Sunday, 28 August 2011
Friday, 26 August 2011
Notting Hill's Carnival will parade the true spirit of London

A lot of reputations rest on everyone having a good time. London mayor Boris Johnson wants to reassure sports fans that London is a family destination ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.
The Met needs to show its policing strategy is fit for purpose. At the same time the Carnival’s organisers need to prove that by providing adequate numbers of stewards and ending the two-day event a couple of hours earlier, they can maintain control in the streets.
Labels:
Britain,
entertainment,
London
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Love locks - tender token or eyesore?

Apparently the fashion has been around a while, found across the world and has grown to a degree where some local authorities in places like Paris and Venice consider it a menace – unsightly and potentially damaging.
I’m neither young nor in love – of the two, if I could choose, I’d settle for the latter – but I am a pretty observant person. Surely I would have spotted a random alfresco padlock let alone an epidemic of the things?
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Skills crisis: The Government must do more to help the young become employable

News today that nearly a million 16 to 24 year olds – one in six – are classified as NEETS (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) was deeply disturbing. It illustrates the hollowness of Tony Blair's "education, education, education" pledge.
The year-on-year 18 per cent rise – some 119,000 - in the number of 19 to 24-year-old NEETS in danger of becoming a lost generation was the largest jump since records began to be collected in 2000. I wonder how many of them were caught up in the riots?
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
NICE: Hypertension battle must move to the home front

‘White coat hypertension’ - when your blood pressure soars during a test in a surgery - could affect as much as 25 per cent of the population, NICE concluded a while ago
Inevitably where doctors have relied on surgery readings alone, there is the risk of inaccurate readings. Patients with otherwise normal pressure could be prescribed unnecessary drugs and those with a problem might be overprescribed.
Monday, 22 August 2011
David Cameron was proved right on Libya - now he must win the peace too

It’s no wonder the imminent overthrow of the Libyan dictator had the Prime Minister rush back to the capital from his holiday a lot faster than when the recent riots set Tottenham and elsewhere a-blaze.
With the Government’s economic policy mired in zero growth and U-turns the order of the day, Cameron’s veneer of competence was being rapidly chipped away and he needed some good news. It’s come from an unexpected quarter.
Friday, 19 August 2011
Hurrah for Celebrity Big Brother - but will Sally Bercow fall flat on her face?

Riots and plunging stock markets are only the latest setbacks turning 2011 into a year to forget. So thank goodness CBB has been revived on Richard Desmond’s newly acquired Channel 5 - after Channel 4 dumped the show as old hat.
A new house – with plenty of scope for eye candy housemates to flash the flesh in both swimming pool and sauna – a new presenter in Brian Dowling but the same old D-List selection of celebrities.
Fittingly the introductions to the new dawn opened with Kerry Katona and ended with the Jedward twins.
Despite the rumours no Charlie Sheen, no Mike Tyson, no Pamela Anderson. The nearest CBB got to a Baywatch Pammy was Pamela Bach, once married to David Hasslehoff.
Labels:
Britain,
entertainment,
nonsense,
television
Thursday, 18 August 2011
We had it easy - student days in the Sixties

A Level grades are make or break as to whether you can study your chosen degree course at your preferred university. I got C, D, E and on the back of six miserable O Levels grades no one would have me.
The only degree I was half-interested in studying was English. Without Latin O Level my choice of universities was very limited. I might not have passed Latin but I couldn't have done worse than the Grade 9 (the lowest) I got in German which I ‘studied’ instead.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
I support tough sentencing but we don't preserve our values being unfair to rioters

But the pendulum in some of the prison sentences being handed out after London’s recent riots does seem to have swung too far in the direction of the latter day hang-em and flog-em brigade.
Four years for inciting a riot on Facebook - which never happened or ever likely to -is tough compared to the two years and eight months received by the protester who dropped a fire extinguisher from the roof of the Tory HQ in the student fees demonstration.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
David Starkey's gangsta culture attack was tame compared to Bill Cosby's broadside

I wonder what those who damned David Starkey’s albeit clumsy invective on the same theme – people who tweeted their condemnation before their brains connected with their thumbs like Labour leader Ed Miliband, BBC’s Robert Peston, and CNN’s Piers Morgan - would have made of Cosby’s observations.
He was addressing a NAACP celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of the court ruling, which ended racial segregation in American schools.
Cosby feared the sacrifices of courageous campaigners made half a century before were being squandered.
Monday, 15 August 2011
The truth behind noisy orgasms

The two researchers from the University of Central Lancashire, who found survey evidence pointing to this conclusion, have merely stumbled across bedroom good manners.
The first sound a man is often likely to make after his orgasm is the word “sorry.”
Friday, 12 August 2011
The riots - a symptom of the death of respect
Policing, for the time being, has leapfrogged the UK economy as the public’s No.1 concern. Levels of crime have always worried voters but usually focused at a local level. The riots have promoted law and order issues to the top of the agenda – in England, at least.
Something will be done because the rioting came uncomfortably close to those who operate the levers of power.
It is one thing to find your high performance car has had its bodywork scratched by an anonymous coin-wielding malcontent during the night but quite another to be confronted by a baying mob kicking in the restaurant window where you are enjoying the 12-course tasting menu.
Something will be done because the rioting came uncomfortably close to those who operate the levers of power.
It is one thing to find your high performance car has had its bodywork scratched by an anonymous coin-wielding malcontent during the night but quite another to be confronted by a baying mob kicking in the restaurant window where you are enjoying the 12-course tasting menu.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Trying to cut rioters' benefits is a wrong turn

