A British furniture store recently bought the rights to Nickelback’s “Rockstar” in order to provide the theme music for their commercials. Television viewers have been “treated” to the sight of customers of varying types dancing in front of their new sofas and miming the lyrics as the tune blasts on. However, unless I’ve completely misunderstood [...]

According to Pew Research, 12% of the American electorate believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. This is in spite of the fact that every last piece of evidence suggests otherwise: Barack’s father was an athiest, as was his mother. The fact that he went to school in Indonesia with a bunch of Muslims does not [...]

President Bush just offered an explanation as to what has happened to America’s financial system: You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video In his parlance, Wall Street “got drunk”. He also advised them to get rid of those “fancy financial instruments”. I suppose this is an improvement to him repeating [...]

Every trip to the small grocery store near my home is an adventure. I don’t know who is in charge of their supply chain, but it is patchy and odd: some weeks there is a glut of strawberries, other weeks you can’t get a berry for love or money. The same inconsistency applies to most [...]

Parliament is due to break up next week for summer recess. As Matthew Parris tells us, this imminent holiday has caused the government to go into overdrive with a slew of “initiatives” intended to make us forget that they have wrecked the public finances, turned environmental policy into a swindle, and destroyed civil liberties. However, [...]

I have had a half and half life: my formative years were in the United States, my later years have been spent in Britain. Because of this mixture, I sometimes am struck by the comparisons and contrasts that can be drawn between the two countries. Contrary to what some French thinkers may believe, there is [...]

Yesterday, I emerged from my house into a sleepy, sultry and somewhat grey July morning, and discovered that my town centre had been turned into a rubbish tip. I live a stone’s throw away from a pub, so I’m not unused to tomfoolery emerging late at night; the previous evening, I had heard the usual [...]

This has been a tense weekend in a number of ways; if the news is to be believed, the folks down at the U.S. Treasury Department have been burning the midnight oil, trying to ensure the biggest dominos of the American financial system – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – don’t fall over. If they [...]

…President Bush couldn’t shock you with yet another gaffe, he goes and does it again. As yesterday’s newspaper said: George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan. The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to [...]

It was reported in the papers today that Gordon Brown sees himself as a latter day “Heathcliff” from Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”. However, as one newspaper reported: Andrew McCarthy, the acting director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, told The Daily Telegraph: “Heathcliff is a man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, possibly murder, and [...]