. There are about 31.7 million taxpayers in Britain; only 3.8 million of them pay any tax at 40%. I’m all for widening tax bands to take some people out of higher tax rates but there are millions of graduates who don’t earn enough to pay higher rates of tax. Nevertheless, the belief that everyone pays tax at 40% is a constant

Obviously it’s from Western Nevada County, California: SWAT Team Requested for Violent Midgets Details, alas, remain sketchy but here’s what we have so far: At 12:32 p.m., a caller from West McKnight Way reported steroid-using body-builders from Reno had beaten up the caller’s son and might have killed him. Midgets from Fulton Avenue had been following and trying to poison the caller. The body-builder and the lead female midget, who the caller reported as being “really violent,” allegedly had been driving the caller’s truck. The caller wanted the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office to activate the SWAT team. God bless America. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]

I am a great admirer of John Rentoul’s series of Questions to Which the Answer is No and recommend it to you without hesitation. Until today, however, I had not known of the inspiration for this splendid feature. Discovering that it all began with the Daily Mail is no great surprise and could anything really be more perfect than the question* that Rentoul picked to begin this valuable series: There is, I submit, something almost heroic about this and the minds capable of producing such dizzying leaps of logic. It is magnificent. *As is often the case, the online version isn’t quite as good.

 Hats off to the New York Post: And we’ll have no more jokes about Scottish goalkeepers, ok? [Thanks to RF for the tip.]

I suppose that relatively few people in England knew Alan Ruddock, who died from a heart attack on Sunday aged just 49, but in Scottish and Irish journalistic circles he was a considerable figure. As Kevin Myers reminds us, he defied the IRA as editor of the Sunday Times’s Irish edition. Later, as Stewart Kirkpatrick remembers, he was a very fine editor of the Scotsman, presiding over the paper and its coverage of the first elections to the new Scottish parliament in 1999. Later still, and foolishly, the Irish Times declined to give Alan the chance to edit the old lady of d’Olier St. Their loss. Instead he wrote a