Author: yorksranter

How about some music? The aim of this feature is to make D^2’s thursday music links look silly, and the only rule is that everything has to be performed by someone other than the original. Call it an agonising reappraisal. Here’s the Clash with Janie Jones, doing “(Get Up I Feel Like Being A) Sex…

Read More I’ll show you thursday music link…(on Sunday)

It seems horribly fitting that, with the Tories back in, Wigan have started winning the league again. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with them. It’s just the effect of the years when they won literally everything, year in, year out. And Maurice Lindsay, of course. If we have to have Wigan though, I…

Read More baaack…

Am I right in thinking this is a form of “superempowerment”, of the NATO forces on the border, the Taliban, and the Pakistani Frontier Corps on the other side? Pakistani authorities say that the checkpoint guards tried to alert the US helicopters that they had strayed into Pakistani territory by firing in the air, but…

Read More the frontier

(Inspiration here.) A numerical variable was today reported to have either increased or decreased or remained constant. Depending on which one, this may represent a record value for this variable, a dramatic rise or fall since whichever point in time is required to show a dramatic rise or fall, or nothing whatsoever. In a development…

Read More This is an article about a statistic

Sorry about this, but yet more journobashing follows. And I warn you that the actual information in this story is media-bollocks, but it may be interesting all the same. Zoe Williams interviews Rachel “Boris Johnson’s Sister” Johnson, editor of the Lady. Rachel Johnson has been editing the Lady for almost a year. In that time,…

Read More a glimpse of the press in action: Johnson family edition

Has anyone else found that the Guardian‘s coverage of the Labour conference made them want to throw up? Here’s Patrick “Unseasonably Mild” Wintour: But his efforts to show he can lead a united, re-energised party committed to redefining the centre ground of politics look likely to be hampered by the expected decision of his defeated…

Read More a glimpse of the press in action: Ed Miliband edition

This Clinton person is making sense, on Israeli politics, on settlements, and on this: Moreover, Clinton said, Hamas militants will soon have military technology that will allow their relatively low-damage attacks on Israeli population centers to have greater accuracy and lethality. “It’s just a matter of time before the rockets have a GPS system on…

Read More now you tell us

OK, so let’s remind ourselves of the rising chatter about a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan from a couple of months ago. We know that there was some evidence of Hezb-i Islami cooperating with ISAF. The first group targeted as part of the diplomatic effort were the Haqqani network. Since then, we’ve learned about the build-up…

Read More in this week’s edition of the Low Expectations Journal