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I was part of the team covering the 1999 Open for Scotland on Sunday – that’s the tournament you all remember more for Jean van de Velde’s collapse than for Paul Lawrie’s victory – and what I remember most from that week was how much the pros whinged about the way Carnoustie had been set
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Mr E is correct to highlight this significant post from Fraser Nelson: The Scorched Earth policy has begun. The FT has a hugely significant story – that the Treasury is “working privately on plans to reform Gordon Brown’s fiscal rules” which would “initially allow for increased borrowing”. In the vernacular, Brown has realised that if
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From the Daily Telegraph: Could Helen Mirren’s bikini start a revolution? The usual rule is, as you know, that the answer to any question posed in a healine is almost always “No”. But who knows, perhaps this is the exception that proves the rule…
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So, Barack Obama travels to the middle east and europe next week on a trip designed to burnish his statesman credentials. Among the events planned: a major open-air speech in Berlin, possibly at the Brandenburg Gate. The good folks at The Corner see this as an own goal. To wit, Peter Kirsanow: Here in flyover
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The other day I was all poised to praise Riccardo Ricco, whose two stage wins in this year’s Tour were thrilling pieces of cycling. I was going to suggest that if Damiano Cunego could show some better form there might be some hope that we could enjoy a modern rivalry that might offer a pale
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Megan wonders whatever happened to the classic upper-crust New England accent: Why did this happen? Television tends to flatten regional accents, of course, but how come Britain held onto its aristocratic tones, while America’s slipped softly and silently away? Well, it’s true that the aristocracy, in as much as it still exists, has maintained a
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Would even the west of Scotland Labour party stoop to producing a fake war hero to endorse Margaret Curran in the Glasgow East by-election? According to Guido, why yes they would…
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David Frum: At a dinner last night, some friends were discussing about what Obama should have said about that New Yorker cover. One suggested that Obama ought to have said “It’s hilarious” – that at least would have put an end to the talk he has no sense of humor. There may be something in
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In response to this post, a reader asks how did I like the Fry and Laurie TV adaptations? Well, only up to a point is my answer. They are, probably, as good an effort as television can muster but they still, to my mind, fail to cut the mustard. An honorable failure, then. Or rather,
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Apparently the US government’s “terrorist watch-list” now runs to more than a million names. How useful can it be then? Let’s see, shall we? The Justice Department’s former top criminal prosecutor says the government’s terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General
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Really? Says who? Says Jamie Kirchick in a piece at Standpoint. Kirchick hangs this dubious thesis upon a single shoogly nail: If the Democrats learned a lesson from their last presidential election defeat, however, it’s that they were not isolationist enough. In a little noticed remark earlier this month, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama
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Since yesterday was Bastille Day, this seems as sensible a moment as any to ask: whatever happened to France? How did a once-great nation fall so low? And, are there any grounds for hoping that France may recover from this shameful, pitiful, nadir? I speak, of course, of cycling. No Frenchman has won the Tour
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A correspondent has a confession and a question: “I have, shamefully, never read Wodehouse and want to read all the Bertie and Jeeves stories. But where does one start?” There is no shame in this. Indeed there’s a sense in which one might (almost) envy the Wodehouse novice; how splendid to be able to cast
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Jesus, people, would you get a grip? Apparently there is bipartisan outrage over this week’s very amusing New Yorker cover: Obviously the New Yorker, that bastion of shoddy journalism and fist-bumping reactionaries, is hell-bent on destroying America. And apple pie. Hell, they probably want to restrict the franchise… Oh, hang on… Ben Smith reports that
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This one’s for my French friends and readers. Here’s Yves Montand singing Les Feuilles Mortes. Wonderful stuff.
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Labour’s latest approach to crime: Plans to ‘shock’ knife carriers Not quite what it seems admittedly, even though wouldn’t surprise you if these clowns did suggest we start electrocuting teenagers, would it?
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Reaches Scotland! T-shirts emblazoned with this striking motif are available here.
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Noah Millman, one of my favourite bloggers, on Brian Dennehy appearing in Krapp’s Last Tape: It’s a marvelously devastating bit of theater, as Beckett should be.Krapp’s Last Tape is – and should be – a particularly uncomfortable play for a blogger. Here sits a man, a writer, having reached his grand climacteric, looking back on
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This post by my old friend Fraser Nelson is the best thing I’ve read so far about the Glasgow East by-election: It is tragic comic to see Labour taking such a philosophical attitude to the scandalous deprivation in Glasgow East during this election campaign as if they were talking about the weather. “Oh, its heartbreaking
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So what are the best (and worst) things since sliced bread? Danny Finkelstein reveals all and, frankly, it’s tough to argue with the findings. Pleased too, to see the TV remote polling so well…