I’ve always known that Bill O’Reilly, a man who once tried to tell his viewers that his “We’ll do it live!” moment of pop-eyed rage was entertainment of some sort, was stupid.

I didn’t realize that he was as stupid as… well this video.

BillO th… Read full post »

According to Kathleen her former mother-in-law talked in a moebius loop, a conversation that continually looped back to where it started so that if you ever stepped away from her for a moment you knew that you could pick up the thread later on when the conversational train of thought… Read full post »

There was a time in my life when my parents despaired of what I would eat. Sausages? Yes. Bread? Yes. Sausage sandwiches? Hell yes. Anything else? Well, it depended on what it was. Some vegetables and Sunday lunch, yes, almost everything else no, apart from pies (meat pies that it is).… Read full post »

It had been a long day. When we came back from a wonderful week in Wales we then threw ourselves at the Augean Stable that was our spare room, or the Pit of Lost Things as I’d mentally renamed it. Getting things out of it and either reorganizing it or… Read full post »

Well, today is a red-letter day for about 250,000 teenagers all over Britain. Yes, it's A-level result day, the day when envelopes bearing the results of A-Levels (the equivalent of junior college) fall through letterboxes and land on mats with the thump of academic doom.

Now, those who pass the… Read full post »

If you can hear a sizzling noise coming from Britain right now, it’s the sound of the sun frying the sense out of this country. Yes, summer has arrived with a vengeance this year and the thermometer hit 90F today.

Now, this country doesn’t do summer particularly well. After a… Read full post »

Sitting in front of my keyboard is a card, marked "Official Poll Card". It's my ticket to access to a polling booth tomorrow, for the European Parliamentary Elections. It gives me the opportunity to put a cross on a piece of paper.

That sounds so simple, doesn't it? A… Read full post »

About a year ago I will confess to feeling a certain smugness about political life over here in Britain. As bad as Blair and then Brown were, I thought, things could be worse – we could be in the US, where the shambling wreckage of the Bush Presidency was busy falling… Read full post »

Today is the anniversary of something that needs to be remembered. Sixty-four years ago today, on April 15, 1945 troops from the British 11^th Armoured Division rolled into a place that left them retching over the sides of their vehicles. It was called the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (http://en.w… Read full post »

An OS Guide to the British Media (or what not to read)

It has recently occurred to me that some people have been quoting from UK newspapers without really understanding the context. The fact is that the British media ranges from the credible to the ludicrous. So here’s a quick… Read full post »

We’ve seen a lot of articles on OS recently on the demise of papers and on the impact to journalists. Personally, speaking as a journalist, I’d like to point out two important facts. The first is that the demise of local papers will lead to an increase in corruption, as local… Read full post »

When I was growing up I had all the usual childhood illnesses. The scar over my left eyebrow is from chickenpox, I should have the antibodies from measles floating around in my bloodstream, I was given vaccines against scarlet fever, polio and smallpox.

And then there was the other… Read full post »

Being something of an avid fan of Jon Stewart (even though I can only watch his show in segments on the internet as we only get a truncated and very out of date version of his show on satellite TV over here) I have been fascinated by his recent segments on… Read full post »