In Praise of Bo Diddley

who died at the age of 79 yesterday.

A tribute from the Animals

An asteroid strike could change your life

One wanders whether Ofcom are making the best use of their resources.

The organisation has commissioned a report on the macro economic scenarios for the year 2025.
Included in its finding,national income growwth is projected to rise 56%,per capita income 37%.However they point out in their analysis,two scenarios may affect these figures,a regional nuclear war and .....an asteroid strike

A tip for journalism students-never be a proof reader

This via Eddie Mair at the Radio 4 PM Blog

Bank holiday humour

Some humour for the Bank holiday weekend,courtesy of Daniel Finkelstein over at Comment is free.

A classic ad from the Seventies

How would the papers handle the end of the world

Kristine Lowe posted a humerous piece on made up headlines that concern the end of the World.


I added a few with a UK perspective to her commments box

Daily Telegraph-End of the World-Brits reported injured

Daily Mail-Immigrants flooding in as border control collapse due to Apocolypse

Express-As the stars fall from the Sky-Diana the Truth

The Sun-End of the World-Video shows God snorting Cocaine.

Excuse me but I need to rant

Posting has been light(actually non existent) as my internet connection has been down.

Once again the problems with call centres raise their ugly heads.

I am with Tiscali,according to my computer I was not recieving a dial tone yet there was nothing wrong with the line.Then the fun and games begins.I ring the technical helpline.After putting in around 20 different numbers for the options,I am put into a queuing system.Thirty minutes I am left waiting with morose music playing interupted periodically by a women's voice thelling me that my call is of concern to them but all the operators are busy.Then finally an answer.I am assuming that I was speaking to someone on the Indian sub continent.I may as well have been speaking to a machine.The lady in question had a prepared script which no matter how hard I tried,she would not deviate from.Even having explained that I had already carried out all the checks that she was proposing and telling me that the phone was working from their end,she could not be deflected.

Then she has the gall to wish me a nice day (complete with American accent) and asks if there is anything else she could do.Well yes you could repair my connection.

A bit of humour for the weekend

This from today's New Statesman where former ambassador to Uzbekistan,Craig Murray who muses on the anti alcohol lobby

I am thoroughly fed up with the anti-alcohol propaganda on every broadcast news programme at this time of year. Look at George W Bush. As a wealthy alcoholic, he was a relatively harmless parasite on society. Then he sobered up, found God, and killed millions. Leave alcohol alone - it does much less harm than religion