Wee video of a friend up Ben Nevis

As she is spoke

I took an online grammar test. I am officially a smug git:


You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


Congratulations! If your mission in life

is not already to preserve the English

tongue, it should be. You can smell a

grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards.

Your speech is revered by the underlings,

though some may blaspheme and call you a

snob. They're just jealous. Go out there

and change the world.


How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)
brought to you by Quizilla

So little time

I found this cool toy at douweosinga.com: it allows you to make a map of all the countries you've visited. When I saw it I felt, I suspect in common with everyone else who has used it, that there is far too little red, far too much grey and what the hell have I been doing with my life.


create your own visited countries map

And what, pray tell, is a shower daddy?

Right. This isn't easy for me to say. But I'm a big boy and I can make hard choices.

I ...

I ...

I agree with Boris Johnson.

Now, I know this requires more than a bit of explanation.

In the interests of security and protecting our democratic rights by taking them away, Tony Blair has threatened to imprison anyone who publishes details of the conversation in which he and his Sith Master (Dubya to you and me) discussed bombing the broadcaster Al Jazeera. The buffoonish Tory (Johnson, not Bliar) had this to say:

"The Attorney General's ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act, and, as it happens, I would not object to the continued prosecution of those who are alleged to have broken it. But we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up.

If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence."

He is not alone. The folks at Blairwatch feel the same way. And I do too:

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Wolf in Blair's clothing

I give Tony Blair a hard time. That's because he's a war-mongering, deceptive, slimeball who squandered a tremendous opportunity to change this country for the better.

But he's a million times better than the Tory Blair, David Cameron. The trick the right-wing coven behind him are trying to pull off is: 1) Sound like Blair. 2) Talk about the centre and put forward vague, centrist-sounding ideas. 4) Get into power. 5) Take the mask off.

The difference between Blair and Cameron is that Blair did not come from nowhere. People knew what Blair stood for. He was one of a group of promiment "modernisers" in the Labour Party. He took over from a leader who had sought to make the party more electable by moving towards the centre. He was surrounded by like-minded people who had been involved at the highest levels of Labour for years: Brown, Mandelson, etc. The "old" Labourites (including myself) may not have liked the shift to the Right but it was openly the Blair project. Despite the slagging he gets, Blair was not just talk.

The only thing we know about Cameron is he dresses casual, made a half-decent conference speech and has lots of friends who hang out in Notting Hill. I'm worried by that crowd and who pulls their strings. And how far to the right they will be pulled after the election.

R. E. S. P. E. C. T.

Tony Blair wants to teach us how to respect each other. Now cynics might suggest this is because he's run out of policies and is now scrabbling around for headline-grabbing buzzwords.

I, however, would not stoop so low. I would merely point out that if TB is so concerned about the respect of the British people he should start treating us with some and come clean about the fairy tales he wove to get us to go to war with Iraq. You see, if you respect people, you don't lie to them.

I mean, we wouldn't want history repeating itself, would we now? Would we?

Time is short and life is good

My feel-good predictions for the future? War with Iran. Global pandemic. Tory victory at the next general election.

Happy New Year. I'm emigrating to Mars.

On a lighter note, I rediscovered The Jam this festive season. I've been listening to Going Underground on repeat for the past fortnight. I recommend it as a cure-all against the coming sabre-rattling as we eagerly await the next instalment in George And Tony's Big Terrorist Adventure (Episode IV: A No Hope).

What you see is what you get
You’ve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don't get what this society wants.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

A Merry Christmas to all our readers

According to a piece by Dylan Evans in The Guardian, it's the end of the world as we know it:

Is it possible that global civilisation might collapse within our lifetime or that of our children? Until recently, such an idea was the preserve of lunatics and cults. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of intelligent and credible people have been warning that global collapse is a genuine possibility. And many of these are sober scientists, including Lord May, David King and Jared Diamond - people not usually given to exaggeration or drama. The new doomsayers all point to the same collection of threats - climate change, resource depletion and population imbalances being the most important. What makes them especially afraid is that many of these dangers are interrelated, with one tending to exacerbate the others. It is necessary to tackle them all at once if we are to have any chance of avoiding global collapse, they warn.

So, there you go, it's all going tits up. Merry Christmas and God bless us every one.