Blatherskite

Guinness saves the world - again

Well that's what Guinness seems to be implying with this latest bout of 'hang the expense' eccentricity. Booze ads are getting like the cigarette ads of yore, you can't say Guinness is good for you any more so you have to essay something completely meaningless (with a big budget). I quite like ...

Terry scores winner, dad caught by NoW

Well that's life in the football spotlight I suppose, John Terry scores the winner for Chelsea against Manchester United while his dad gets nicked by the News of the World for flogging drugs in an Essex pub. John Terry and Chelsea were rather lucky to beat a well-organised but rather toothless ...

There’s proper wars and other wars - and Afghanistan comes into the latter category

Paddy Ashdown was all over the radio yesterday saying we were losing in Afghanistan and the Government should form a proper war cabinet to pursue this life and death struggle, just like it did in 1939 and 1916 (when David Lloyd George became prime minister mid-way through the First World ...

American on brink of buying Arsenal

Not another one you might say after the disaster of Tom Hicks and George Gillett at Liverpool and the Glazer clan at Manchester United (well it isn't a disaster yet but with all that debt you never know). But the Arsenal board seem to be waving Denver businessman Stan Kroenke through, ...

Clear message from Afghan tragedy - but is anyone paying attention?

The killing of five British servicemen by a 'rogue' Afghan policeman is clearest signal yet that the Afghans, or a significant minority of them at least, want the British and their Nato allies out of there. The Afghan police are supposed to be our allies after all, with British troops charged ...

More dodgy numbers - this time on child obesity

Apparently our children are not now going to resemble Eddie Murphy in a fat suit - according to the latest stats from the obesity 'experts' anyway. A few years ago we were told that that around a third of girls were going to grow up obese (very fat to you and ...

Has the ONS screwed up its recession figures?

Well Mr Blatherskite only asks because most people thought the recession was turning around May and June this year but the Office of National Statistics announced a couple of weeks ago that the UK economy was still in recession, declining by 0.4 per cent between July and September. These figures get ...

C4’s programme director Kevin Lygo is most expensive public employee

**Channel 4's director of programmes Kevin Lygo is the biggest individual burden on the public purse it appears, having trousered some £1m plus last year. Quite why C4, which doesn't actually make any programmes, needs to pay its chief programmer such a generous sum is something the Government and Ofcom might ...

Nutt’s banana skin for Johnson

As far as we know bananas aren't classified drugs (although if you rolled them up into a joint who knows?) but the drug-induced banana skin home secretary Alan Johnson has just slipped on could be the end of him as a potential Labour leader. He has, of course, sacked government drugs ...

Rough ride for President Tony

The socialists don't want Tony Blair as President of Europe because they think he's too right wing, was close to George Bush and is a war-mongering so and so. The centre right (in Europe nobody in Europe is ever just right wing) don't want him because he's a socialist (that's ...