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 […]

I probably didn’t buy my car from the most reputable salesman. He wore silver dice cufflinks, had a shirt that was so crisp with starch that the collar tips could be used to gouge someone’s eyes out, and had enough mousse in his hair to keep Vidal Sassoon in profit for a year. But beyond […]

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 […]

The Parliamentary expenses scandal has soaked up British airtime like a sponge. Admittedly, it’s not entirely the fault of the media: some of the tidbits are simply too juicy to ignore. It has everything: vanity, flamboyance, greed and silliness. It makes a Monty Python farce look tame. However, this has obscured an even more important […]

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 […]

London has lost much of its swagger over the past twelve months. When we think of economic gloom, we tend not to envisage it having a direct effect on how a city looks or feels, apart from there being more “for sale” or “closed” signs. However, there is a palpable sense that something is wrong […]

The May Bank Holiday has to be one of the cleverest innovations that the British government has produced. Winters here can be long and depressing: they’re dark, soggy with rain, and their chill is worsened by the omnipresent moisture in the air. It’s very rare that we get a covering of snow to enliven the […]

Perhaps one of the funniest yet most obscure Monty Python sketches portrayed a meeting of senior British Civil Servants. John Cleese entered and spouted off a great deal of bureaucratic gibberish, which was then translated by his colleagues into a simple problem: the government needed something new to tax. Terry Jones then said, “…most things […]

It must have been a nice 100-day anniversary present for President Obama to have Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania defect to the Democratic Party. Provided that the Franken / Coleman court case in Minnesota is resolved in favour of the former Air America host, the Democrats will have gained an absolute majority in the Senate. […]

For those who missed it, the source of the present swine flu pandemic may have been found. According to the Times, the disease has been traced to a Mexican town of 3000 people called La Gloria. La Gloria has the dubious distinction of being located near a massive pig farm, which is partially owned by […]