"60% of men trim their pubes. What, really?"
posted on Sep 15, 2008 - View this thread

40% of Afghan aid returns to donor countries. In today's guardian, it has been reported that 40% of the money promised/delivered to aid Afghan has been spent on "corporate profits and consultancy fees" and that "Much of the money earmarked for aid is diverted to political or military purposes."
posted on Mar 25, 2008 - View this thread

1,000 Albums to hear before you die compiled from The Guardian's assorted music reviewers (assisted by readers who then told them which ones they missed). You won't want to be planning to expire any time too soon with these to get through.
posted on Mar 13, 2008 - View this thread

Morrissey makes some controversial remarks to the NME. Defensive explanations by the interviewer, attempts at defusing the situation and threats of legal action ensue, as does satire.
posted on Dec 1, 2007 - View this thread

Jon Ronson decides "I'm going to tell my son the worst swearword in the world". His follow up article is also interesting. Incidentally, his "Bad Science" colleague from The Guardian did uncover a list of the worst swearwords from the BBC no less (and previously)
posted on Oct 23, 2007 - View this thread

Our shameless culture, by David Cox (The Guardian): Iran has shown the British what kind of people we really are: without honour and without shame. The Sun, the now officially approved disseminator of British military information, notes that navigator Arthur Batchelor was "tormented" by being called "Mr Bean". Understandably, he had to cry himself to sleep. Perhaps President Ahmadinejad feared that the goody bags might just prove a step too far. But no, they were gratefully received, in a response that aptly captures the infantilisation of a people that once ruled much of the world. Navigator Batchelor has however since complained that the quality of his own bag's contents was not what he had hoped.
posted on Apr 10, 2007 - View this thread

The Guardian examines "nu snobbery" and the social acceptability among the British press and middle class of ridiculing the working class. The chav phenomenon has been discussed many times on MeFi, but if anything it has gotten more widespread, and as documented in the article, even spawned Chav Discos. Where will it all lead? Has Britain slipped completely back into class snobbery - in both directions - or did it never really go away?
posted on Apr 11, 2006 - View this thread

TED UK
(click through to What is Ted : About Ted : Highlights. You'd think a conference with Freemon Dyson speaking could afford a decent web designer)
posted on Jul 25, 2005 - View this thread

KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. A follow up to this post.
posted on Oct 18, 2004 - View this thread

Sebastian Horsley - a man who's slept with more than 1,000 prostitutes - gives a controversial and candid account of his experience of paying for sex
posted on Sep 24, 2004 - View this thread

I feel like I have stepped through the looking glass.... first, we have the truly surprising but welcome sight of Michael Howard celebrating cultural diversity in Britain, then we have David Goodhart, editor of Prospect, apparently a magazine of the left, suggesting that perhaps we have quite enough immigrants in the UK for the moment, thank you. Goodhart's article is very provocative and very important, it's a debate that needs to be had and which has most certainly and entertainingly been joined by Trevor Phillips. I love a schism!
posted on Feb 24, 2004 - View this thread

Trusting The Redcoats: How many independent-minded Americans actually rely on the BBC (specially the World Service) for accurate coverage of American politics? Not to mention The Guardian. Is it a strictly an elitist, liberal/left-wing phenomenon? What does it mean? What does it say about better-informed liberal newspapers and media of the U.S.? If so, why aren't like-minded Europeans just as cosmopolitan and, say, pay the same attention to news sources like The New York Times, NPR and others, rather than stolidly sticking to their own national staples?
posted on Jan 14, 2004 - View this thread

It’s not a mass-produced American product. It's either "a turnaround in American publishing, or... radically wrongheaded" - but it looks like The Guardian may be launching a version in the USA soon. Could such a venture lead to the demise of the venerable old Fleet Street institution, owned by an independent trust? Is it overreaching ambition or a daring entry into niche market? More interesting to me, are there any similar non-profit media organisations in your part of the world (wherever that may be)?
posted on Jul 7, 2003 - View this thread

Elliott could no longer bear the waste. He had six staff and a budget of £3.5m a year. He had a potential client group of 25,000 users ... but at the end of all his work and all that public money, the total number of detox beds he was able to provide was five. The Guardian reports from the front-line of the drugs war. (part two) You may have no interest in Drugs or the UK but read this superb piece for a profile of a bureaucracy in farcical, tragic, total collapse.
posted on May 23, 2003 - View this thread

It's just not cricket - it would appear that the Cricket commentator at The Guardian is having a bad day.
posted on Mar 14, 2003 - View this thread