The e-petition submitted by Stephen Mains adds: “No taxpayer should have to contribute to those who have destroyed property, stolen from their community and shown a disregard for the country that provides for them.”
This position won guarded support from several MPs in today's recalled Parliament, while some councils are considering whether they have sufficient powers to evict tenants who have - or their children - committed offences in the riots.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Max Hastings gives a grim assessment of thuggish rioters but can Ed Miliband offer some hope?
I would give my eye-teeth to write half as well as Sir Max Hastings. Having edited the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard, he returned to jobbing journalism even more successfully than before.
His military pieces contain masterly analysis; his political and social examinations are always thought provoking.
None more so than today’s article in the Daily Mail titled Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters in which he examines the background to the riots in England.
It makes uncomfortable reading for someone such as me, who believes in social justice all be it of the hand up rather than hand-out variety.
Read it for yourself; the headline tells the tale.
His military pieces contain masterly analysis; his political and social examinations are always thought provoking.
None more so than today’s article in the Daily Mail titled Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters in which he examines the background to the riots in England.
It makes uncomfortable reading for someone such as me, who believes in social justice all be it of the hand up rather than hand-out variety.
Read it for yourself; the headline tells the tale.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
The riots - how soon can England turn this unhappy page in its history?

But it’s likely both extremes of opinion will agree ineffectual parenting is where the problem starts.
Conservatives will argue that tough sanctions need to be taken against parents (including efforts to discourage them procreating further) as well as demanding their wayward children be tamed.
Liberals will insist that understanding and support is applied both to redress the disadvantages of birth and an unfair society.
Labels:
London
Monday, 8 August 2011
The riots - a Londoner's despair

As a Londoner I am ashamed and worried that images of wanton arson and destruction by feral youths in my city are being broadcast across the world.
What began as a legitimate and peaceful protest about the shooting of Mark Duggan by police – and the shabby treatment of his family in the wake of the killing – has been seized on by disaffected youngsters to cause mayhem.
Prepared to put lives at risk, they are obviously beyond the control of their parents, but it is to be hoped they are still within the reach of the long arm of the law.
Labels:
London
Friday, 5 August 2011
we know who you are, thats why you cant come in you coke head ponce
The headline is an over-the-top comment left today by an anonymous writer responding to a wisp of a story on a showbiz gossip website. It had reported on the indignation of a minor Hollywood celebrity denied a backstage pass at a rock concert.
The target of the invective is inconsequential; I use it only because the reaction typifies the bile that many internet items attract where comment moderation allows. My example is modest in tone compared to some of the vitriol – often obscene – which is commonplace.
The advent of the internet has made possible a worldwide epidemic of what used to be called poison pen letters. What did these angry or envious people do before technology allowed them expression of their bitterness?
The target of the invective is inconsequential; I use it only because the reaction typifies the bile that many internet items attract where comment moderation allows. My example is modest in tone compared to some of the vitriol – often obscene – which is commonplace.
The advent of the internet has made possible a worldwide epidemic of what used to be called poison pen letters. What did these angry or envious people do before technology allowed them expression of their bitterness?
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Britain's defence policy is unfit for purpose

The shame is the military top brass have been found wanting too in the light of their mistakes in Afghanistan.
The Tories are squabbling among themselves. The Commons defence select committee chaired by Tory MP James Arbuthnot has heavily criticised last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Broadly speaking the Armed Services are being pared to the bone yet are asked to do more (e.g the Libya conflict) with less.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
I've time for critics - but not The Hour

I gave the first episode both barrels in my July 20th review Sorry, The Hour is a waste of 60 minutes.
This was a departure for me. Generally it goes against every instinct to be negative about any creative project given that many of mine have failed to fly at all.
True, I didn’t like The Finkler Question but then it had won the 2010 Man Booker Prize. I forced myself to watch two further episodes of The Hour to be certain I hadn’t been unfair.
Labels:
Britain,
television
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Labour's legacy - 1 in 3 children ill-prepared to start secondary school in September

For neutrals the BBC decided the news angle was a small rise – from 64 per cent to 67 per cent - in the numbers reaching the “expected” level in the “three Rs.”
On the left The Guardian was concerned that 1 in 3 pupils (nearly 183,000) would be entering secondary school without a working command of reading, writing, and maths.
The Daily Telegraph, on the right of the political spectrum, led with its worry that the proportion of children gaining upper level scores had fallen.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Should child murderers and police killers hang?

Several death sentences had been handed down in the intervening period but the murderers had been reprieved.
Now the Guido Fawkes right-wing political website is hoping to use the Coalition’s new e-petition procedure to further the re-introduction of capital punishment for the murder of children and policemen killed in the line of duty.
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