No blogging today: I’m off to try the delights of a London Hogmanay. Yes, really. Frankly, the longer one has endured what passes for life on this so-called good earth the more one wearies of the boozed-up, back-slapping amateurs who infest hostelries tonight insisting that all’s for the best in this the best of all
What is the point of airport security? It’s most important job, it seems to me, is not to deter or even prevent terrorism but to remind the public that there is a terrorist threat. If this was true before the Knicker-Bomber it’s even more clearly the case now. That’s not just because Mr Abdulmutallab was
Graeme Swann and Ian Bell combine to dismiss Ashwell Prince for 16 runs: Swann would finish with nine wickets in the match. Photo: Paul Gilham/Getty Images. With his long-sleeved shirt and buttoned-collar there’s something appeallingly old-fashioned about Graeme Swann. True, the sunglasses he often favours add a modern touch but, at bottom, Swann’s the kind
So, dear and gentle reader*, here’s wishing you a splendid and very merry Christmas. Thanks for being here this year and for all your comments and contributions to this blog. It’s not the same without you. Anyway, here are Shane and Kirsty performing one of the few Christmas songs worth a damn. *Not actually
It’s that time of year. There’ll be only a little blogging here until Christmas is done for one more time. So here, as the season demands, is a wee quiz to keep you occupied. You could, I suppose, google some of the answers but where’s the fun or satisfaction in that? So don’t google. No
Just realised that today is the twentieth anniversary of Samuel Beckett’s death. Only twenty years! Seems like it should be longer, somehow, since the finest cricketer to have won the Nobel prize for literature finally gave in to the temptation of not going on. Then again, most of the old boy’s best work did belong
George Monbiot isn’t everyone’s cup of char, not least in these parts. I don’t write much about climate change because the subject* bores me and so I’m happy for Monbiot to promise that the end of the world is just around the corner and I don’t spend too much time worrying about it. I suspect,
I don’t pay enough attention to the Liberal Democrats to be certain about this but today may have been Nick Clegg’s best day as leader. The announcement that there will be not one but, god help us, three debates between Gordon Brown and David Cameron and that Clegg has been invited to participate as an
So health care has its 60 votes and, since there are, depending upon how one classifies Joe Lieberman, 60 Democrats in the United States Senate all those votes are Democratic votes. No Republican crossed the aisle. At this point you might be forgiven that this is how politics is supposed to work: the side with
Well, Sunday afternoon high-class, great-pickin’ gospel really. Alison Krauss has always cited Tony Rice as one of the biggest influences upon her career and here he is, accompanied by the great Ricky Skaggs, performing what is, in my view, a beautiful version of the classic The Soul of Man Never Dies:
James Cameron’s mega-blockbuster Avatar seems destined to win the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director (as well as the technical awards). Peter Suderman explains why: So despite its genuinely impressive technical innovations, Avatar isn’t much a movie: Instead, Cameron’s cooked up a derivative, overlong pastiche of anti-corporate clichés and quasi-mystical eco-nonsense. It’s not that the film’s politics make
Remember the Paul Clarke affair*? He’s the chap who found a shotgun in his garden, took it to the local police station, was arrested for possession of a firearm, tried, convicted and, possibly, faced as many as five years in prison? Well he was sentenced today. Holly Thompson has the story: A former soldier who
This is what the internets were invented for: Uncle Monty as Darth Vader. Superb. [Thanks:MTMG]
I’m glad Pete mentioned Sion Simon’s expenses embarrassment, not least because it allows one to return to one of the funniest, strangest pieces of punditry one has seen in years. Sadly I was in Washington and missed it at the time, so thanks too to Guido for drawing it to my attention. The scene is
On the one hand you have Jacques Kallis, on the other Chris Gayle. Together they remind one that there are many ways to play the game. And, also, that individual brilliance may manifest itself in ways that do not always help the team as much as quieter, more sustained application might. That may seem a
Julian Sanchez has some fun with the GOP’s Quest for Victimhood: Conservatism is a political philosophy; the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag. Sure, there’s an element of “schadenfreude” in the sense of “we like what annoys our enemies.” But the pathology of the current conservative movement
Having endured a miserable time of it last time he was in England, there was a typically Kallisian probability that the bugger would grind his way to a century today. And so he did. It had everything you’d expect from a Kallis innings – which is both a compliment and thin praise indeed. Naturally the
Whither health care reform and, thus, whither Barack Obama? First things first: it’s not dead yet. I make no judgement on whether it should be killed or not even though, like others, all my prejudices instincts tell me it is indeed a monstrous frankensausage. But I do suspect that the sudden re-emergence of the liberal-left
CHESTER, ENGLAND – DECEMBER 03: A soldier of 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh waits for a Chinook to land during an exercise before deployment to Afghanistan. Members of 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh, who are based in Chester, are to be deployed following Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s announcement on Monday of an extra 500 troops
Jane Austen has become the most revered and probably the most popular of the great English novelists. Not even the vulgarisation of her novels by those who have adapted them for television has impaired the esteem in which she is held. She is not only deemed amusing, which she is, but a wonderfully fair and