Stalin, Hitler, Guilt, Finger-Pointing And Friendship: Timothy Garton-Ash reviews, a trifle superciliously but fairly, a very lively and soul-searching polemic between two consummate, consuming and irresistible writers, Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens - who also happen to be old friends. Funnily enough, I'd suggest reading Hitchens's review in the Atlantic Monthly first; then the three [1] extracts from [2] Amis's book [3] and, finally, Hitchens's reply to them. All in all, it's that rare thing: a long, juicy, well-written and passionately argued polemic with plenty of insights into how generations come to terms with the honest indiscretions and oversights of their youth. Oh and there's a lot about communism, nazism, totalitarianism and the Sixties too...
posted on Sep 5, 2002 - View this thread

Essex is the New Jersey of England, but is trying to change the public perception of my beautiful home county. Not all Essex girls are slappers and it's not all industrial wasteland. But why tell the rest of England about our beautiful secrets?
posted on Aug 30, 2002 - View this thread

The America-Hating British? In the UK's Spectator : "And this time it’s not just the usual America-haters at the Guardian and the BBC, but the likes of Alice Thomson, Stephen Glover, Alasdair Palmer, Matthew Parris, my most esteemed Telegraph and Speccie colleagues...many people over here had no idea quite how ridiculous you are. You’re shocked by us, we’re laughing at you. In fairness, instead of coasting on non-existent diseases and wild guesses at the weather, the always elegant Matthew Parris at least attempted to expand Guantanamo into a general thesis. ‘We seek to project the message that there are rules to which all nations are subject,’ he wrote in the Times. ‘America has a simpler message: kill Americans, and you’re dead meat.’ This caused endless amusement over here. As the Internet wag Steven den Beste commented, ‘By George, I think he’s got it!....’ PS What is an internet wag anyway?
posted on Feb 11, 2002 - View this thread

BBC 2 are axing their current channel idents One of the pleasures of this UKtv channel is seeing how they'll be banging, crashing or stretching that little number two. Is this a revolutionary development or just another example of meddling from a channel which is having trouble finding an identity within the UK's multi-channel future?
posted on Nov 14, 2001 - View this thread

Virgin Mobile Phone Records Which Map Users Whereabouts Kept Indefinitely. Admittedly, this data is only accurate to within a few hundred metres at the moment, but 'When the new breed of 3G - third generation - phones comes on stream, probably next year, they will enable the users' location to be pinpointed to within a couple of metres'. I know the current climate is increasingly pro-identity cards, pro-police state, but this can't be right, surely? Why do they want to keep this information indefinitely?
posted on Oct 30, 2001 - View this thread

Limp Liberals - Aintchasickovem? A really fine left liberal answer to Berkely and all the faint hearts. And it fits right in with my own thinking. It's time we stood up and got counted for human rights against any "culture" or "religion" that denies them. Polly Tonybee writes an excellent and timely piece. Liberals too, should not "go wobbly" out of a plain cowardly "respect" for reactionary strains of Islam, Christianity or Judaism. What do you think?
posted on Oct 10, 2001 - View this thread

Archer sentenced to 4 years... This may not mean much to those from outside the UK but there will be celebrations in much of England tonight as the 'Teflon Tory' finally takes fall. Sometimes justice is done, even to politicians with immense arrogance, money and no apparent morals. The scale of the web of deceit is fascinating and the ending quite poetic.
posted on Jul 19, 2001 - View this thread

Pathology Tribunal Collapses.
One pathologist, who asked not to be named, said last night: "This is going to call into question the credibility of the board. How can the public, let alone coroners and the police, have confidence in the crucial work it does if it can't run a disciplinary hearing?"
posted on Apr 25, 2001 - View this thread

This is a list of a 101 things we don't miss in the UK. Actually, it's mostly 70% right. Any suggestions for what's missing?
posted on Apr 22, 2001 - View this thread

News picks from the Guardian. This is a very useful service of course: The Guardian links to top news stories on the web- weblog style... But is this a weblog or just a related links page...? Either way it's a news junky's heaven...
posted on Apr 11, 2001 - View this thread

Guardian weblog has assembled a special page with foot-and-mouth disease links, mostly (tho not completely) Eurocentric. The links include one to an elaborate backgrounder (with a few graphic photos) from thepigsite.com.
posted on Mar 15, 2001 - View this thread

Scotland Yard raids Saatchi Gallery over complaints of child pornography in Tierney Gearon show - Why? Gearon, a former fashion model turned art photographer, has included in the show a couple of pictures of her children naked. "In one the two children are wearing theatrical masks while in the other her son is urinating in the snow." Gearon sees nothing wrong with her pictures, but apparently they make some people a little nervous.
posted on Mar 10, 2001 - View this thread