At the dispatch box Michael Howard rises and says to Tony Blair, “Would the Rt. Hon. gentleman agree that the latest MRSA figures are a disaster and a shocking indictment of his government’s failed NHS strategy?”. Blair gets up to respond, but instead turns round to his backbenchers and says “Did you hear that? He [...]

It’s madness. Madness I tell you!
Our absurdly unrepresentative government (elected by 22% of registered voters) led by the most distant and disconnected Prime Minister since the mad bloke who talked to trees (yes, I know he was a king not PM, but there’s every chance he thought he was prime minister from time to time [...]

Following up on my previous post about the internet and the future of television, there have been some interesting developments over the last couple of weeks, which may be the first birth pangs of a new direction in television distribution. Then again, it might just be the internet’s latest nine days wonder.

As a great fan of pornography, I believe that legalising the showing of erections and penetration in the UK was one of New Labour’s more creditable achievements. However, much of my favourite porn is still produced in the US, leaving me concerned on a personal as well as a political level about the US government’s new set of regulations on pornography. While the rules ostensibly serve admirable goals, they are sinister in intent and could prove disastrous in practice.

A much wiser, fatter, and more Italian man than me may once have said, “Respect the family.” Family is the most important thing in the world, but in today’s Britain (that sounds a bit Daily Mail…), we don’t respect that basic building block of society (and as a good Conservative, I have to now deny [...]

In a week when one country’s deeply flawed election process is attracting criticism from Washington, the appointment of another autocrat for Hong Kong has got barely a mention. When Xinhua murmurs approval at the ‘democratic process’, we should allow ourselves a little snigger and impolitely ignore them:

For my first sentence of my first post, I would first like to thank these kind gentlemen for letting a girl (as Blimpish put it, ‘a real, live one!’) into their midst. I’m frightfully flattered to have been asked up for coffee and I promise to put the loo seat back up before I leave.
With [...]

It is one of those undisputed tenets of faith of many right-wing commentators that Europe is a hot-bed of anti-Americanism. That Europeans instinctively reject anything that comes from the States simply because it has an American tag attached to it. The war in Iraq, Bush’s refusal to sign up to the Kyoto agreement, the [...]

Hello children. Are we sitting comfortably? I’m going to tell you a story. It’s the story of Princess Tony and the Ugly Face Man.

The UK government may soon face a terrible clash of Silly New Laws: not only has it vowed to protect witches from discrimination, it has also vowed to clamp down on witches. The Wiccans are apparently following in the footsteps of their historical predecessors in seeking to slaughter children, although gingerbread houses appear not to be involved this time round.

This post was inspired (if you will) by the post and comments thread started by Andrew on Once More the other day, on the limits of the law in regulating speech and thought. There’s a lot of interest in this right now because the Government is presently attempting to pass its Racial and Religious [...]

Like Blair and New Labour, the British press have drawn a line under Iraq and moved on. Just as many of us suspected, Blair’s piss-poor victory at the General Election was enough to sweep his mendacity under the carpet.
Sure, we still get coverage of the various bombings and carnage but the reasons for all the [...]

Some people may have noticed a delay between them posting their comments and the comments appearing on the site. This is because the WordPress system that we use has a comment spam filter and any comment with more than one link in it is held back until it is moderated (by me, as it turns [...]

So, the thinking runs, a mate of yours has fallen on hard times, but still wants to be a member of your local club. Only trouble is they can’t quite afford the membership fees, and as they don’t smoke they don’t have the benefit of the club’s free cigars. So you and the other members [...]