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Saturday, 3rd May 2008

Oh no, it’s Boris

Technically Boris Johnson, who has just been elected Mayor of London, cannot be an idiot; ‘idiot’ is an archaic medical term referring to someone with very low intelligence and I am sure that Boris has a reasonable level, the problem really being that he does not ever seem to have learned how to use it. He is prone to gaffes and apparently racist and insensitive statements about whole groups of people and even entire cities. Rather than referring to him as an idiot I think it is probably best to (…)

Posted 3 May 2008, 08:11

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Sunday, 30th March 2008

Farewell to Neo

Yesterday, after a hell of a lot of heartbreak, I took my cat Neo to the vet to have him put to sleep. At the moment I am inconsolable and keep bursting into tears. He had been my pal and constant companion for eight years. Now I feel as if a piece has been ripped out of my life and I can’t find anything to fill the hole. If there is an afterlife for cats then I hope he’s chasing birds and having a whale of a time. (…)

Posted 30 March 2008, 10:22

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Saturday, 22nd March 2008

Nothing to fear

AC Grayling’s recent article in the Guardian addresses those people who take the “if you’ve nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” line on the government’s increasing use of surveillance techniques to keep tabs on us. I’ve been wanting to write something like this for some time but have not known where to start. Now I don’t have to as Grayling has written it instead. (…)

Posted 22 March 2008, 21:02

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Tuesday, 18th March 2008

Goodbye Arthur

I’ve just heard on the radio that the author Arthur C Clarke has died, aged 90, in Sri Lanka, where he has lived since 1956. Over the years I’ve probably read most of his science fiction books, some of his non-fiction and many other books whose authors have been influenced by him. (…)

Posted 18 March 2008, 23:45

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Sunday, 2nd March 2008

Heat Water Bag

Recently, I bought a hot water bottle. At least I thought I’d bought a hot water bottle. It was wrapped in a cellophane-type material and when I got it home I saw that the wrapping had printed instructions on it. I’m one of those sad people who always reads the instructions. Even for a hot water bottle. Or not, as the case may be. I discovered that what I had bought was not a hot water bottle at all. It was, so the instructions claimed, a ‘Heat Water Bag’. The instructions read as follows — (…)

Posted 2 March 2008, 02:22

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Monday, 18th February 2008

Diana’s still costing us millions

Why on Earth are we as a country spending millions of pounds on indulging the crackpot ideas of Mohamed Al Fayed about the death of his son Dodi and Diana Spencer in a car crash in Paris in 1997? Everyone who’s taken a serious look at the evidence has concluded that it was caused by excessive speed and a driver who was demonstrably drunk. Why does this man persist in believing that vast numbers of people were involved in a conspiracy to kill the couple? (…)

Posted 18 February 2008, 22:18

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Wednesday, 19th December 2007

Remarkable: an atheist politician

Quite remarkably the Liberal Democrats have elected a new leader who is prepared to admit that he doesn’t believe in God. Such a pity that he then has to go and spoil it by saying that he has enormous respect for people who have religious faith and to emphasise that his wife’s a Catholic and his children are being brought up as Catholics which, presumably, means that he’s quite happy that his kids are growing up with fundamental delusions. What a prat. What a hypocrite. (…)

Posted 19 December 2007, 22:36

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Monday, 10th December 2007

One year later

It’s now almost exactly a year (almost to the minute in fact) since I was sitting here at this same computer when the thought entered my head that something wasn’t quite right somewhere. I’d been feeling some discomfort for 20 minutes or so but had vaguely put it down to indigestion. The feeling slowly got worse until I felt I had to go have a lie down. Problem was that lying down made no difference whatsoever. With indigestion I’ve normally found that there’s a position, albeit possibly an odd one, (…)

Posted 10 December 2007, 23:30

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Friday, 30th November 2007

The Name of the Bicycle

I hereby give notice that I am seriously considering naming the front wheel of my bicycle ‘The Prophet Mohammed’ and the back wheel ‘The Little Baby Jesus’. That way I can be ensured of being attacked by both the Mad Mullahs and the Crazy Christian Fundies. (…)

Posted 30 November 2007, 00:17

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Tuesday, 6th November 2007

I am not an ant

Every weekday at around 7:45 BBC Radio 4 broadcasts a three minute sermon by a religious personage. The speaker is usually a Christian although, from time to time, they’ll have someone with a different religion do the talking. This segment of the Today programme is known as Thought for the Day and has been running under its current name since about 1965 and under other names since before World War Two. (…)

Posted 6 November 2007, 23:30

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Sunday, 4th November 2007

Health nutters

I can’t make up my mind about whether the article on the Top 20 health gurus in the Telegraph is an elaborate wind-up or whether it was written by an uncritical idiot. (…)

Posted 4 November 2007, 13:49

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Friday, 2nd November 2007

Shot in the head

The refusal of the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Ian Blair, to resign over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 is understandable. Like nearly everyone who has clawed their way to the top in our laughable meritocracy he refuses to accept that he can do any wrong and is there, at the top, because he is, almost by definition, infallible. (…)

Posted 2 November 2007, 21:02

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Thursday, 18th October 2007

Ancientness

Aarrgghh! I’ve just discovered that Chuck Berry is 81 years old today. This cannot be unless I too am becoming more ancient than I would like to be. There is no hope. None whatsoever

Posted 18 October 2007, 17:16

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Sunday, 15th July 2007

More socks from nowhere

I have just finished doing my laundry and have found yet another pair of socks which I didn’t have before amongst what I pulled out of the washing machine. This is the second time this has happened in the past couple of months. (…)

Posted 15 July 2007, 12:59

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Saturday, 14th July 2007

The Badgers of Basra

I love the story which has surfaced on the BBC News site about the British Army allegedly releasing a swarm of savage badgers into the city of Basra in Iraq. (…)

Posted 14 July 2007, 12:13

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