System Addict
My mailbox might not have been over its size limit, System Administrator, if you hadn’t sent me 43 sodding emails advising me of the fact while I was on holiday last week.
287 emails in my Inbox. Three – at most four – are important.
That first morning back from holiday really can put one in touch with one’s suicidal tendencies, can’t it?
Hooker line and Singh-er
The News Of The World‘s showbiz correspondent Rav Singh is ordinarily a contemptible read but big Minitrue respect for the sublime opening paragraph of his story today about the McCartney-Mills divorce:
HEATHER Mills will pocket around £1,000 an hour for her four-year marriage to Sir Paul McCartney in a hush-hush divorce deal — that’s about the same rate she charged as a hooker.
Bordering on the genius.
Truth Exempt Shady Selfish Arsehole
So Kulcha Secretary Tessa Jowell is “slightly bewildered” about why Mr. Tony’s close personal aide Ruth Turner was arrested at 6am yesterday to be questioned under suspicion of perverting the course of justice because Ms. Turner is “a person of utter decency and conscientiousness”.
Point number one, the offence of perverting the course of justice involves the commission of one or more of the following three distinct acts:
- fabrication or disposal of evidence;
- intimidating a witness or juror; and/or
- threatening a witness or juror.
Given the nature of these acts, Ms. Jowell, the boys and girls in blue tend not to make an appointment to arrest a suspect just in case that suspect, er, destroys/fabricates evidence and/or intimidates or threatens a witness in the interim.
Point number two, per previous posts, such public comments – particularly comments made in the media by such high profile and influential individuals as Cabinet ministers – might very well amount to contempt of court. I have no doubt that the Attorney General will be directing the police to investigate the comments of the estimable Ms. Jowell and similar comments made today by one D. Blunkett, Esq. (Mr. Bluffett said he wants the police to act with “thoroughness, not theatre”: I’m sure I can’t be the only one to remember that particular man’s particularly theatrical tenure as Home Secretary and therefore find myself rolling on the floor laughing my fucking arse off.)
Point three, people in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones. Despite instigating a quickie marital separation a year ago in order to hang on to her job by the skin of her teeth, Secretary of State Jowell (aka Mrs. David Mackenzie Mills) remains married to one of two defendants in judicial proceedings in Italy pertaining to an alleged act of bribery involving that country’s then Prime Minister.
At what stage will “New Labour” offically be renamed “VenaLabour”?
The public gets what the public wants but I want nothing this society’s got
“If I was a racist I wouldn’t have ate chicken curry.”
In the immortal words of Simon & Garfunkel, “Gee, but it’s great to be back home.”
Smoking Gun
BUY TWO PACKETS OF CIGARETTES AND GET THE THIRD FREE!
The United States of Yankee Doodle is a country you have to admire on so many different levels.
Crab Apple
The Minister finds himself shivering in sub-zero New York City.
Last night I paid $200 for two tickets to see The Vertical Hour, the new Broadway play by Sir David Hare starring Bill Nighy and Julianne Moore, at the charming Music Box Theatre (built by Irving Berlin, no less).
In the words of the Minister’s wife, Sir David has “fallen off a bit”.
I do not believe the following analysis of the Iraq invasion to be worth $200 of my – or anyone else’s – money:
Moore: “Oh, God – we really made a mess of it, didn’t we?”
Nighy: “You could say that.”
Now that Harold Pinter is effectively out of commission, Hare is theroretically the best dramatic polemicist the British Isles has left to offer. If that’s the case, I should be up for the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Hare has Nighy’s character complaining about his enormous self-esteem and crushing lack of self-confidence. It’s a shame Hare’s gone the other way.
Julianne Moore, incidentally, may be preternaturally beautiful but she can’t act on stage to save her life. And if Nighy’s twitches, tics and gurning are not genuine acting, he needs to see a neurologist immediately for some extra strength Dopamine.
Two hours and fifteen minutes and I still don’t know whether or not it was meant to be a comedy…
Celeb-spotting so far: we sat in front of the BBC’s Brian Barron on the flight over (he’s a big jazz fan; and he agrees that the BBC’s news output these days “is not the best” but doesn’t want to sound like a grumpy old dinosaur about it) and while taking the backstage tour at the Metropolitan Opera we bumped into the small-but-perfectly-formed West Wing alumnus Kristin Chenoweth.
Sonic Boom Bang A Bang Boy
That’s it. I’m off. I’m emigrating.
This is just getting silly.
Crash, bang, wallop
Today’s Caption Competition: what is Marti thinking?
How about: “I gave up smack for THIS?”
Slight return
Now there is officially no need to satirise our political leaders, will satire itself die?
Tony Blair has been accused of double standards after he declined to comment on the execution of Saddam Hussein after returning from his holiday in Miami.
MPs are demanding a statement from the Prime Minister about the taunting and unauthorised filming of the former Iraqi dictator just before he was hanged last Saturday. They recalled that Mr Blair has commented on the deaths of footballers, musicians and disc jockeys as well as speaking for the nation after the death of the Princess of Wales and the Queen Mother.
In 1998, he authorised a Downing Street statement backing a campaign for the release from prison of Deidre Rachid, a character in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.