She got his name right.
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17Jul04 — 1
An Unpaid For Plug
As The Fast Show would put it, The Economist is bloody brilliant! This week's edition, delivered promptly to my door this morning, contains a gripping investigation into the man who is pulling at De Beers's ever more gobsmacking grip on the diamond “market”, a fascinating survey of the rising costs of healthcare around the world, […]
Read More17Jul04 — 1
Separate Questions
There's a difference between approving fully of Sharon's policies in dealing with the threat of Palestinian terrorism—I don't—and acknowledging seriously that they are working—they are. This is a difference too subtle for Barbara Plett of the BBC. In saying this, I am assuming that her disapproval of Sharon's approach is the reason she chooses to […]
Read More15Jul04 — 4
Win A Spouse In PooterGeek's Exciting BBC Online Challenge!
About half of the visitors to this site hand over a significant wedge of money annually to pay for their access to the marvellous products of the BBC. I don't because I don't have a television. If I did, however, I'd like to know where to write to complain about, say, my getting poor value […]
Read More03Jul04 — 15
Decree Absolute
My dad introduced me to G. She came to Tamworth from Manchester. If you've grown up in the Midlands it's tempting, but wrong, to see southern types as inherently more sophisticated. She might have suffered from dyslexia, but she was so much cleverer and kinder than her snooty rivals that it was hard not to […]
Read More30Jun04 — 1
“Cynical”
People who love English because the language can be precise and powerful can't protect it from people who love English because they love the sound of their own voices speaking it. Words like “disingenuous”, “chaotic”, and “appalling”, for example, have distinct and useful meanings. To the journos and pub bores and politicians they have become […]
Read More29Jun04 — 0
Militant Accountants Against The Occupation
The Anonymous Economist sends me Paul Krugman's opinion piece in the New York Times today. Krugman meets expectations: he makes some valid points about American incompetence and corruption in Iraq's reconstruction; then he blows it with his conclusion: “Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for […]
Read More26Jun04 — 0
In Praise Of The Little Guy (And His Girlfriend)
This another oldie, but it's never too late to read a story about the Mail on Sunday being humiliated. Mil Millington wrote a Webpage and a newspaper column and a book and, soon, a film—sorry: “major motion picture”—called “Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About”. [Mil's homepages might be funny, but they're ugly and […]
Read More23Jun04 — 0
Whoda Thunkit?
Join me on the bleeding edge of radio broadcasting, where Tony Blackburn and Cliff Richard form a radical alliance against corporate music programming. No, I'm serious. The cheesy, 61-year-old Blackburn is a true rebel and has put his job on the line to prove it. I find myself in the disturbing position of supporting him […]
Read More21Jun04 — 0
Slip Of The Tongue
Many column inches have been devoted to the latent homosexuality of football, from communal baths to post-goalscoring kissing. I am skeptical. In England, the game is, like me, boringly straight. I am listening to Radio Five Live—or “Radio Bloke” as it is often mocked. One of the presenters of the England-Croatia match, Alan Green, has […]
Read More10Jun04 — 0
Losing Hearts And Minds
Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, makes some important points about the US Justice Department's torture memos, bits of paper which are, in a way, more shocking than photos of piles of naked Iraqi prisoners. It's not a bad piece until Cohen resorts to the cliché “winning hearts and minds”, then your toes will clench […]
Read More08Jun04 — 0
Quick Round-Up Of Oldies
Here's one for the pharmacologically minded readers (Anthony “Black Triangle” Cox and little Leasey) about “pharmazooticals“. Next, testimony for those who really want to hear it from the intern's mouth—remember this story? Thirdly, one of the most detested (by the Right) papers of the liberal Left takes some well-deserved shots at the huge target that […]
Read More08Jun04 — 1
Rave and Rant
Judith tried to post a comment nominating Victor Davis Hanson as a rival to Mark Steyn for the Best Columnist Working In The English Language award, but the currently flaky PooterGeek site rejected her submission, so I'm posting it here. She recommended this piece by VDH. Funnily enough, “Backword Dave“, who links to me occasionally […]
Read More01Jun04 — 1
Innocence
The biggest 'Blog in Britain is written by a prostitute. One of the biggest mainstream US news stories about 'Blogging broke when an intern sleeping with US government employees for money was outed by another 'Blogger. When it comes to Weblogs, the Anglo media have one thing on their minds and it isn't the potentially […]
Read More29May04 — 0
Flip-Flop
Earlier on I stated that Iyad Allawi was the “US choice” for Iraqi Prime Minister because that’s the impression I had been given by BBC Radio 4 yesterday evening. This morning, the BBC News site had the headline “US backs caretaker PM”, suggesting that the Americans had merely approved of the Iraqi Governing Council’s decision […]
Read More29May04 — 0
“Expert”
Yesterday evening I listened to Warwick University‘s Iraq “expert”, Toby Dodge, tell BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight that the Iraqi Governing Council’s choice for Prime Minister was “the worst one possible”. His argument seemed plausible and well-informed. Then I had a google into Dr Dodge’s past. Here he is arguing that only offering to […]
Read More27May04 — 0
Admitting Uncertainty
As well as being an interesting story about the ambiguity of PSA tests for prostate cancer, this is a solid, unhysterical piece of science reporting in a US newspaper, of the sort that appears in British papers during months with a letter “K” in their names. This week, The Guardian contained a pull-out supplement on […]
Read More14May04 — 0
Couldn’t Have Happened To A Nicer Guy
Poor Piers. Who would have thought that he would finally be sacked for printing lies?
