Via Daniel Knowles on Twitter, where he is @dlknowles, I read this marvellous old letter to the (then) Manchester Guardian from one of its totalitarian about-to-be-ex- readers: Original here.
Read More28Sep12 — 0
Newspapers
27Apr10 — 5
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 More24Apr10 — 2
Identity Crisis
This week, a friend of mine who still reads The Guardian [online—does anyone not looking for a public sector job still pay for the print edition?] drew my attention to a piece there about how success by the Liberal Democrats at the upcoming General Election could “push out black and Asian MPs”. That is, because the […]
Read More06Oct09 — 0
Evans, Dear Boy, Evans
Via Paulie’s “Shared Items” feed at Never Trust a Hippy, I read on the Democratic Society Blog one of the best “Did Magna Carta die in vain?” comments ever [see foot of the post I link to] and, on Tory Troll, an account of yet another FAIL by frontline interviewers. Here’s a tip for the […]
Read More16Jun09 — 2
The Spirit Of Lord Rothermere Lives On
Every single “serious” newspaper in the UK led with Iran this morning. But The Daily Mail devoted its entire front page to an attack on Gordon Brown and the Iraq Inquiry, and The Express (alongside a photograph of a Euro Lotto winner cradling a giant cabbage) to asylum seekers, the largest group of whom before the war came […]
Read More02Apr09 — 0
Position Statement
Tom Freeman doesn’t see the sense in The Times capitalizing the words “Left”, “Right”, and “Centre” when its writers use them to describe political leanings. I think the newspaper is right to do so. Language is a communication channel, and shouldn’t be a fashion accessory or status symbol; however, in this country, more than many […]
Read More23Mar09 — 2
Atheist Taliban Exposed By Daily Mail
The headline above is a lie, as is almost everything in an article in The Daily Mail, fisked here by the British Humanist Association. [via wongaBlog]
Read More11Mar09 — 2
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 More25Feb09 — 1
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 More02Dec08 — 0
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 More30Oct08 — 1
That BBC Statement
Click here to hear the official BBC statement. [MP3 0.6Mb]
Read More30Oct08 — 1
The Ultimate “Comment Is Free” Comment?
I don’t read or link to “Comment Is Free”, The Guardian‘s cesspit of a group blog. Sadie saves you, me, and everybody from ever having to do so again by republishing a comment from the site that captures the spirit of the place. Under an article about rape, a reader writes: “rape is never a […]
Read More25Sep08 — 2
Palin Derangement Syndrome—PalinDrome?
You could argue that Mick Hartley won this game when he collected Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. from The Huffington Post, but I think quoting Naomi Wolf is cheating. Here’s a good one from yesterday’s International Herald Tribune. Roger Cohen writes: From an inspirational notion, however […]
Read More26Jul08 — 2
Eternal Prurience Is The Price Of Liberty
Woman E, demonstrating again the superiority of film over digital portraiture From the BBC News Website: World motorsport boss Max Mosley has won a legal action against a Sunday newspaper over claims an orgy he took part in had Nazi overtones. The High Court ruled the News of the World did breach Mr Mosley’s privacy, […]
Read More25Feb08 — 2
Columnist Sneers At Drunken Fool And Demonstrates His Own Ignorance
It’s been global find-and-replace time again at the nationals over the past couple of days as the columnists check the “Fallen_Hero.dot” Word template out of the their publications’ databases in response to the detention of former football star Paul Gascoigne under the Mental Health Act. They haven’t had to do that since “Bestie” died. The […]
Read More16Feb08 — 3
Guests? But I Haven’t Hoovered For Days!
A couple of my friends txted me this morning to let me know that PooterGeek is in The Guardian‘s Guide today. Unfortunately, as has been the case for most of the past week, I’m too busy to write anything new and the best-of section is over a year out of date. Come back next week, […]
Read More02Feb08 — 10
Dopey
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post in which I pointed out that statistics disprove the media myth of an excess of unmarried thirtysomething females, complained about the parallel emotional indoctrination of women by commercial interests, warned of the uselessness of online dating services, and described a good evening out I’d had instead […]
Read More15Jan08 — 1
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
11Sep07 — 0
Lesson One
When I tore open the plastic envelope containing my latest copy of The Economist there was a flyer inside advertising Felix Dennis‘s How To Get Rich: The Distilled Wisdom Of One Of Britain’s Wealthiest Self-Made Entrepreneurs. If you phone the number printed on it then he’ll send you a copy of the new paperback edition […]
Read More09Jul07 — 2
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 More09Jul07 — 9
Jib Jab
I left The Observer on the shelf at the supermarket yesterday because it had another load of bollocks about MMR and autism on the front cover. Around the blogosphere, people who A) know some science and/or B) can be arsed to use Google show the newspaper’s science editor how to do his job: lizardoid Eustonian […]
Read More07Jul07 — 0
Brrringing People Back Down To Earth
I took my time noticing it, but in this blog post Tim Almond fisked a particularly stupid article about the iPhone and gave a more accurate assessment of the significance of the device. And this was a good spot too.
Read More22Jun07 — 4
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 More04Jun07 — 0
Netherlands
To my immense amusement, I am quoted in a national Dutch free daily newspaper today, saying (of the Euston Manifesto): “We had no idea it would get so big”.
Read More27May07 — 2
Today In Your Super Soaraway Sunday Madeleine
BUY OUR MADDY MEMORIAL NECKLACE, FEATURING A VIAL OF MADELEINE’S MOTHER’S TEARS EXCLUSIVE: SEE THE WALLET PHOTOGRAPH THAT INSPIRED THE ABDUCTION PIRATES‘ KEIRA TELLS OF HOW AGONIZING HER AGONY WOULD BE IF SHE HAD CHILDREN AND HAD ONE TAKEN AWAY FROM HER RING THIS NUMBER TO DISTRACT THE INVESTIGATION DAGO COPS “INCOMPETENT AND XENOPHOBIC” SAYS […]
Read More19May07 — 10
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 More14May07 — 1
Rent Boys
A. N. Wilson has been writting cobblers for years. What disturbs me now is that The New York Times seems to be willing to pay him to write cobblers in its pages. Over at Tom Hamilton’s place there’s some more nonsense from Wilson. While you’re at Davos Newbies, I also recommend that you read the […]
Read More02May07 — 5
Stars In Your Eyes
If, like me, you are a Pisces, you’ll be concerned by the news in the astrology column of this week’s Brighton & Hove Leader that “Mars is tense close to Uranus”.
Read More29Apr07 — 3
Blog Bait
Please tell me this article is a parody, aimed at luring bloggers into making mocking fools of themselves. The suspiciously named “Sebastian Cresswell-Turner” complains at length that his middle-class peers aren’t as rich as members of their parents’ generation and have to do shocking things like live in Battersea or send their children to state schools. […]
Read More11Apr07 — 5
This Space Intentionally Blank
I read a report in the Telegraph that provoked me to write something that was, by my standards, a steaming rant. Then I decided to check the details with the BBC Website’s version of events. This gave the story a completely different tilt so I spiked my blog post. I’m too busy to write a […]
Read More
Recent Comments