The cricket season has begun which is, as usual, a cause for celebration and an occasion to lament the guarantee that the first month of the new innings will be ruined by rain. Commercial considerations – that is, the need to stuff the calendar with as many limited overs fixtures as possible during the prime
My father is fond of telling a story that, though possibly apocryphal is, in the old newspaper terminology, too good to check. Apparently Georges Simenon was in Edinburgh and, as you would, asked what the gothic rocket on Princes Street was. On being told it was a monument to Sir Walter Scott the great detective
Here’s an interesting – and, for once, encouraging – development. Motherwell College (soon to be moving to a new campus on the site of the old Ravenscraig steel mill) is going to offer students the chance to study for the International Baccalaureate, rather than Scottish Highers. That’s a small, but significant victory for school choice,
The Daily Beast has a scoop that (if true!) is going to make life rather awkward for rather a lot of people: Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held
Imagine that, until now, the only books you’d been able to read were those that had been carefully selected by your parents and that, not surprisingly, these were books of a type that your parents approved of, written by authors who, for want of a better word, they considered sound. These books weren’t necessarily bad,
Commenting on this post about the Damian McBride Affair, Shippers makes an excellent point: things are just as bad, if not worse, on the other side of the Atlantic. Consider this example, culled from Politico’s daily Playbook: The WashPost’s First Dog exclusive – which the WP says the First Lady’s office offered in March to
If it weren’t such fun despising Derek Draper one might have to pity the poor man. James has already highlighted one part of his latest post, but here’s another noteworthy, if sadly delusional, passage: Maybe this affair will encourage the whole blogosphere, right and left, to commit to a new start, where offensiveness and personal
How can someone at the BBC write this without bursting into laughter? Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to ensure every young person has done 50 hours of voluntary work by the time they are 19-years-old. In fairness, the Press Association also doesn’t understand the meanings of compulsory and voluntary, nor the oddity of suggesting
The first thing to say about the downfall of Damian McBride is, of course, how entertaining it is. Gordon Brown’s machine has deserved this kind of comeuppance for years. These are, and always have been, thoroughly disreputable people and, while there are plenty of people in the Labour party who might be wondering today why
It’s actually quite hard to know where to begin when it comes to criticising Pete Wehner’s stunningly bone-headed, paranoid critique of President Obama’s alleged disdain for the United States of America. This part was especially illuminating, however: What leaves me with a queasy feeling, though, is the growing sense that Obama is willing to denigrate
My crack that same-sex marriage hadn’t caused the sky to fall in any of the places where it has been established prompted a socially-conservative friend to suggest this was a “lame” argument since “no historical event literally causes pure chaos”. He had a point. It was a cheap line. Nonetheless, homosexuals are going to have
Iain Martin suggests that amidst the justified hoopla over the death of Ian Tomlinson we shouldn’t forget the role the G20 protestors played too. They, he says, are “just as much to blame as the police”. And for the police it was a long and stressful day, mistakes happen you know, they’d been insulted and
TNR asks defence analysts Who Won and Who Lost in Bob Gates’s realignment of Pentagon spending priorities? One party that doesn’t get a mention is the Royal Navy, yet the curtailment of the F-22 fighter programme and the allocation of increased resources to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter must be considered good news for the
Quote of the day comes form Steve King, a Republican Congressman from the Great State of Iowa: If we don’t save marriage, we can’t remain pro-life. “Saving” marriage obviously means objecting to gay-marriage. But what does this have to do with abortion? Can someone please explain to me what on earth King means? Seriously, I
A splendid piece by Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner explaining why Philip Morris* is quite happy to hop into bed with anti-smoking campaigners and lobby for more federal regulation of tobacco. As Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., push bills this spring to heighten federal regulation of tobacco, expect
The appalling thing – apart from his death, of course – about the death of Ian Tomlinson after he was assaulted by the Metropolitan Police during the G20 protests last week is that if it weren’t for the fact that Tomlinson collapsed from a fatal heart attack moments after he was attacked by the police,
It was Brian Lenihan yesterday and in a fortnight it will be Alistair Darling’s turn to announce the bad news when he delivers his emergency-in-all-but name budget. Or bloodget. Lenihan, the Irish finance minister, did his best to spread the pain around, announcing tax increases and cutting spending while leaving many of the most difficult
Or how social networking can, at least in this instance, solve crime more quickly than the police. So, drunk guy steals woman’s bag and wallet froma Philadelphia bar (the bag has a chihuahua in it too); woman gets his name from the barman, uses Facebook and Google to a) identify him and b) find his
This week the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld same-sex marriage and the Vermont legislature has overturned a gubernatorial veto and recognised gay marriage. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia’s city council voted unanimously to reognise gay marriages in DC, regardless of the state in which the ceremony took place. Commenting on this Rod Dreher writes: Gay
Tim Montgomerie suggests David Cameron needs to do a little more to produce a proper, comprehensive policy on MPs expenses. That’s probably true. As we all know, any talk of reform at Westminster unnerves parliamentarians from all parties since, as we all know, no-one has clean hands in this affair. They’ve all been fiddling the