Read More13May04 — 0
“…and the freedom”
Imagine this: you have skipped your morning exercise routine so you are not hot and sweaty as usual when you stagger into the bathroom; acutely low local water pressure means that your powershower can only produce icicles; and the T-shirt you know you are going to put on when you clamber out of the full-body […]
Read More08May04 — 1
Step Backwards
In the latest Spectator Rachel Johnson reflects on the remake of The Stepford Wives and the progress of women’s liberation since the original film was released. Even members of The Spectator‘s natural constituency on the Right have been mourning its decline lately, and, sure enough, the rest of the magazine contains a lot of rubbish. […]
Read More29Apr04 — 0
Auntie Drools Over Apple
When does journalism become boosting? When the BBC reports on Apple, says The Inquirer
Read More20Apr04 — 0
The Generation Game
Judith tips us off to the delights of Hezbollah TV, as reported in the New York Times [free registration blah-de-blah].
Read More18Apr04 — 0
News Readuh
[High Court Judge voice] I’ve just heard an excitable young lady deliver the 7:30 news on Radio 1, the BBC’s popular music channel.[/High Court Judge voice]. Yesterday’s assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was about the fifth item: “The leader of a militant Palestinian group has been shot and killed by the Israelis. It was part […]
Read More15Apr04 — 0
I Cracked
I was in Sainsbury’s and it beckoned to me with its front-page headline “Bush rips up the roadmap”, and its science pull-out Life, and its article about bioinformatics. Reader, I bought a copy of The Guardian. Anyway, inside was a report on an interesting new band BlöödHag. They describe themselves as “edu-core”. This genre involves […]
Read More12Apr04 — 1
The Real Thing
Popquiz! Which of the following is a real reality TV show? “Sing Out, Sisters“: A group of twenty white, middle-class American women from a Bach choir are taught to sing Gospel by members of a black Baptist group in Philadelphia. We watch four of the Bach-lovers being transformed over the run up to their appearance […]
Read More24Mar04 — 0
Shock Development
Common-sense article by anti-war writer printed in The Guardian! A sample: “Just for the record, the Bali bomb, which killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists, happened six months before the invasion of Iraq. The motive, as Clive James has said, had nothing to do with Iraq, much less Palestine. It was because the […]
Read More05Mar04 — 2
Metaphor Stew
Judith‘s sharp editrix eye was caught by a couple of mixed metaphors in the media this week. Rob Lowe, a star of NBC TV’s West Wing said of one of his fellow actors in the show, Allison Janney: “She just tees the ball up and hits it out of the park every single time.” . […]
Read More03Mar04 — 0
Call the Analogy Police!
Pamela Wade of the New Zealand Herald compares Peter Jackson’s winning 11 Oscars to her buying the perfect teapot. Perhaps there are special kinds of irony in New Zealand, rhetorical variants that could only have emerged and developed in such extreme isolation from major landmasses of culture—linguistic marsupials, if you will. Or perhaps she’s crap.
Read More29Feb04 — 0
You Don’t Say
The San Jose Mercury News reports from Ohio the shocking truth: “Poll: Democrats want someone who can beat Bush”
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