Those crazy American wordsmiths Merriam-Webster have come up with their Word of the Year for 2007. In fact they've come up with a whole top ten. The fact that it's based on voting done by internet users is clearly demonstrated in the list ( Read more... )

It seems religious education amongst stock boys may not be as good as it could be.


( Read more... )

Oft-touted criticisms of charity are that 'half the money is spent on administration and advertising' or 'you can never be sure the money goes where it should' or 'you never know if the money is even useful'. In a lot of cases these apply.

A friend of mine, boyzici, visited Tanzania during a gap year between school and university, and struck up ( Read more... )

( Under a cut because it auto-starts - sorry to anyone who had this happen already )

Of sorts anyway. It's all a bit random really.

Today is a day off. As such it has been filled with me doing things that I needed to do that I couldn't do whilst at work. I've sorted a cubic hectare of assorted post into a few roughly related piles which I shall deal with later. I suspect the recycling bin will be pretty full by tomorrow.

I need ( Read more... )

Time for a mass debate...

The BBC reports of a call from the The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for a government awareness campaign about the dangers of steroid abuse in the face of evidence that more and more people, some as young as 12 or 13, are using the substances to 'beef up'.

Lord Victor Adebowale, a member of the advisory council ( Read more... )

1. Which band would you like to see reform ( Read more... )

This isn't exactly news, the process was first started in 2005, but I haven't seen it being widely reported since I first learnt of it a few months ago.

Fellow Britons, it is time for a change. A change in our change. And lo, our change is changing.

From the Royal mint:

For the first time since decimalisation, the legal tender coins of the ( Read more... )

OK, so unless you've been living in a cave for the past 24 hours (or living somewhere other than Britain) you can't have failed to notice that HMRC has accidentally misplaced discs containing personal and banking details of every parent and child in the country because some undertrained (and probably underbrained) fuckwit decided to write the Child ( Read more... )

Last night I went to see Frank Skinner at the NIA. It's been 10 years since I last saw him (and indeed since he last did stand-up) and whilst his material has changed his general gutter-dwelling mind hasn't. Top stuff. From paedophiles, through terrorism, to giving the orals to women, no stone was left unturned and just when you think he's reached ( Read more... )