freedom costs money

There appear still to be real barbarians in the shape of the IRA and their less than amusing Sooty imitation, Sinn Fein. Quite apart from the original terrible murder the subsequent intimidation of witnesses, the absurd Martin McGuiness urging witnesses not to co-operate with the police but to go to the police ombudsman, the craven sophistry of Gerry Adams (gasp) quite how they could ever imagine that offering to shoot McCartney's murderers would ameliorate the situation is completely beyond me.

They liked Million Dollar baby.

Theirs is not an opinion that I am going to dignify with any comment.

Since nobody else appears to be going to say anything at all on the subject of the Prevention of Terrorism Act that is currently making its uncomfortable passage through parliament, I will have to have a bash at explaining why it’s wrong wrong wrong and why it’s absolutely imperative that, come the election, everyone uses their vote and gets rid of this lunatic government.

Here are this years Oscar nominations, apparently picked at random out of a very small hat by people who were late for an appointment.

Here are my inconsequential, impartial, ill-informed opinions:

Those of you with more cash than you know what to do with and no grammar skills will be pleased to know that thelanguagehawk.com is up and running at last.

Go there, go there now.

THIS IS VERY MUCH A WORK IN PROGRESS. THE WAY I SEE IT, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE A UNIFIED EUROPE EVENTUALLY. I'M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT SOME OF MY (ADMITTEDLY INCONSEQUENCIAL) IDEAS ON HERE AND I'D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF THEM. HERE'S THE FIRST BIT OF THE FIRST BIT (BEAR WITH ME - IT'LL BE A WHILE BEFORE I'VE ORGANISED MY THOUGHTS ENOUGH TO WRITE MORE).

It seems that the current collapses of grammar and punctuation are not entirely down to the simultaneous collapse of what might plausibly be regarded as an education system. It seems that our literary forefathers have, to put it bluntly, used all the grammar and punctuation up. What we are using now is the poor quality stuff that they thought uneconomical to use.

The European Union as it currently stands is an irritating parody of what it could be, but it is not completely useless.

Or it wouldn't be if anybody there had any courage to do what is obviously the right thing.

Researched published this week suggests that the nation could be on the verge of a potentially catastrophic outbreak of Hypochondria. The disease, which can devastate lives as it floods through people's nervous system like a white elephant in a china-shop, has been described as having symptoms ranging from "a bit of a sort of a nebulous ache" to sudden unexplained death.

THIS IS AN ATTEMPT AT SOME SORT OF SERIOUS PIECE. IF YOU'VE GOT ANY SUGGESTIONS (not things like "wensleydale cheese and strawberry jam go well together") PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LET ME HAVE THEM

I had a very interesting conversation recently that set me thinking. We were talking about class, and how one could tell whether someone was Working Class, Middle Class or Upper Class.