Yay! Another young, still-to-reach-their-prime performer! I like Laura Cantrell heaps. She has something. Here she is performing When the Roses Bloom Again. A nice, properly mournful song that is, in its title anyway, a spin-off of an old Carter Family tune that itself is reminiscent of some of the old Border ballads and, thus, a
Chris Dillow estimates that there are more heroin users in Glasgow North East than Tory voters*. For that matter, there are probably four heroin users in Springburn for every plucky citizen prepared to vote Liberal Democrat. I suspect Labour won’t want to use this factoid for fear it foster the impression that heroin use is
The result hasn’t been officially announced yet but it’s clear that Labour have won a handsome victory in the Glasgow North-East by-election. That’s no surprise. I don’t think the SNP ever really expected to prevail though, of course, they hoped they might be able to repeat the Miracle of Glasgow East. Still, they thought they’d
Kevin Pietersen is an idiot. One day that will become endearing and amusing and we’ll look upon his daftness with fondness and so on. But that moment hasn’t arrived yet. So, for the time being, we look at Pietersen and wonder what on earth is going on. No normal person would tell the Times that:
Sure Barack Obama won the Presidential election last year. But he wasn’t the only big winner. Nate Silver, the number-cruncher behind FiveThirtyEight.com was another victor, having predicted the result with uncanny accuracy. Silver is a sabermetrician, which is to say that he began his public life as an analyst for the brilliant Baseball Prospectus years
Everyone, and not without reason, holds the House of Commons in some degree of contempt. This has provoked any number of proposals for reforming the lower house. One simple, if admittedly difficult and controversial, measure, however would be to grant the House of Lords more power, relative to the Commons, than it currently enjoys. It
Oh, this is splendid. Lord knows when it will be released in Britain, but a trip to Paris in the New Year to see this biopic of the great Serge Gainsbourg might be just the ticket. Here’s the trailer: And, for your additional delectation, here’s Serge performing La Chanson de Prévert:
Apart from Barack Obama, that is. One way of measuring influence, in Washington, Whitehall or elsewhere, is to ask: how much damage would this person’s resignation do? By that standard, there are only two really, truly important people in the Obama administration: Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates. And only one of them has the power
But only on the absurd row over his letters to the mothers and wives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Heck of a job, Sun. A Politics Home poll reports: And: And: In a way these results are quite comforting. Voters are rather more sophisticated and decent than the papers they read. Thank Christ for that.
Brother Blackburn’s suggestion that David Miliband risks, perhaps, being something of a Labour version of William Hague should he succeed Gordon Brown. And Danny Finkelstein’s column arguing that Miliband should change his mind and put himself forward for the post of EU High Representative is, in many, many ways, compellingly persuasive. But if Miliband were
Well, he’s the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs who is, according to Melanie Phillips, a “fifth columnist” who is “in hock to the Iranian regime”. Melanie suggests that Limbert’s appointment means Tehran “now has its own man running the United States’s policy towards Iran” and
I had a pretty keen dislike of Gordon Brown long before it was popular or profitable to hold the Prime Minister in low regard, but it’s now obvious that the time for anger or disappointment or fury has passed. The only humane response to the Prime Minister’s predicament is pity. The grotesque, trumped-up, “row” over
Good grief: All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting. Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information,
Happily my Outrage Outage didn’t last long. Thanks, Robert Kaplan! Your Atlantic column on the fall of the Berlin Wall proved a most adequate tonic. You conclude your piece: What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only
Apologies for the light blogging. I’ve failed to be outraged by anything today. Lamentably, this even includes not being outraged by the outrage over whatever it is that’s the outrage of the day. Will try and do better tomorrow.
So the House of Representatives has, albeit narrowly, passed health care reform. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the bill that is an achievement for Pelosi and Obama in and of itself. Lord knows what kind of bill will emerge from the Senate and conference but that’s a matter for another day. Will it
Janet Daley describes herself as a euro-sceptic of “apocalyptic dimensions”. The evidence presented by her column today suggests this may be an understatement. Alas, this kind of euro-scepticism seems to drive its followers mad. This is the only sensible conclusion that may be drawn from Daley’s final paragraph in which she writes: On Europe, our
The war memorial in my hometown, a place of no more than 6,000 people today, lists the names of no fewer than 292 men from Selkirk killed in the Great War. As we remember them, and the hundreds of thousands and millions of others today, it’s also worth noting that it is a mark of
Charles Krauthammer isn’t as reliably and consistently wrong as Bill Kristol, but he’s also determined to see the sun shining for Republicans. Thus: The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African-American
Not welcome in Montana. For shame. A sad story of our times: residents of Belgrade, Montana petitioned the town council for permission to keep chickens in their yards. No-one objected to this. Except, of course, the councillors. Why? Because they could. Apparently the chickens might escape and that could be a problem for the police.