Dear God. How should pupils be taught to cope with the pressure and stress of examinations? The most recent and most novel suggestion comes from the Church of England: pray your way to a stress free examination season. To this end the Church has published prayers that nervous pupils can utter to help them feel [...]

[Read more →]

I’m so irritated by this story. You people living in the United Kingdom who are under the impression that you’re living in a free country are grossly mistaken.
When I was in my mid-teens I’d already wanted to be in radio for a few years. I took great interest in a new national station [...]

[Read more →]

Robert Dunlop, from Ballymoney Northern Ireland, was one of the best motorcycle road racers in the world. I say “was” because he no longer “is,” after dying in a practice lap for Northern Ireland’s top racing event - the “North West 200.” After hitting around 150 miles-per-hour a technical fault caused his bike to seize [...]

[Read more →]

Christian Aid is one of those horrible organisations with an implied claim to moral superiority over us lesser mortals, pontificating how the rest of us should live our lives. Of course, they’re entitled to do so, after all isn’t God on their side? Bring on the Inquisition.
This week this pompous band of moral busybodies published [...]

[Read more →]

This is a gem:
“Dolly Parton is threatening to sue The Howard Stern Show for manipulating recordings from one of her audio books last week into seemingly racist and sexually graphic sound bites.
‘I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life,’ Parton says in the statement. ‘I cannot believe what Howard Stern [...]

 

 Howard Stern May 6th, Dolly Parton clips (NSFW): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]

…is nothing new. Think Al Gore for a prime example, or Sheryl Crow. Now Paul McCartney is being accused of hypocrisy:
“The former Beatle has long been an outspoken advocate of environmental causes and animal rights. He is a vegetarian who won’t even wear leather shoes. But now he’s being criticized for having [...]

[Read more →]

Michael Stone. If you’re from outside Northern Ireland that name will probably mean very little to you. But to those versed in Northern Ireland’s rather murky past that name will conjure up images of one of the most notorious terrorist episodes of “the troubles.”
In 1988 a man few had heard of before attended the funeral [...]

[Read more →]

Penn Jillette has given an excellent response to a viewer on the issues of drugs and suicide, speaking as a ’sensitive libertarian’ on the matter (watch it for yourself here; it’s worth a few minutes of your time). Penn’s opinion - identical to our own - is that, while he would go to great [...]

[Read more →]

Rob Lyons has an excellent response to the comments of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay today in Spiked. We like Ramsay and he’s found favour on this blog before, but these latest comments - in which he says it should be illegal for restaurants to offer food shipped from other parts of the world - [...]

[Read more →]

Only a few weeks ago no-one knew who Josef Fritzl was, except, obviously, his friends, family and neighbours. But now we all know Josef Fritzl, or least we all know he is an Austrian who locked his daughter up for years and fathered 6 or 7 kids by her without even his own wife getting [...]

[Read more →]

Another week!
Minette Marrin is back on my radar this week with an article about waste, echoing my own thoughts On Waste but in a, er, superior way. While she starts practically speaking, “Flexible catering cannot be entirely frugal, nor can serious cooking,” she doesn’t disappoint: “The real truth is that I like waste. [...]

[Read more →]

A combination of re-decorating, tidying, and assembling flat-pack furniture has prevented me from writing my usual articles this week. It’ll be business as usual next week, but for now I thought I go for some light relief for you all to enjoy at the end of a hard week’s work. Some of these were given [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve heard from a lot of people about ‘Super-Size Me!’ and, although the film is now a few years old, a lot can be learned about a person by observing how they respond to it. The film by Morgan Spurlock deals with issues of responsibility, of personal liberty, health, capitalism and more. I [...]

[Read more →]

A great article today from Rob Johnston on cannabis:
“The argument about cannabis and schizophrenia reflects the modern view of children. In the memories of the 1968 generation, the ‘mild and gentle weed’ they smoked and made them mellow has been replaced by ‘skunk’ which turns today’s children into aggressive and anti-social monsters. So these anti-social, [...]

[Read more →]

Well, I started to write this yesterday, but got sidetracked by a virtually impromptu wedding - my sister-in-law got married quietly and casually last night after much drama. I had a horrible headache all day yesterday, my Jeep’s been in repairs for 4 weeks (when I get it back, it’ll be coming with a [...]

[Read more →]

Dear Douchebags,
Last year you pursued (and last week convicted) Deborah Jeane Palfrey (pictured), a Washington DC escort service operator for several crimes including running a prostitution service. An hour ago, police announced that she hung herself in a shed near her mom’s house.
Those of you who made, uphold or support the laws against prostitution, [...]

[Read more →]

Meet Broderick Lloyd Laswell. Broderick has been an inmate in an Arkansas prison for eight months. Like most prisoners he is isn’t entirely content.
Now, we might imagine all manner of complaints that an inmate might have about their prison: like being there at all when they are “innocent” (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) and merely suffered at the hands [...]

[Read more →]

United Press International reports on the case of a Tunisian family who alleges their daughter was raped by a man… on a phonecall. No, I mean, they allege it took place over a phone line.
“The 30-year-old man said he never touched the young woman. But he acknowledged he heard her scream while they were [...]

[Read more →]

Life is like a game of Tetris: it throws down difficult conditions sometimes, it gets faster and faster until you feel you’re going to throw up from stress, and it never ends happily. …. Okay, I don’t really mean that. I was playing Tetris on my phone a few minutes ago and just [...]

[Read more →]

There are issues over which libertarians disagree: abortion, capital punishment, roads, and children being amongst the things that can set brother against brother in a fight of biblical proportions. And sometimes it might look like libertarian ideals clash.
Libertarians believe in religious freedom. This is simply an extension of the right to freedom of thought and [...]

[Read more →]