April 2004

So, the US staff sergeant accused of sitting on a prisoner’s head whilst masturbating at a camera has had his lawyer tell the world that he “had not had the opportunity to read the Geneva Conventions before being put on guard duty”. So that makes it all right then? I’m meant to believe that he…

Lord Browne, the head of Britain’s biggest company BP, and the oilman’s oilman has said that his firm has given up on Iraq as an investment. Link Apparently, he believes that the lack of a sovereign and legitimate Iraqi government and the small matter of guerrilla war means that “It’s not obvious to me that…

Frank Maloney, well-known boxing promoter and UKIP candidate for Mayor of London (Doesn’t the sheer crappy populism of that make, as Simon Hoggart put it, your teeth fur over?) has got into trouble by ranting at gay people. He declared that he would not be campaigning in Camden because there were “too many” of them,…

It is reported that a student at New York University spent the last eight months sleeping in the basement of the library at his college because, despite working four jobs and drawing a scholarship, he couldn’t afford hall fees. Students have, of course, a reputation for catlike powers of sleep, and with the best will…

British Spin reports that Hartlepool’s citizens are about to embark on no less than eight opportunities to exercise their civil rights in the next two years. That makes four elections a year – just think of all the leaflets! and tea! and shameless lust for power! Just for added value, they’ll involve Peter Mandelson and…

Back in January, during the great aviation security flap, I blogged that the flakiness of the arrangements for sky marshals on flights from Europe perhaps suggested that some officials were hoping to accept the scheme but let it fail. It now appears that the US is rowing back on the idea: US ditches effort to…

I’ve been reading Supping with the Devils, Hugo Young’s collected columns, recently. It is sad and astonishing how often he got it exactly right. I am going to ask readers of this blog to guess when each of these major statements were made: 1. ” In the end, it’s a question of how you define…

I don’t think this story has been covered much in the UK, which is a great pity as not only is it good, it is also a fine piece of Ealingesque British farce. Imagine. The former director of the CIA, James Woolsey, snooping around a college in Swansea trying to prove that one of its…

As is now well reported, our MPs recently voted to spend £2 million on building a huge glass wall across the House of Commons, in order to protect them from putative terrorists ensconced in the public gallery. Or perhaps from the justified fury of the citizens, but let that pass. Apparently, this is to protect…