Can this really be happening? Everyone aged between 40 and 74 will be called in to their GP for a ‘fat test’ and prescribed weight management and exercise if they are found to be overweight, under a new Government drive on obesity. Why, god help us, yes it can. And is. How, er, fatuous. The
Courtesy of the Scotsman: Boycott rigged poll, says Al-Qaeda chief This would surely come as no surprise to many of the great man’s former team-mates, but still, what can this mean? Has Sir Geoffrey been stuffing ballot boxes in some Greatest Yorkshireman contest or something? And why should Al-Qaeda care about that? Has Boycott offended
By which I mean, now that Opening Day is finally here, is he good for the New York Yankees? The evidence suggests he might be. True, Megan McArdle – herself a Yankee in fine standing – warns one to be sceptical about the apparent ease with which a causal relationship may be deduced from a
Like George W Bush, Barack Obama is in favour of Turkish accession to the EU. That’s grand, though those American progressives who would like to see europe do more, not less and project a more, not less unified approach to all manner of international issues – be they fiscal or military – should remember that
In the midst of an otherwise risible* column on how if it weren’t for the BBC license fee all British TV would be as trashy as some of Fox’s output, Marina Hyde asks: Have any of these people seen the likes of Moment of Truth, one wondered idly, in which our hero Mike Darnell hooked
At the end of the Peter Oborne column James linked to yesterday, Peter writes: I believe that one genuine hero has emerged from the collapse of the British banking system. He is John Varley, the Barclays chief executive who this week proudly announced that his bank would not be taking government money to stay afloat.
The super-talented Lisa Hannigan and her band gather in Dick Mac’s pub in Dingle, Co Kerry for a charming wee session that is just the ticket for a lovely spring weekend…
Such is the disrepute into which Scotland’s once all-conquering bankers have fallen that the favoured put down at Edinburgh dinner parties these days is “My husband pays your husband’s salary”. A period of silence on the part of these erstwhile Masters of the Universe would be most welcome. This injunction, it seems, also applies to
Photo: ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/Getty Images Say what one will about Gordon Brown, at least the United Kingdom wasn’t represented by this clown*. *That would be Silvio Berlusconi, silly.
Jaysus lads, Henry Farrell is correct to observe that this New York Times piece seems to have been inspired by Myles na Gopaleen’s great Catechism of Cliche. It’s all there: “land of saints and scholars”, a “wellspring of poets and balladeers” replete with “ruddy-faced fishermen” and all the rest of it as the writer, an
Comes, via a Facebook note, from Crooked Timber’s Kieran Healy: Another breach of etiquette. A moment’s thought would tell you that the Queen can only own a wePod.
Ross Douthat suggests that rather than look to US-Soviet relations, it might be more useful to recall how the world was terrified by the prospect of a nuclear China in the 1960s. There’s something to that and, equally, as Ross says the fact that deterrance worked with the USSR and China does not mean that
Jack Shafer – entertaining as ever – mounts a spirited defence of yellow journalism: “Being rambunctious to the extreme, yellow journalism is misunderstood. At its best, yellow journalism was terrific, and at its worst, it really wasn’t all that bad.” Quite so. Newspapers are an entertainment just as much as they’re a source of, like,
So, Scotland host Iceland tonight in the latest “crucial” World Cup qualifier. The loser will have almost no chance of making it to South Africa so tonight’s tussle is effectively an elimination contest. Just as importantly, the losers will assume the official, undisputed title of Worlds’ Worst Bankers. The Scotsman’s David Maddox runs through the
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has a very interesting interview with Benjamin Netanyahu which includes this passage: Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness.
Andrew Stuttaford, exiled in New York, thinks the creation – and about time too – of the kebab-flavoured* Pot Noodle demonstrates that there’s hope yet for the Old Country. He has a point. The Kebab Pot Noodle will be a particular boon to rural dwellers. City folk, however, should remember that this new product cannot
Over at the Motherblog, Peter writes that Gordon Brown is being damaged by, inter alia, the continuing brouhaha over Jacqui Smith and her expense claims. A revealing PoliticsHome poll, released this afternoon, finds that a majority of voters (56 percent) think she should step down as Home Secretary – with only 36 percent thinking she
Elliot Abrams, veteran warmonger and neoconservative, reminds us that while there are always those who find themselves fighting the last war there are also those who forget that the last war even happened. Concerned about bombing Iran? You shouldn’t be. Why? Well, the Iranians will, probably, like it. Or, as he puts it: We are
Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images There are those who say that John Murtha’s mastery of the federal budget process has made the slab-faced Pennsylvania Democrat the posterboy for the need to overhaul the earmark process that delivers federal money to Congressional districts across the country and goes some way towards ensuring that, absent the proverbial presence
How to commit what would seem to be close to a “perfect” crime? Step a) Make Sure you’re in Germany. Step b) Make sure you have an identical twin. From Spiegel Online: German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may have perpetrated a recent multimillion euro jewelry