Pedantry isn't boring – it's essential - David MitchellIntroducing new words is all very well, but sticklers like me prefer the traditional approach to languageTell that to Shakespear! Jeez, Mitchell is turning into (or maybe always was) a complete twat. I could hear his annoying nasal whine as I read this piece.
Simon Cowell is not a mass murderer, which is an important caveat. People do not die as a direct consequence of The X Factor — except in a few unverified cases of viewers witnessing their will to live exiting through the tops of their skulls as some off-key warbling nonentity makes a George Michael song even more emetic than it was in the first place and being congratulated on so doing by thick, doe-eyed, over-emoting panellists who themselves are possessed of not even a soupçon of talent.
And it’s here that there is something genuinely defining about The X Factor — in the elevation of suffocating mediocrity, the superficial, the banal and in the incontinent, demented shrieking of the studio audience, and — when the hopeless winner is announced, the statements of congratulation from No 10 and the opposition.
When the Geordie Joe McElderry won last year’s contest, they cut to a vast street party in his home town of South Shields where the idiotic mayor and his wife were dancing a jig, the sorts of scenes Britain once witnessed only on occasions such as VE Day.
The Rare Earth BoomBritain and other Western countries risk running out of supplies of certain highly sought-after rare metals that are vital to a host of green technologies, amid growing evidence that China, which has a monopoly on global production, is set to choke off exports of valuable compounds. Failure to secure alternative long-term sources of rare earth elements (REEs) would affect the manufacturing and development of low-carbon technology, which relies on the unique properties of the 17 metals to mass-produce eco-friendly innovations such as wind turbines and low-energy lightbulbs.
The murder rate has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years but police admit that the main reason may be the skills of paramedics and advances in medicine rather than a decline in violent attacks. Official figures to be published this month are expected to show a dramatic fall in the number of murders in the year to the end of last March.Via Tim Worstall
However, many police accept that the streets remain as violent as ever, with the number of serious woundings and shootings continuing to rise in many parts of the country.
Teens allowed to go to bed after midnight were almost a quarter – 24 per cent – more likely to suffer from depression and a fifth more likely to think about self harm than those who were set bedtimes of 10pm or earlier. The authors of the study, published in the journal Sleep, said that the more sleep adolescents get the better it is for their mental health. Adolescents who usually slept for five or fewer hours per night were 71 per cent more likely to suffer from depression and 48 per cent more likely to think about committing suicide than those who reported getting eight hours of nightly sleep, it was claimed.
Brown cannot admit the monumental error he and Ed Balls made in their economic policies because there are some mistakes just too big to apologise for. For the same reason Tony Blair cannot apologise for the Iraq war. Oops, sorry, the gun went off in my hand. Oops, sorry, I crashed the public finances. Even if Brown were verbally adept, rhetorically agile, a great communicator in touch with popular sentiment, he would struggle to find words to shape the next decade. It would be far easier for someone else to admit mistakes, draw a line under the past and spell out new directions...No, not a quote from The Daily Mail but from the great Guardian Lefty herself, Polly Toynbee.
...voters will throw Gordon Brown out – unless Labour does first.
Miliband's values are all wrong...if he is genuinely angry about the Chinese treatment of Akmal Shaikh, then why does he do nothing about the continued United States persecution of British computer hacker Gary McKinnon? McKinnon's mental problems are far better documented than Shaikh's, while his crime of computer hacking is far less serious than heroin smuggling. Yet the Foreign Secretary has not dared to utter a word of protest to the U.S. government, let alone haul in the U.S. ambassador for a richly deserved dressing down. Peter Oborne
Britain and other Western countries risk running out of supplies of certain highly sought-after rare metals that are vital to a host of green technologies, amid growing evidence that China, which has a monopoly on global production, is set to choke off exports of valuable compounds. Failure to secure alternative long-term sources of rare earth elements (REEs) would affect the manufacturing and development of low-carbon technology, which relies on the unique properties of the 17 metals to mass-produce eco-friendly innovations such as wind turbines and low-energy lightbulbs.
