On reading George Osborne’s oh-so-convincing CiF piece setting out exactly how tough he’s going to get with tax dodgers (they’re “like benefit cheats” apparently – can you imagine the depths of their perfidy?), one sentence in particular jumped out at me: Tax evaders also make use of tax loopholes, and the truth is that over [...]
Aid staff and famine-stricken Somalian refugees expressed their shock today at the News of the World phone-hacking revelations. Françoise Chevalier, 35, a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières, whose clinics and feeding centres in Kenya and Somalia have been completely overwhelmed by the effects of the devastating drought told our correspondent she was appalled. “Steve Coogan, [...]
In the middle of any media broo-haha there is the possibility that new unanticipated stars can be born. This time we have been blessed with an especially fabulous new z list celeb in the form of hack’s hack, hapless Paul McMullan, who – with his wonky tie, unbuttoned shirt, and impossibly crumpled, maybe slept in, [...]
It’s hip, it’s fun, it’s the new craze everyone’s talking about, it’s…Strike Bingo! Easy to play whenever strikes are discussed in the news! All you need is a keen eye for politics and current affairs and a national media with an overt bias against organised labour – it couldn’t be easier! So sharpen your pencils, [...]
We can’t in all honesty, remember if one met Kate Middleton at St Andrews. We may well have – St Andrews is a small place, without any appreciable nightlife beyond the two streets where the students cluster. With the weather so consistently bleak only alcohol could really induce us to travel outside. And so to [...]
Last week Brian True-May was suspended as producer of everyone’s favourite rural English take on Nightmare on Elm Street, Midsomer Murders, for some slightly non-pc comments. “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved,” True-May said. “Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them… We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep [...]
The rise of the Tea Party in America has presented lefties and liberals with more than two brain cells to rub together on both sides of the Atlantic with a problem. Picking a facepalm of the week just got a whole lot harder. Following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, Republican senator Jon Kyl [...]
The Liberal Democrats are set to merge with the Conservatives before the next general election. A lasting alliance between the two coalition partners has been the topic of some speculation since the Oldham by-election campaign kicked off and polls indicated the Lib Dems could barely hold onto second prize in a beauty contest with Jabba [...]
I came home from work yesterday to find myself locked out of my house. I’d like to blame an evil money-grabbing landlord, I’d like to blame the council, the police, the state. I’d like to blame the man. But I can’t. The blame lies squarely at my door. The very door I found myself hammering [...]
Toy Story 3 is many things: heartwarming, tragic, nuanced, beautiful, and, if you stop to think about it, really quite disturbing. Not just because of all the dark ‘adult’ themes that so many critics have picked up on, but also because of the message. And yes, to forestall the chorus of objection that I’m sure [...]
