9 years and 364 days ago, the then MEP (and later cabinet minister), Chris Huhne caught a flight back from Brussels to London Stansted, landing at 10.27pm. He picked up his car, with the distinctive number plate H11HNE, and sped back to his home in Clapham, South London, setting in motion a chain of events that would ultimately see him and his wife, economist Vicky Pryce,
each sentenced to 8 months in jail. [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan
on Mar 11, 2013 -
83 comments
The
National Portrait Gallery's Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize shortlist for 2010 has been announced. Among the entries, and causing a small ripple of controversy, is
Panayiotis Lamprou's Portrait of My British Wife, which is reopening up where mainstream sensibilities of the border between art of and voyeurism lie. The photo features Lamprou's wife Christina looking directly at the camera.
Wearing no knickers.
[Links are SFW. NSFW links appropriately flagged on the pages themselves] [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan
on Sep 20, 2010 -
72 comments
In response to
shortfalls in organ donation, policy is undergoing a serious rethink in several countries. In
Australia, the government has just lifted a ban on animal-to-human transplants. In the UK, the Chief Medical Officer has called for
presumed consent, while in Israel a new law gives donor card carriers
a legal right to priority treatment if they should require an organ transplant. Many are looking to
Spain, which leads the world, having seen the number of deceased donors per million people - a commonly used benchmark - increase from 14 in 1989 when a new system was put in place to 34.2 last year. Interestingly,
people committing suicide have a higher rate of donating organs than average.
posted by MuffinMan
on Dec 21, 2009 -
99 comments
On
British TV last night,
Gail Trimble, a Classics scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, singlehandedly
trounced the opposing team in
University Challenge. To some a
smug,
bluestocking know-it-all, to others a
role model. Cue the fightback and lots of
questions about whether we, as a society, actually like really clever people and specifically, clever
women?.
posted by MuffinMan
on Feb 24, 2009 -
166 comments
A
biased shadow of its
former self, a
waste of money dominated by
champagne socialists, a victim of
media fragmentation, a
political pawn or still the
trusted heart of the UK's (and, arguably, the world's) broadcasting world? As
scandal after
scandal threatens to undermine confidence in the BBC and the voices calling for the dissolution of the licence fee gain a more
cohesive platform, can the BBC survive, - is it
the solution or the problem, and can the British public really afford to let it die the
death of a thousand cuts?
On the day after the BBC announces it will put every UK
publically owned oil painting online and the Director General talks about the BBC's "special responsibility" to culture in the UK, what should the role of the BBC be and, perhaps more importantly, what should it cost?
posted by MuffinMan
on Jan 29, 2009 -
50 comments
