London tubeworkers are threatening to go on strike tomorrow evening.

Below the fold you’ll see the full text of a series of telegrams sent by Craig Murray, the then British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, to the Foreign Office. Briefly, the situation Murray describes is as follows. Karimov’s Uzbekistan, a vile authoritarian regime, routinely uses torture on its own people. Torture during interrogations rarely produces usable information [...]

While other TV reviewers use the excuse of a forthcoming week or two off to round off the year with a review of all they’ve watched over the past 12 months, I prefer to just carry on as normal, if only because reviews of the year in any media provoke only slightly less dread in [...]

This rant is spat at you from the baleful keyboard of David Duff, who sits, or rather, slumps, in his armchair viewing the actions of his fellow man through a beady, and occasionally, it must be admitted, blood-shot eye. Those possessed of a strong stomach may inspect, at a safe distance, his other putrid [...]

“It seemed a good idea at the time” has been an excuse for many people, and television is no exception. FromThe Borgias to Celebrity Wrestling, producers and commissioning editors have used it to justify all sorts of atrocities committed against the tastes of the viewing public.

As promised, here’s a roundup of some of the blogs that have appeared in the last few months. And a fair crop it is too. The list represents all the blogs submitted and there is no political bias from me.
To be fair I’ve ranked them in alphabetical order and no qualititive judgements should be inferred [...]

This week’s ranter: Please be upstanding for the general pendantry of the The Pedant-General in Ordinary
I Blame the Parents
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”
So quoth your stern and hard-boiled Pedant-General in one of his very first posts.
There is nothing like a good dose of [...]

But do I detect a certain incoherence?
“We need to change the way we feel. No more grumbling about modern Britain, I love this country - as it is, not as it was - and I believe our best days lie ahead.”
On the other hand…
“I want to set free the voluntary sector and social enterprises to [...]

Muslims may not be on course for another set of gas chambers as some seem to think (see this entry at my own blog), but Islamophobia in Europe is taking on yet another of the characteristics of traditional European anti-Semitism: the conspiracy theory. We’ve all heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, [...]

‘Reality’ is everywhere on television these days, giving people the chance to sit at home and watch other people going about their lives and wonder whether a mirror might have been a cheaper way of getting the same thrills. But sometimes the lives of real people can make for good entertainment, though usually when there’s [...]

This week’s ranter: Neil Harding is the uncut, uncensored, unofficial voice of Brighton Regency Labour.
Editorial note, Thursday evening: Sadly it has been brought to our attention that this is - as well as being uncut, uncensored and unofficial - entirely unoriginal, as it was previously posted on Neil’s own blog two months ago. As such, [...]