Words Dept.: category

I keep reading that the new 50% income tax rate unveiled in the Budget on Wednesday is going to lead to a “brain drain” of which we should all be dreadfully afraid. Apparently, all the clever people who earn more than £150,000 a year are threatening to leave the country, with catastrophic consequences. The Telegraph [...]

I’ve got a question. How is it that people who are expressly employed to advise very senior politicians on “political” matters haven’t got the gumption to realise that by typing offensive words into an e-mail, there’s a risk that those words might be made public? Damian McBride, a “special adviser” to the Prime Minister has [...]

Fear and loathing, moral pomposity, confused lines of argument, unfunny satire, tastelessness and hypocrisy have all been on show as never before in recent weeks as the nation’s newspaper columnists wring their last buck from terminally-ill cancer victim Jade Goody. Here’s a compendium of choice quotes on the subject from the media Twatosphere. Allison Pearson: [...]

What is green custard? As far as I can see it’s a vaguely remembered school dinner treat, which, before today, rated about three mentions on the whole of the internet

The first thing I thought when I heard about Alfie Patten, the “baby-faced” 13-year-old who has supposedly fathered a child, was: Where’s the evidence that he’s really the dad? Surely it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that someone might be seeking to make a financial gain by pretending the boy is the father and [...]

It’s a month to go until the result of the referendum on the Transport Innovation Fund and peak-time congestion charging in Greater Manchester – and the debate is moderately warm! Stockport council, led by Liberal Democrat Dave Goddard, is opposed to the TIF bid and has been a target of particular attention from the Yes [...]

Just before going to sleep last night I attempted to have a US election-based multimedia experience, which involved taking the laptop to bed (my intentions were pure) and surfing various sites to do with the vote. This, I am led to believe, is the done thing among web-savvy news hunters of the 21st century. Twitter, [...]

One of the most enlightening pieces of journalism re the Russell Brand/Jonathan Toss incident was when the BBC’s David Sillito solicited the views of people queuing to watch the filming of the Alan Titchmarsh Show and compared them with the views of people queuing to watch Never Mind the Buzzcocks. The former group (old people) [...]

Michael Howard, the former Conservative leader now making a living as a Count Dracula impersonator, has waded into the Peston debate, demanding an investigation into how the BBC’s business editor found out about banks requesting a financial bail-out from the government. I sense some political momentum gathering behind this, having seen Michael Portillo honking on [...]

I may have created the impression the other day that I think Robert Peston is a tosser. This wasn’t my intention at all because, notwithstanding his numerous presentational faux pas, I actually deeply admire his ability to get up the noses of the Daily Mail (“Does this man have too much power?”), various bloggers and, [...]