About ten minutes ago I was walking past the Houses of Parliament. As I reached one of the side-exits onto Parliament Square, a policewoman stopped me and a small group of tourists in order to allow a white van out. On the side of the van, which had obviously just delivered to Parliament, was this image:
It [...]
This year saw the passing of Britain’s last World War I veterans, Harry Patch (aged 111) and Henry Allingham (aged 113). They were rightly honoured – praised for the courage they showed in their youth, and for what they represented: hundred of thousands of their generation, slaughtered on muddy battlefields almost a hundred years ago. [...]
Imagine a Premier League of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Who do you reckon would top it? It’s a tough call. I think Holocaust deniers would lift the cup, with 9/11 truthers not far behind. But there’s a new lot on the rise, recently promoted from Division One: global warming sceptics. Fuelled by the hype surrounding Climategate, [...]
The two latest scandals to hit the NHS have inspired me to make a confession: I was once an IT Installations Technician at a major NHS hospital. Sounds grim, doesn’t it? You’re right, it was. For two months (as a fairly broke student) it was my job to hunt down grimy, half-broken PCs and replace [...]
Catholics tend to ignore comic news stories about the Vatican, but they are becoming worryingly prevalent – and most of them are entirely the Church’s fault. The latest one reveals that Monsignor Franco Perazzolo of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture has condemned The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the second part of a teen vampire romantic [...]
Here’s a story which didn’t last long on the front page of Guardian.co.uk: today’s Guardian/ICM poll shows that the Conservatives have a one per cent lead over Labour on the issue of lifting people out of poverty. It’s symbolic, reports Julian Glover: “Labour has lost its crown as the champion of the poor”.
This act of [...]
After watching a few England internationals at Twickenham, you can judge the mood of the crowd after about ten minutes of play. Sitting in the upper stands during yesterday’s match against Argentina, I quickly realised it was not one I would treasure – no thundering echoes of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” or Mexican waves, but [...]
John Humphrys will stand in tonight for David Dimbleby on Question Time, after the show’s host of 15 years was injured by his wife’s bullock. Here are the details from a BBC press release:
David Dimbleby will not be chairing Question Time this week – the first he has missed in over 15 years – but [...]
A brief note to add to yesterday’s post. Frank Field, the outspoken Labour backbencher, has recognised the significance of David Cameron’s Hugo Young lecture. It “isn’t simply a raid into Labour territory”, he writes for the Guardian. “The speech declares war on Labour’s reason for existence.”
It was a particularly contemptuous introduction, even for the BBC. “A Conservative Old Etonian exits his limousine to lecture on how to help the poor”, Mark Easton said with relish on last night’s News at Ten. Wrong about the limousine – it looked like a Rover to me – but right at least about the content [...]
