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The man who was probably the greatest banjo player in history has died, aged 88. Steve Martin says everything that needs to be said here. Here he and Earl are performing the immortal Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
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Should you receive a jail sentence for being an idiot on Twitter? Apparently so! Liam Stacey, the 21 year old who tweeted “LOL, Fuck Muamba. He’s dead” after the Bolton Wanderers’ collapse at White Hart Lane is off to spend 56 days in prison for this and other (unpleasant) “racially offensive” tweets. Cue much outrage
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Hats-off to Dick Puddlecote and Chris Snowdon for being quick to notice the latest absurdity being considered by the Commons health select committee: plain packaging for alcohol. Yes, really. The committee is holding a consultation on the government’s “alcohol strategy” (and how depressing it is to contemplate the very existence of such a thing) as
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A truly repellent piece by Cristina Odone in the Telegraph in which she argues for NHS-rationing by liefestyle and wealth. That’s not quite how she puts it, for sure, but her suggestion that (middle-class) pensioners are losing out to (lower-class) fat people and that something should be bloody done about this is the kind of
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Briefly: not content with producing the worst kit in British Olympic history Stella McCartney returns to the well of drivel to tell us that: “I was aware of the fact that it’s [the Union Flag] something that might be overused in the build-up to the Olympics, in taxis, on cushions and mugs, so I wanted
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According to John Rentoul, the combination of the budget and Cam Dine With Me* has shunted Labour into a ten point lead in the opinion polls. Tuesday’s Independent/ComRes poll puts Labour on 43% (+3) and the Tories – as you may have worked out by now – on 33% (-4). How to spin this? 1.
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Jocky Wilson, who died on Saturday night aged 62, was a very Scottish sporting hero: short, fat and toothless he was touched by equal measures of brilliance and self-destruction. Darts is glitzy now but back in its 1980s pomp it needed no rock music or scantily-clad dancing girls to lend an air of semi-ironic gladiatorial
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On the Daily Politics today Andrew Neil asked David Mundell Why are the Scottish Tories so useless? It will not surprise veteran Mundell-watchers that the member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale did not have a great answer to this blunt question. Nevertheless, Mr Neil’s question was, in effect, the theme or premise of the Prime
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My friend Ciaran Byrne is right: If Rupert Murdoch owned Fianna Fail he’d close it down. The Mahon Tribunal’s report into the flagrant corruption at the heart of the planning process in County Dublin is a very Irish scandal. It is not surprising that senior Fianna Fail politicians were on the take, yet the extent
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Even if you accept that the government’s plans for a minimum alcohol price in England and Wales are well-intentioned you can be pretty sure that it’s a bad idea. How so? Well, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each agree that something must be done and this kind of cross-party agreement tends to be
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The Olympic games will, despite everything, be rather fun. This is so even though they will be tediously excessive. The absurdly lavish opening ceremony, for instance, will doubtless be an embarrassment that could have been avoided by keeping it simple. Asking the band of the Grenadier Guards to play a few tunes would have sufficed
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So George Osborne has received a kicking in today’s press. That’s what happens when you try to disguise a tax-raising budget as a tax-cutting affair. This is also a fine lesson in press management. For when you leak everything else in the budget do not be surprised if the press – bastards hungry for novelty
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Brother Jones and Fraser and Pete have already given you some of the useful charts from today’s budget. But the truth of this budget can be summarised quite simply: Everyone Pays More. Here’s the proof, culled from the Red Book: Conservative Home say this shoots Ed Miliband’s fox, proving that the rich will pay more
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It is not right to say that this is the last United Kingdom budget. Far from it. Nevertheless, the times they be changing. Due to an unfortunate coincidence of parliamentary timing (though doubtless some will see a conspiracy in this) the Scotland Bill will be agreed today. It will, naturally, be lost amidst the budget
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The Sunday Telegraph was sensible enough to publish a pleasing article by Brother Hoskin last weekend in which our man took the temperature of political speech-making in Britain today and, concluded, that it is, well, tepid. The speechwriters Pete talked to seem to agree. The decline of the political speech is, for sure, a minority
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Congratulations to YouTube user Hugh Atkin for this mash-up. Nicely done.
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Today’s top Westminster read is James Kirkup’s article on the Treasury smart set. It builds a good foundation from which to argue that for all David Cameron and George Osbourne dislike being compared to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, there remain good grounds for making that kind of comparison. And already we can see, as
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The Illinois primary is today and looks like handing good news to Mitt Romney and poor news to reporters and pundits desperately trying to rustle-up fresh interest in a contest that has been dying for weeks now and certainly since Rick Santorum failed to make an apreciable Super Tuesday impact on Romney’s lead in both
From our UK edition
Jack Valero is the press officer for Opus Dei in the United Kingdom. Plainly, his tweet is made in a personal capacity but it’s not really so far removed form the kind of talk one hears from the Vatican these days. It is hysterical stuff and hysteria is not the best preparation for winnning arguments.
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Well he’s done it. At last. Surprisingly, this was Sachin Tendulkar’s first ODI century against Bangladesh. One hundred international hundreds – 51 in test cricket and 49 in the abbreviated game – is an achievement so astonishing it becomes mesmerising the more time you spend contemplating it. Better still, however, is the fact that it