Banditry

I’m not sure Boris would approve:

(photographed by me at Kings Cross St Pancras station, 14/5/08 at 2215)

Simon Jenkins:

No good is served by incarcerating an illiterate drugs “mule” in Holloway for 14 years for a first offence when she had no clue what she was doing and has left four children on the streets of Jamaica. She will be sent back in seven years, after Britain has spent £250,000 turning her into a drug addict and a wreck. Not since deportation for poaching has British penal policy been so heartless and so stupid.

You may think drugs are awesome fun or unspeakably evil, but either way it’s difficult to deny Mr Jenkins’ point. The really weird - and mildly encouraging - thing, if you ever read the comments on Commentisfree, is that none of them object to the article…

“Can someone please explain on what basis I am supposed to care more about the plight of the white working classes than that of, say, Congolese people driven out of their homes by war?”

(an oasis of sanity in a thread dominated by horrible bigots)

Tom Lehrer is 80 today. Which is nice, since when I saw references to him on other blogs I assumed he’d died. Sheer genius.

I’m entertained by this comment from CT:

The world really needs more like him – brilliant math teachers who are brilliant parodists and public intellectuals on the side.

Yes, this is precisely what the world needs more of. Relatedly, Dinesh D’souza is an arse.

It’s reasonably silly that you can get a qualification as a homeopath, given the complete lack of potential for an unlicensed homeopath to do any harm or for a licensed one to do any good (”you’ve been struck off the homeopath’s register for actually giving someone a traceable amount of medicine”, etc).

But it’s absolutely amazingly implausibly incredible that the course for said qualification includes a module on the benefits of astrology. I mean, are they trying to eradicate any spurious credibility they may previously have had…?

There used to be an excellent website of bad celebrity name puns called The Wesley Snipes Archive. Sadly, the old link for it is buggerised. Anyone know if this still exists in any format? (note: I’ve tried the Wayback Machine, but for some moronic reason the site owner vetoed it in his robots file…)

John Lennon once spiked Jimmy Tarbuck’s drink with amphetamines.

In perhaps my proudest moment ever, this blog is the top Google result for “what food do working class people eat?”

(it now seems to be showing as second, which is odd since it was showing as first five minutes ago. Google is perplexing. Although not as perplexing as the original question…)

Happy St Cyril’s Day, everybody. And bah, humbug to all other saints (yes, even you, Methodius…)

Update: this is excellent stuff…

Fine 18th century invective from Captain Christopher Middleton, directed against a random idiot who was talking rubbish on the Pamphletnet - a snip at £2,000.

A REJOINDER TO MR. DOBB’S REPLY TO CAPTAIN MIDDLETON; IN WHICH IS EXPOS’D, BOTH HIS WILFUL AND REAL IGNORANCE OF TIDES; &C. HIS JESUITICAL PREVARICATIONS, EVASIONS, FALSITIES, AND FALSE REASONING; HIS AVOIDING TAKING NOTICE OF FACTS, FORMERLY DETECTED AND CHARGED UPON HIM AS INVENTIONS OF HIS OR HIS WITNESSES; THE CHARACTER OF THE LATTER, AND THE PRESENT VIEWS OF THE FORMER, WHICH GAVE RISE TO THE PRESENT DISPUTE. IN A WORD, AN UNPARALELLED DISINGENUITY, AND (TO MAKE USE OF A VERODOBBSICAL FLOWER OF RHETORIC) A GLARING IMPUDENCE, ARE SET IN A FAIR LIGHT. LONDON

Regular readers will doubtless be unsurprised to hear that Captain Middleton turned out to be right in the end.