August 9, 2005

The Portadown News is a cracker this week. “Ian Paisley has promised to keep Sinn Fein out of government by keeping himself out of government. “There will be no surrender to the IRA’s surrender,” the leader of Northern Ireland’s largest party said. “After fifty years, republicans are just as dangerous as I have always needed…

An official email reaches me, telling all staff that our company’s journalists must now pay the full delegate fee, plus 10% if they want lunch, when they attend conferences arranged by our conferences division. So – let’s get that straight. I pay £1,000 to the conferences division and charge it to expenses. Publishing is down…

..the things that set the parameters of our ideas. Those formative events and thoughts that go with us on whatever weird trajectory we take through life. Politics is always like that, which is one of the reasons I mourn Robin Cook. A short list of my own founding concerns would run something like this: The…

Just in case you’ve yet to become convinced I harbour a blood loathing of Hull…Annie Mole of the Tube blog reports that Hull City AFC fans were heard chanting “You’re just a town full of bombers” at Queen’s Park Rangers this weekend, bearing out everything I said about them.

Over at t’Sharpener, Justin has a long post about Basra, the growth of theocracy in Iraq, Steven Vincent’s criticism of the British occupation authority’s alleged indulgence of political Shi’ism, and a perceived lack of support from the pro-war side for secularism in Iraq. I was moved to drop off this comment, which ought to be…