I’m not sure, but I think that my grandad worked in the original Leyland Truck factory in the town of Leyland, Lancashire. [My dad will correct me soon if I’ve got that wrong.] Today, Tim Worstall links to a study of the long slow decline of the endlessly government-subsidised Rover/British Leyland/BMC vehicle manufacturing group. The […]
Read MoreThe Economist‘s bold, white-on-red poster campaign has run for years. It started, if I remember rightly, by playing on readers’ insecurity—its message was that digesting The Economist was the best way to avoid dinner party embarrassment—a subscription would ensure that you were always informed of Important Matters. Currently their approach must be based on flattery. […]
Read MoreI am just back from Auriol‘s wonderful wedding in Wales and have a stinking cold so there probably won’t be anything new to read at PooterGeek until this evening at least. If any of the people involved in the celebrations or in getting me home afterwards are reading this, thank you!
Read MoreMs Taylor obviously has a sense of humour. She might have been rude to ‘Bloggers en masse 😉 , but she was very polite to this one in particular. She would like to point out that she is neither middle-aged, nor confused by her iPod. Thank you again for your nice email about my post […]
Read More[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 MoreDarth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith now has his own ‘Blog, “The Darth Side: Memoirs Of A Monster“. The tone of the thing is perfect, a whole new galaxy of bathos: 15Apr05 “It is not the sort of thing people think about, but I do not get many opportunities to see any living world […]
Read MoreMichael Howard 18Jul04: “If I knew then what I know now, that would have caused a difficulty…I couldn’t have voted for that resolution…If you look at the terms of the actual motion put to the House of Commons on March 18 (2003), it placed very heavy emphasis on the presence of weapons of mass destruction […]
Read MoreTwistblog makes an interesting observation about the location of Kilroy’s secret headquarters.
Read MoreStumbling and Mumbling makes the ‘Roll. There’ve been some excellent posts there lately. I liked this, this, this and this. I believe in free trade as much the next bug-eyed ‘Blogging loon; I just think that globalization’s boosters aren’t honest about its inevitable downside or the requirement that, for the full benefits to be spread […]
Read MoreIt’s my mum’s birthday in a few weeks and I am thinking of buying her (and my dad) a handheld DVD player. She won’t watch films on it, but it will be perfect for her and dad to browse through (CDs of) family photos I make for them without their having to heft albums about […]
Read MoreEven Tony Blair’s biggest enemies have got to admire his willingness to sit in a studio full of publicity-hungry voters and patiently engage with their rants. My head would explode with frustration after five minutes of listening to inarticulate, ignorant, and illogical challenges, but he keeps on doing it. The bigger a fight he has […]
Read MoreI am carrying a red clipboard and wearing a Labour Party sticker on my raincoat (John Rocha, dahling). The four of us have each been canvassing in a ward which will remain anonymous for the rest of this post. We flit from door to door. We pass each other in the cluster of streets that […]
Read MoreKeen Spanish speaker Brian emailed with a pretty direct translation of the dustbin message: “Bastard rubbish collector, put the rubbish into the (f*****g) lorry and work like some kind of whore’s life” …or similar. It could be Portuguese though. I don’t recognise a couple of the words. I’ll get working on it! He did (though […]
Read MoreMy current guilty pleasure is ToryScum.com. Highlights of the site include their “Sleazy Lover” match-the-Tory-to-the-scandal competition—answers: Cecil Parkinson—Abandoning an illegitimate child John Major—Adultery Harvey Proctor—Spanking rent boys Ian Harvey—Cavorting with a guardsman Stephen Milligan—Autoerotic asphyxiation —and their marvellous collection of Conservative poster “subvertisements”.
Read MoreI met snappy Hak yesterday in London. She was only really snappy when, for example, a mad Islingtonian bint all but knocked her down, dashing across Upper Street to hail a taxi; otherwise she was a charmer. We had a nice lunch; discussed politics, psychiatry, and property; and fondled the shiny things in the Tottenham […]
Read MoreI’m adding three more sites to the ‘Blogroll today. First is Bloggers4Labour. This is late, I know, but I’d assumed that I had already installed it. B4L led me to two entertaining sources of nitpickery: Twistblog, which I am going to forgive for being run by the person responsible for Cute Cat Of The Day, […]
Read MoreFrank Sinatra is in my big book of overrated singers alongside Bob Dylan and Elvis. So it’s all the more surprising that I am about to rave about someone who started his performing career impersonating Presley and Sinatra. On the evidence of his latest album, It’s Time, Michael Bublé is going to be huge. More […]
Read MoreOliver Kamm quotes an admirably restrained letter to The Independent by William Shawcross. Earlier this week I read the original article that prompted the letter and expressed my disgust with it so noisily that I was forced to explain myself to one of the Campus librarians. Unlike the Bodleian, the Sanger library doesn’t require you […]
Read MoreSadly, an Onion article entitled “Fifth Grade Paper Doesn’t Stand Up To Peer Review” reminds me of my actual working life: DECATUR, IL—A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski’s fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his 327-word essay “Otters” did not meet the requirements for peer approval. Nogroski presented his […]
Read MoreHi, Olivia. It’s Damian here. Er, I was wondering if you might be free for lunch on Thursday. We could, um, discuss… “…Sex”? It’s always the same with you professional bachelors, isn’t it? “There’s no ‘I’ in “commitment”—that’s your motto. You think you can breeze in with a pack-of-three and breeze out with bloody fibres […]
Read MoreBlimey. I’ve been so quiet lately the readers have started to write the spoofs themselves.
Read MoreSince I wrote this post, mithering on about how unattractive I find Kylie Minogue, even when writhing around sweatily on an electric horse dressed in her skimpies, and how this saucy schtick of hers was going to become more embarrassing with her advancing years, there has been a couple of interesting developments. Firstly, one of […]
Read MoreI have to apologise to people expecting reports from the Labour canvassing frontline here. This evening I set off to join our candidate on the streets and got completely lost on the way to the rendezvous point. I promise to tell all when I finally get out there and meet the voters, the bastards. At […]
Read MoreWhodathunkit? As well as being “destructive” and “ecologically catastrophic”, biotechnology is “racist“. I suppose that makes me some kind of sell-out: “This June in Philadelphia, thousands of wealthy capitalists and biological profiteers representing the Biotechnology Industry Organization will convene in Philly to celebrate and promote their dangerous manipulation of life’s very building blocks for private […]
Read MoreIs it a conclave of cardinals or a cover-up of cardinals? Let’s ask Cormac.
Read MoreThe menswear floor of the Cambridge Grafton branch of Next: Leasey and I are practising low-stress tag team male/female shopping, a mode of consumption made possible by mobile phone technology. At last an end to blokes idling morosely in Monsoon while the women they are browsing with compare a succession of near identical burgundy velvet […]
Read MoreYeah, nothing much to read here at the moment, I know, but Rummaging is on a roll. Check out “Himmler Action Figure. Gay Interest?” and “The best staff profiles ever“—outstanding weirdness.
Read MoreA PooterGeeker wrote to ask how she could take part in the Genographic Project. The answer is here, though some of us “in the business” might get a little bit sniffy at the idea of a human sample group that is not only partly self-selecting, but includes people who’ve paid to be experimental subjects. Of […]
Read MorePerhaps you have heard those George Gershwin player piano recordings, rendered from rolls of his original performances. Much as I admire Gershwin, his showy, overworked playing hasn’t, to my ears, dated well, even when recreated live by modern human mimics who are a more sensitive to contemporary tastes. It’s like listening to a blousey old […]
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