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Fri, 20 November 18:35
POLITICS apart – and Esperanza Aguirre’s definitely aren’t mine – there’s not a woman around who didn’t understand her perfectly a couple of weeks back. Repeatedly asked to comment on a fraught political situation she had largely created, the president of the Madrid autonomous region refused to comment: “I’m not saying anything,” she insisted.
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Fri, 20 November 18:33
OUT-of-work James Bramwell believed he’d won some of the vast 100,000,000-euro Euromillions jackpot earlier this month. Confident that he’d scooped millions, he borrowed £1,000 to tide him over his last weekend of poverty but later found he’d done a text lottery which turned out be worthless.
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Fri, 20 November 18:02
SMALL children uttering sexual obscenities have only a hazy idea of what they are saying but pick them up from other people – generally adults and sometimes their parents. This also happens with racial insults which, Anglo-Saxon or not, are in themselves obscenities. Nevertheless the six-year-old girl “logged” at school after allegedly verbally abusing a black pupil probably wondered what the fuss was about although her parents, on the other hand, know all too well.
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Fri, 20 November 17:56
TIM Nicholson was sacked by his employers after he began asking pointed questions about their big cars and carbon footprints in his desire to protect the environment. He alleges that his beliefs regarding climate change are protected under anti-discrimination laws and an Employment Appeal Tribunal agreed. Mr Nicholson’s green views could be classed as a philosophical belief, ruled the judge, prompting religious groups to complain that Britain is abandoning its Christian heritage.
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Fri, 20 November 17:49
I CANNOT comprehend high-flying female executives who crash to earth as a result of crass behaviour from male bosses or colleagues and immediately demand millions in compensation. Is it coincidence that the discrimination, sexual harassment, humiliation, loss of self-esteem, flashbacks and depression of which these women complain generally begin when they are ousted from their posts after being promoted above their level of competence?
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Fri, 20 November 17:48
DAVID Kynaston, author of “Family Britain 1951-1957” claims that the influence of the Church of England was then so great that the late Princess Margaret chose Christian duty over marriage to divorcé Peter Townsend. What rubbish!
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Fri, 20 November 17:42
LIKE most people, I have had disappointments and Gordon Brown’s two-and-a-half years as prime minister is one of them. But for goodness’ sake, why demonise him for anything other than his inability to fill the post he hungered after for so long?
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Fri, 20 November 17:39
THERE was venomously harsh criticism for an American woman who sent a message on Twitter when she realised she was miscarrying, telling her 20,000 “followers” how relieved she felt. Sounds like a blessing in disguise to me, as she’d clearly not cut out to be a...
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Thu, 12 November 11:42
JENNIFER’S Body is a slasher movie written and directed by women. Therefore it has to be feminist, or so the thinking – and the publicity - goes. But if it were truly feminist it wouldn’t have been made – what rightminded woman spares a moment’s thought let alone waste a moment’s concentration on a movie that stars a man-eating schoolgirl? I don’t know how the sisterhood feels about it but it sounds to me as though Jennifer’s Body caters for male chauvinist pussycats.
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Thu, 12 November 11:41
CLIMATE change guru Lord Stern has urged us all, British or not, to give up meat so that flatulent cattle do not pollute the planet with the greenhouse gases they produce every time they break wind. It was bad enough when the good burghers of Ghent prompted by the same worthy motive proposed making every Thursday a meatless day. But a vegetarian world nourished on pulses and vegetables alone? Blown away hardly describes it.
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Thu, 12 November 11:40
SAID 25-year-old Lisa Roden of her 71-year-old husband, father of their one-year-old twins, “He is fit and healthy for his age. He has his own vegetable plot and he’s always plodding about in our garden.” Mrs Roden could have chosen a better word than “plodding” though – it does rather convey slightly more than she probably intended.
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Thu, 12 November 11:39
PSYCHOLOGY expert Professor Joseph Forgas has discovered that not only do we solve problems more efficiently when we’re grumpy but people in a bad temper provide more accurate eyewitness accounts than those in a good mood. As if there weren’t enough to discourage us at present, now they go and tell us that looking on the bright side isn’t as good as looking on the right side! Time to remove our rose-tinted spectacles, I fear.
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Thu, 12 November 11:38
GORDON Brown believes his rivals for the Labour leadership would fare still worse than he in the next Elections, and the pity of it is that he’s right. Not that Brown has much to look forward to, though, because the man so many people saw as the antidote to Blairism has instead mutated into a killer strain of the same ailment.
