In a recent Ephems entry I remarked, not for the first time, on the media’s repeated assertions that Tony Blair (in the words of a Guardian columnist, chosen at random) “famously [sic] insists that there is no connection at all between the actions of his government in Iraq and the threat to the UK from international [...]
I’m much indebted to Tony Hatfield for drawing attention, in his indispensable blog “Tony’s Ramblings”, to a wonderful story on the BBC News website. Here it is, in its entirety:
Eleven bailed over stolen coachEleven people have been bailed after being arrested on suspicion of stealing a 30-seater coach. Northumbria Police said the coach was taken [...]
Cartoon from the FT magazine.
Jimmy Carter remarks shrewdly on Tony Blair’s ‘timidity’ [More >>>]
A controversial and thought-provoking speech on the middle east and the west by an eminent Israeli scientist asks a number of uncomfortable questions and offers some unpalatable propositions [More >>>]
Language can be abused in unwitting self-betrayal, by clothing platitudes in pretentious and trendy costume, or by plain old-fashioned murder. Some examples [More >>>]
Some of our ministers are employing ‘life coaches’ at vast public expense, according to the Sunday Times. Terrifying. [More >>>]
An old friend, an inexplicably obsessive cricket fanatic, has just telephoned in a state of high excitement about the collapse today of the fourth Test match between England and Pakistan. My first thought was that the Pakistanis must have walked off in protest at racist insults from the spectators. Happily it turns out that [...]
The Defence Secretary has emerged from obscurity to pardon WWI soldiers executed for cowardice. This suggests a need to identify other figures from the past who suffered punishments now regarded as unjust and who should similarly be pardoned now [More >>>]
The foiling of the UK terrorists’ plot to bomb aeroplanes in mid-air between Britain and the US (still cautiously referred to in the Guardian and elsewhere as the “alleged” plot) has prompted the emergence into the daylight of two particularly unpleasant slanders, one new and specific to the bomb plot, the other old and discredited [...]
