Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Lib Dem Voice wins Quote of the Day
As there’s been quite a lot of self-abuse on the pages of Lib Dem Voice in the aftermath of the Henley by-election...
Labels: Awards
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Joke of the Day
There is a grim joke circulating among Labour MPs: "What is the difference between Robert Mugabe and Gordon Brown?"
Answer: "Mugabe was elected."
Labels: Awards, Gordon Brown, Zimbabwe
Monday, June 23, 2008
Trivial Musical Fact of the Day
Great fun as the Stranglers were, this confirms my view that they were a pub band that got lucky rather than real punk rockers. Cornwell and his bandmates were part of the sixties generation, not a reaction to it.
Similarly, when Steve Winwood's first solo album came out in 1977 he was dismissed as a rock dinosaur. But despite having been a star for more than a decade, he was hardly older than many of his critics in the punk movement.
Labels: Awards, Music, Steve Winwood, Trivia
Monday, June 16, 2008
Trivial Philosophical Fact of the Day
According to the Friesian School website, "Wittgenstein's maternal grandmother was the sister of Hayek's maternal great-grandfather".
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sign of the Day
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Name of the Day
Pork pie library may be closing
Labels: Awards
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Overblown Claim of the Week
The winner is Peter Dowd, leader of the Labour group on Sefton District Council.
According to the Bootle Times, at last Thursday’s full council meeting he:
accused the Lib Dems of creating “apartheid” after one leaflet attacked a candidate for coming from Bootle.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Headline of the Day
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Great tits and Jan's cock
Norfolk Blogger has quite rightly awarded Headline of the Week to the BBC for its:Great tits cope well with warmingMalcolm Redfellow's World Service also notes this story and goes on to inform us that the RSPB has banished the word "cock" from its website. This leads him to reminisce:
Long years ago, Malcolm worked alongside a lovely, if slightly too-innocent-for-her-own-good teacher. She insisted on using Ian Serraillier's 1956 great story, The Silver Sword, as a class reader. (It may subsequently have been edited or re-written: it certainly seems to have gained a new title, Escape from Warsaw). The problem was that one of the characters has a pet chicken, and this (as Malcolm painfully remembers) provokes the immortal line:
"Jan placed his cock on the table."
As soon as the set of books was removed from the stock-cupboard, Malcolm, would take great care monitoring the class's progress in reading the story. He fully appreciated that he would be summoned to suppress the minor riot when the psychological moment arrived.
Labels: Awards
Thursday, May 01, 2008
"For all their faults, Lib Dems are best of a bad bunch"
Note too its observation that "you may as well vote Monster Raving Loony Party as vote Tory in this city".
Labels: Awards
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Headline of the Day
Monday, April 28, 2008
Search of the Day
Sigh.
It was Hugh Paddick - though Wikipedia claims they are distantly related.
Labels: Awards
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Headline of the Day
Monday, April 21, 2008
Trivial Fact of the Day
Almost as good... her father was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park and also the officer who took Rudolf Hess into captivity.
It's all in Wikipedia.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Trivial Connection of the Day
Long-standing readers may recall that I enjoyed the BBC series The Lost World of Friese-Greene and was pleased to discover a musician called Tim Friese-Green. I assumed he was a descendant of Claude Friese-Greene, whose early colour films of Britain were the subject of the BBC series.
It turns out that that Winwood and Friese-Green both played on the Talk Talk song "Happiness is Easy".
As I always say, if only I live long enough I shall have found enough trivial connections to make sense of the world.
Labels: Awards, Steve Winwood
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Photograph of the Day: Enoch Powell on a pogo stick
Lord Bonkers adds: It is a little known fact that Powell would often ride a pogo stick while delivering his speeches. The effect was rather like this:
As I look ahead, [boing] I am filled [boing] with foreboding. [boing] Like the Roman, [boing] I seem to see [boing] "the River Tiber [boing] foaming with much [boing] blood".
Labels: Awards, Lord Bonkers
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Compliment of the Day
Friday, March 21, 2008
Cat of the Day: Dorofei
Well done, Dorofei, who belongs to the newly-elected Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev.The blue-eyed cat has an experience of “political” struggle. Dorofei once had a fight with a cat owned by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, who used to live next to Dmitry Medvedev. Dorofei did not win the fight with Gorbachev’s cat. The Medvedevs had to treat their cat with antibiotics for a month. Afterwards, they decided to castrate the cat to protect him from possible unpleasant situations in the future.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Bad Grammar of the Day
I don't think the press and public should be allowed to talk to the jury like that.Mr Yam cried in court after being asked about his life in China before seeking asylum in Britain in 1992.
Shortly after telling the jury that he had set up internet blogs in 2002 and 2004 criticising the Chinese government, the press and public were excluded from court.
Labels: Awards
