Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longueur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread […]

Of all George Orwell’s essays, the one to which political bloggers should pay most attention is his May 1945 essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that it should be considered required reading for anyone with aspirations of writing […]

  …is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think – HL Mencken Hey look, lads, Claire Curtis-Thomas is back again with her top-shelf campaign, this time using the Graun’s right to reply facility […]

Episode # – shit I’ve lost count – in the new reality show that’s sweeping the nation, the commentariat -vs- bloggerati, and it’s time for the Indy’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to wade into the fray on the side of the pro’s… Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Hounded by assaults from cyberspace Where […]

Congratulations to Andrew Brown for asking the question of the week, "Why are we [bloggers] all so nasty?" before adding, "People are such arseholes online because they write as they expect journalists to do." Huh? Thankfully Andrew goes on to explain what he means: I think that the […]

Oh, if only – yes, Mad Mel’s back in the Mail and as completely barking as ever… The Redundant Male? Her name was Frances Swiney, a feminist whose vision for the sisterhood and humanity was more than a trifle extreme. She thought men were the waste products of […]

Monday 12 June Home Secretary John Reid has criticised the sentence on a paedophile who abducted and sexually assaulted a girl of three as "unduly lenient". Relatives of the victim of Craig Sweeney, 24, attacked his life jail term because guidelines on guilty pleas mean he could be […]

From a series of posts on his blog,- [1] [2] [3] & [4] its looks very much as if both myself and Iain Dale have been simultaneously working on the same question – just what was John Prescott actually doing in visiting Colorado-based Billionaire, Phillip Anschutz, at his […]

It seems, of late, that I’m one of few bloggers who’s warped enough to eschew the now ritualised twice-weekly slaughter of the lesser-brained Toynbee (see that’s what happens when you ban fox-hunting, the buggers only go off and find themselves a new bloodport) in favour a rather more […]

Courtesy of the Beeb… Impotency rub-on gel developed A rub-on gel could be the first over-the-counter treatment for impotency, a company has announced. It is being developed by Futura Medical in collaboration with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. The treatment, called MED2002, is expected to go into clinical trials at […]