Pointing the way to a Happy New Year

Dearie me, it’s 2012. The world is in the grip of death, famine, financial collapse, and, despite the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, there are still a significant number of lunatics running the global asylum. The New Year arrives with violent storms battering the coasts of Britain and Ireland. Even David Bowie is about to turn 65. […]

Mind the step…

Have you seen this print ad? It’s for a well-known ‘value’ furniture store who probably thought it’d be really cute to advertise its stair carpet and underlay service with a sleeping toddler, presumably to show you just how snug it would be. Unfortunately, it only looks as if the child has slipped down the stairs and ended up […]

England is (still) not Britain

The arrogance of The English (formerly known as the England football team) and misguided opinion of their own importance continues to show it knows no boundaries or sense of perspective. Not only have they launched a new and expensive football kit when their popularity is at an all-time low, and even their most stupidly die-hard […]

Plastic not-so-fantastic, then

Another childhood illusion shattered, another comfort zone wrecked. Belgian punk “sensation” Plastic Bertrand has admitted he wasn’t the singer of his one and only UK hit ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’. Is there nothing left we can believe in? This is far more devastating than the Milli Vanilli ‘scandal’ of 20 years ago. Poor Plastic (real name Roger Jouret, […]

It’s the demon drink talking, again

Three pieces in the morning papers got a rise out of me today. First and foremost, an excellent opinion piece in the Irish Times by Brian O’Connell about the appalling situation regarding cut-price or below-cost alcohol sales; then, a shocking (to my eyes) report on how the Irish are apparently at odds with the rest […]

Things can only get bitter…

The Tories are only back in power a wet minute and look who’s crawled back from the lair of the woodworm. Only Phil Collins. Back, back, back, he is. Considering Britain’s now going back to Victorian values, back to basics, back to colonial, feudalistic, tally-ho, smash-the-oiks Conservatism, why not go the whole hog and bring back old Phil too? I’m […]

No more excuses, guns are not sport

Another gun massacre in the UK. Hungerford, Dunblane, now Cumbria. The gun lobbyists will argue that’s not a bad figure, and figures certainly back up claims that gun crime in the UK is rare. But this is entirely missing the point. There shouldn’t be any. Michael Ryan, who killed 16 people in Hungerford in 1987, Thomas Hamilton, […]

The End, Part 666

We’re way, way more doomed than we thought before the weekend. We moan and whinge about potholes in this country but imagine waking up to find that the actual entrance to hell has opened up in your back garden? They certainly woke up to that ‘reality’ in Guatemala City the other morning. In yet another piece […]