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Thu, 12 November 11:37
FRANKIE Boyle’s verbal savagery in describing Olympic medallist Rebecca Adlington as resembling a reflection on the back of a spoon is his stock in trade. But although the swimming champion must have felt justifiably devastated, she revealed herself more the Nanny State’s victim than the comedian’s in demanding that the BBC ban him. Nanny’s ministrations mean the public, famous or obscure, believe everything should be put right for them, for all ill-feeling to be cancelled out, criticism silenced, friction rubbed smooth and, of course, self-esteem restored. But life is tough, and even Nannies eventually leave their charges to fend for themselves and if Rebecca Adlington had said nothing the remark would have been forgotten. As it is, more than one person has since remarked that perhaps she does need a nose job.
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Thu, 12 November 11:33
THE French president Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife, former model and singer Carla Bruni, want to have a baby not only for the usual reasons but because Sarkozy believes it could help him in the next elections. So he’s at it again (manipulating public opinion, I mean, not Carla) and fooling himself that voters really are as gullible as political leaders believe. We want, and desperately need, men and women able to do a politician’s job, not provide us with evidence of their ability to procreate.
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Thu, 12 November 11:31
BRITAIN’S anti-alcohol brigade are picking on bargain price food and wine offers by Marks & Spencer and other chains with admonitions that deals like these will turn the middle-aged middle classes into winos. They never succeed in getting it right, do they? The real dangers of alcoholism lie in drinking to get drunk in time-honoured British fashion, not in having a glass or two of wine with meals as people do in Spain, regardless of class.
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Wed, 11 November 11:37
Let’s give the Duke of York an undeserved rest and focus on Scotland Yard’s Department of Professional Standards instead. Nicknamed the Sunshine Squad because its members spend so much time in choice locations it excelled itself by running up a £5 million bill in a botched two-year investigation into alleged corruption in the Cayman Islands. Professional standards? The Met should look to its own – but that’s always been too tall an order where the Met’s concerned.
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Wed, 11 November 11:32
The BBC put Humpty Dumpty together again by giving him a less fragmented ending in a Cbeebies programme by ending the rhyme, “And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men made Humpty happy again.” If they’re so anxious not to upset the little darlings’ sensibilities why don’t they give the Three Blind Mice tail and cornea transplants and report the Farmer’s Wife to the RSPCA? While they’re about it they could put the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe on the Pill, give Simple Simon one-to-one remedial classes and put Peter Pumpkin Eater’s wife on housing benefits.
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Thu, 22 October 16:39
Donkeys in Gaza City’s zoo have been dyed to look like zebras and that just about says it all regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation. At least the Palestinian children who missed the two zebras that died of starvation during the Israeli military offensive earlier this year seem happy enough with the improvisation. When you don’t have much of the real thing – zebras, peace or freedom – it’s easier to make do with imitations
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Thu, 22 October 16:38
A new self-help book promises to divulge five steps to lasting happiness but I’m sceptical about all magic recipes for happiness, bearing in mind its elusive ingredients. Nevertheless, happiness is increasingly regarded as a human right, but is no easier to seize than it ever was. We do have the right to seek but unless you greet happiness as a welcome but sporadic visitor and not a permanent resident, you’ll be ‘well unhappy’.
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Thu, 22 October 16:38
Jude Law has fathered a fourth child, Sophia, who was born last month after what he says was a one-night stand with 24-year-old model, Samantha Burke. Sadie Frost, ex-wife and mother of his three other children, is icily unamused and claims he has put ‘unnecessary pressure on the children and put himself under financial strain, which impinges on their life’.
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Thu, 22 October 16:38
Nicole Kidman is looking very unwrinkled of late, as you would expect of a celebrity and, as they all do except the most honest, she attributes this to eating fruit, drinking lots of water and doing yoga. Like all super-thin superstars, she also swears that she eats like a horse, and I don’t doubt that she does. After all, what do horses eat? Hay, oats and the occasional apple or carrot – the original macrobiotic diet, in fact.
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Thu, 22 October 16:37
More bilge from investigators who claim to have found that the hormones in the Pill have changed women’s taste in men, as they now prefer bite-sized toy-boys to the beefcake of yesteryear.
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Thu, 22 October 16:37
On principle I would never vote for any political candidate whose wife introduced him with dewy-eyed devotion before making a party conference speech. Likewise any politician who praised his wife for her support as David Cameron did in Manchester earlier this month.
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Thu, 22 October 16:35
BBC presenter Chris Jackson found regulation of hypnotherapists in the UK to be so lax that he managed to register his cat George as a practitioner with three industrial bodies. Personally I don’t detect much to marvel at here: a cat owner knows that a cat’s unblinking but gentle gaze gets first-rate hypnotic results. And you don’t even realise you’re being controlled.
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Bonus 
