Middle Aged Woman Confused By iPod

Oops, Odone Again

Most literate adults in the UK know that The Daily Telegraph wants the Conservative Party to win the upcoming General Election. Those who have been following the recent public unravelling of that newspaper’s opinionist Christina Odone—she is to the Telegraph what Madeleine Bunting is The Guardian—know that she particularly wants the LibDems to do badly […]

Read More

Unfortunate headlines of the day

The BBC News Website has changed its original headline: SARAH PALIN LASHES OBAMA AT FIRST TEA PARTY CONVENTION —bring your houseboy, and let’s party like it’s 1779!—to this one: SARAH PALIN CONDEMNS OBAMA AT FIRST TEA PARTY CONVENTION but, Liz Jones’s latest wibble—search for it if you like; I’m not going to link to it—retains […]

Read More

Noblesse blancmange

For some lucky and rich people who describe themselves as Left-wing, one of the worst things about free markets is that they have given the oiks the freedom to enjoy the pleasures that were previously restricted to their betters. A real “socialist” state would provide the lower orders with more suitable goods: perhaps they would […]

Read More

Not Dead

Thank you very much to the PooterGeeker who sent me a Minolta SLR camera, lenses and other exciting goodies. You are star. I feel guilty writing so little lately when my readers are so nice to me. The person who sent me that amazing gift is someone I have never met in my life, which […]

Read More

Clash Of The Titans

From a letter to the Halifax and Calderdale Evening Courier by Jason Smith, the Bradford Chairman of the UK Independence Party: GREEN’S ARREST SHOWS WE ARE BECOMING DICTATORSHIP As unaccustomed as I am to defending Tory MPs, I feel I must speak out about the arrest of Damian Green, who was apparently held for nine […]

Read More

Bitches From Hell

I’ve observed before that there are good reasons to criticise Cherie Blair, but it’s revealing that those aren’t the reasons why most people in the media criticise her. It’s worse than that: they hate her—and for the oldest human reason of all: she’s “not one of us”. Cherie Booth was a poor north-of-England Catholic girl […]

Read More

Ash-ian Babes

The Labour aristocracy does seem to be attracted to “sexually highly charged black women“. Not being one of Jackie Ashley’s admirers, I missed her toe-curling tribute to Diane Abbott in The Guardian—where else?—when it appeared last week, but I caught up with it via Peter Briffa: [Diane Abbott MP] was, and is, a cheerer-upper. She […]

Read More

Surely Another Joke?

I very, very rarely bother with “Comment Is Free” here. It’s one of the wrongest things about The Guardian these days. But I’ve just read an irresistible article. In it, the Assistant Editor (or perhaps “an assistant editor”—dontcha love these meedja job titles?) of the newspaper’s arts and entertainment blog—that’s its arts and entertainment blog—confesses […]

Read More

“Racism is still very, very vibrant”

Last week I mentioned celebrity “people of colour” talking “po-faced rubbish” about slavery. I don’t have the time to wade through it now, but please do skim the drivelling of “Ms Dynamite” on the subject over at the BBC News Website. I’m proud to say I didn’t pay the BBC to pay this woman to […]

Read More

For Grandma And Grandpa Geek

One of the places I went away to was my sister’s, where our parents had a dinner to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. I took this the next day after mum and dad had gone back home. In the front is Maisie, my niece; holding her is my sister Clare; the blur in the background […]

Read More

“It’s super-smart!”

iPHONE: Hi, Steve. Who do you want to talk to today? STEVE: I’ve told you before not to say that. iPHONE: Sorry. My little joke. Who should I ring? STEVE: I’d like to speak to my broker. iPHONE: Are you sure you want to do that? STEVE: Of course I’m sure. Don’t get sma… Just […]

Read More

Panic At The 80s Disco

According to ITVNews the somewhat erratic former superstar and object of Osama’s lust Whitney Houston “is convinced that the 21-year-old [X-Factor TV talent show winner Leona] will be an international superstar and has even offered to mentor her.” Sister, you need Whitney Houston as a mentor like you need Michael Jackson as a babysitter.

Read More

Yes, It’s Bloody Safe

It’s the sound of ball bearings grinding against fragments of broken glass on a wet pavement. It’s being wired straight into my jaw in full-frequency Dolby surround. Yes it hurts, but if I didn’t have a face full of lidocaine I’d be squealing like a pig in a combine harvester. There’s a man with his […]

Read More

Every Cloud

I was sitting in a waiting room yesterday. As always, I couldn’t resist reading one of the women’s reality rags—almost as appealing as discarded copies of the Daily Mail on a Tube train. Real magazine rewarded me for my defying public mockery with this lovely headline, neatly balancing the ghoulishness, shrill optimism, and bathos that […]

Read More

Great Moments In English Legal History

Apple Computer has won a major legal battle today when a High Court judge in London ruled that the company had not breached a trademark agreement made 15 years ago with the Beatles’ Apple Corps. … The 1991 Trade Mark Agreement gave Apple Corps – owned by Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows […]

Read More

Serious Breakfast Mistake

Above the usual manufactured outrage headline on the front page of the Daily Mail this morning I read the following smaller banner: He’s quizzed over £350 000 “bribe”. Their home is remortgaged three times in four years. Yet not once, says Tessa Jowell, did she ask her husband: “What the hell is going on, darling?” Crikey. […]

Read More

That Grammy Awards Dyed-Hair Rockers’ Medley In Full

THE EDGE: dicka-ticka-ticka-ticka [dicka-ticka-ticka-ticka] [[dicka-ticka-ticka-ticka]] [[[dicka-ticka-ticka-ticka… BONO: And the Devil touched the angel in the middle of the desert… BROOCE: Bwangggg! …in the shadow of the foundry, in the shadow of the flag… ELVIS COSTELLO: …and the angel was a s-s-s-squaddie and the Devil was Thatch… LORD MACCA OF LOCH KODAK: …and the little green […]

Read More

A Very Silly Woman Indeed

Also amusing in the Graun are the wonderfully unselfconscious words of Susan Rice, Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland. She’s so terribly, terribly important that she has to put in a 15-hour working day. “Home for me is Aberdeen, my head office is Edinburgh and I’m in London a couple of days a week because […]

Read More

Hideously White

I’ve just seen a disturbing thing over at Norm’s place. Alan Johnson, a prominent figure in Labour Friends of Iraq, has answered some bonkers fundamentalist’s denunciation of the electric guitar with a selection of guitar moments. There are about twenty-five more or less famous guitarists named in his post. Of those, the half-Irish, half-Brazilian Phil […]

Read More

Get With The Programme, Blogers!

[Guest post by Ros Taylor of The Guardian] So what has the British Blogoball to say about our revelations? Nothing much. Imagine how American blugs like Instapunto would have responded to the news that the fall of the Iraqi government in 2003 was the result, not of an Israeli black-ops mission as many have argued, […]

Read More