The Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes has the right attitude to today’s media-overload as at least 16 networks compete to see who can provide the most gruesome coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial today. Odds are that ABC will be the winners, if only because they have Martin Bashir on their books… We’re guessing Jackson
Via Tom Harris, I see that the new Speaker is contemplating “modernising” the House of Commons by dropping the convention that MPs refer to one another as the “Honourable Member” and “Right Honourable” and so on. If John Bercow thinks this will do anything to help the public understand the supposedly arcane and baffling Westminster
A characteristically interesting column from Rachel Sylvester in The Times today, in which she describes how the Tories are looking to how the Liberal Party in Canada managed to slash public spending a decade ago. As Sylvester describes it, our Canadian friends lopped 20% of their public spending bill and dismissed as many as a
A lovely, gentle, mildly nostalgic piece in the New York Times by Gay Talese, recounting his maiden trip aboard one of the tourist cruisers that sail around Manhattan. It’s as elegant and neat and finely-constructed as you might imagine: Atop a cliff on the Manhattan bank of the Harlem River stands the 185-foot Highbridge Water
James makes a droll case for Labour holding an open, national, primary to select the party’s next leader. As I say, it’s an entertaining notion, though it’s not clear that Tory or Lib Dem voters have any real right to choose Gordon Brown’s successor. Still, the idea of primaries seems to be on everyone’s mind
Never let it be said that Fred Barnes can’t take the long view. While he concurs, with regret, that Sarah Palin has dashed her chances of winning the Republican nomination in 2012, he still sees a path to the White House for Palin: But there is a way: win Alaska’s lone House seat in 2012
Until that extraordinary fifth set this afternoon’s contest between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick had only occasionally flirted with greatness. It was always tense and often gripping but that owed as much to the weight of the occasion and the serendipity of tennis’s scoring system as it did to the drama of the tennis
Perhaps it’s appropriate that Sarah Palin concluded her incoherent, rambling, puzzling resignation statement by quoting General Douglas MacArthur’s absurd line that “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.” After all, MacArthur was a a megalomaniac who believed black could be turned white merely by saying so. The General was a great showman,
I defy you to find a better story today. Sad, obviously for the tiny wrestlers and their fans, but pure, unadulterated, newspaper gold for everyone else. We need more details but, by the looks of it anyway, this has the potential to be the story of the year… Two professional midget wrestlers have been found
The Tour de France begins tomorrow and it will not surprise long-time readers that my main concern is that Lance Armstrong does not win it again. Like any sensible enthusiast I recognise Armstrong’s greatness even if, as detailed here and here, I think that the Case for Armstrong is frequently overstated. Fairly or not, I’ve
Home Secretary, is “identity theft” unknown in countries that already have identity cards? If it isn’t, then how will Britain’s ID cards solve that problem? (A problem that is, in any case, vastly smaller than you claim.) You now say that ID cards will be “voluntary”. Doesn’t that compromise their (putative) effectiveness? And if the
The Guardian is a great* newspaper but also an uncommonly infuriating rag. Take, for instance, this paragraph in what was an otherwise unobjectionable article about Elizabeth David: Now I should be quite clear from the outset that I’ve always been a little ambivalent about David. She famously moved food writing out of the dark didactic
The university debating circuit isn’t quite what it once was. Once upon a time it was, if not a closed shop, a cosy cartel organised by Scottish, Irish and English universities with the Australians and the occasional American or Canadian providing whatever passed for international glamour. Changed times and these days English-speakers can lose to
Perhaps because hypocrisy and mendacity are such open and prominent features of the British press, no-one is terribly surprised when newspapers live down to everyone’s expectations. Newspapers behaving badly is a dog bites man story. They do things differently in America where the Cult of Credentialism and an absurdly-inflated sense of their own importance has
From – where else? – the Guardian: No national administration would allow paedophiles a say in setting child welfare policies. So why should the views of Big Tobacco on issues of health be taken seriously? And no, I don’t think this analogy is too extreme. One wonders what David Cronin – the author of this
Thanks to David Maddox for this gem. During a debate on BBC Scotland last night, marking a decade of devolution, Iain Gray, leader of the Labour party at Holyrood, boasted of the parliament’s achievements: Has it [the Scottish Parliament] made a difference?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes it has. When the Parliament started one in five
Actually, this is rather a touching, sad story about the Amish and the impact first rising prosperity and then, of all things, a run on an Amish bank in Indiana. Nonetheless, it seems that the Amish are no more able to resist shiny baubles and status symbols than the rest of us. Plus, the idea
It’s Canada’s birthday today as well! I dare say that there must be unpleasant Canadians but every Canuck I’ve ever met has been lovely. Granted, most of them no longer live in Canda but that’s a mere detail… Canada is one of those countries we rarely hear much about, not merely because it’s over-shadowed by
This is a day for anniversaries: my 35th and the Scottish Parliament’s 10th. The latter is, I concede, the more significant milestone. Once upon a time George Robertson, then Shadow Scottish Secretary, declared that devolution would kill the demand for independence “stone dead”. His Labour colleague, Tam Dalyell, disagreed predicting that devolution would put us
David Brooks makes a number of excellent points in his latest column. No surprise there. There’s plenty to dislike, from a policy point of view, about the bills the Democratic Congress in Washington is passing. No surprise there. Then again, there was plenty to dislike about much of the legislation that came out of the