I have been struggling to come up with a suitable metaphor for the state of the economy at present; however, I literally fell into one this morning. It’s my habit to awaken at 5 AM on weekdays to go running; as pedestrians and passing motorists tend to be unkind to joggers, this is an ideal […]

Apart from “I love you”, perhaps the most dangerous statement in the English language is “Things couldn’t get worse”. In my experience, uttering this phrase is an invitation for evil to arrive. Indeed, I have wondered if the present Prime Minister has said it more than a few times. Faced with a teetering economy, he […]

I’ve lately taken to referring to Gordon Brown as “Prime Minister Crackpot”. Part of it is due to his mad insistence on clinging to power when no one believes he can actually accomplish any further good. Beyond this, however, he has shown even greater signs of mental disturbance: for example, he has tried to squash […]

An esteemed colleague of mine challenged the blogging community to explain American healthcare and the need for its reform. This was intended, I believe, partially as a plea for more substantive online discourse given the tidal wave of frippery that has been generated recently, such as the disproportionate response to the death of Michael Jackson […]

Beating up on Gordon Brown has all the appeal of shooting roadkill. The corpse may be twitching still, but it is still a corpse: obliterating it further is unnecessary. The Prime Minister must know on some level that his time in office has been a tragic failure, an epic tale of ambition running ahead of […]

There is a difference between anarchy and chaos. Anarchy implies people being in charge of themselves and willfully going in individual directions; in contrast, chaos is apparently defined by no one being in control of anything and everyone running around in circles. Britain got a large dose of chaos yesterday. On Monday afternoon, the Speaker […]

Yesterday, I was about as uncomfortable as I’ve ever been outside of a place of torture, sorry, a dentist. My bladder was near bursting, my hands were twisting a small notebook with the intent of tearing it two, my blood pressure was elevated to the point that I wondered if the scene was actually turning […]

There is a certain greyness to Monday morning, no matter how bright the sunshine nor how blue the skies may be. Upon awaking today, I awkwardly, sleepily made my way to the kitchen and switched on the coffee maker and BBC Radio 4: I caught the tail end of an item which said that the […]

The Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek once said you could learn a great deal about a country from its toilets. He cited three main examples: the lavatories of France, Germany, and Britain tell us, in his opinion, all we need to know about French politics, German philosophy and British economics. French toilets are basically a hole, […]

For those who have been spending their Easter holiday away from the news or are living abroad: one of the chief aides to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Damian McBride, resigned yesterday. The reason for his departure was the revelation of certain emails which he sent from his 10 Downing Street address. In these missives, […]