Peter Risdon

Is dying. No… wait. Ronnie Drew will never die.

Eric decided that given his lack of training and the critical food situation that to go to Belgium would have been a suicide mission
Via Mr Eugenides. Reading this in context, it was several minutes before the tears of laughter cleared sufficiently for me to type.

Sometimes, it helps to know a little javascript.

Tim Blair:
Some weeks I’ll buy eggs from ranges so free that have no fences at all and cheerful hens volunteer their produce to gentle PETA workers wearing elf costumes. Other weeks I’ll select a carton from Buchenwald Farms, where caged and dewinged birds are nailed down as steroid-boosted eggs are extracted via their beaks. It’s [...]

They are ploughing up all the setaside fields round here. We face looming grain shortages, thanks to biofuel cultivation. The barn owl that used to work these fields until a week ago has disappeared, as the three barn owls did from the fields I used to walk in before they built the housing estates a [...]

Lord Mancroft has stirred up controversy by criticising nurses in a West Country hospital:
He told peers: “The nurses that looked after me were mostly grubby. We’re talking about dirty fingernails, slipshod, lazy.
“It’s a miracle I’m still alive. But worst of all my Lords they were drunken and promiscuous.
“How do I know that? Because if you’re [...]

The BBC reports:
Israeli leaders are warning of an imminent conflagration in Gaza after Palestinian militants aimed rockets at the southern city of Ashkelon.
The deputy defence minister said the stepped-up rocket fire would trigger what he called a “bigger holocaust” in the Hamas-controlled coastal strip.
The use of the word “holocaust” by an Israeli minister, in [...]

The police made no attempt to investigate a burglary, not even visiting the crime scene.
That’s news? They almost never bother to investigate burglaries.
But here’s the bit that caught my eye:
Officers failed to visit Stephen Earp after the break in – even though his wife had contacted police and been told not to touch anything because [...]

The Conservative Party has been labelled “The Nasty Party” and “The Stupid Party”. Both are, to some extent, true. Here’s a quote about the Tories, from Winston Churchill:
A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad…sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial [...]

It’s a vintage week for amusing tales from the fringe:
A British man who aimed to walk from Bristol to Gandhi’s birthplace in Porbander, India without spending any money has been forced to give up at Calais… He is a member of the Freeconomy movement, which believes in a ” moneyless society in which no money [...]