I have a lengthy post half-written about The Dig, Sutton Hoo and The Dark is Rising, but in the meantime thought some of you might be interested in the ODNB's commemoration of 14 December 1918, the first time a woman was elected to the British House of Commons and indeed the first election in which women could stand as candidates and vote (if over ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, I booked tickets on Eurostar for hano and myself, which meant I set up a user account and gave them my name and email address, and (obviously) payment details. As part of buying the tickets I also gave them both our names as the people who would be travelling ( Read more... )

white_hart posted yesterday about the anniversary of women first getting the vote in the UK, and one of my colleagues was speaking at an event about this yesterday. She came in today with a big poster showing all the constituencies where women are currently or have ever been elected - and all those where they haven't. It's on the Electoral Reform Society's ( Read more... )

Thought others might be amused by this:

...the Davies BBC Pronunciation Department Theory Of Geopolitics, which basically states that the importance of any foreigner to the politics of the UK can be reasonably assessed by looking at how much trouble the newsreaders take to get his name right. In general, the BBC appears to believe that all ( Read more... )

I see that David Cameron thinks we should be chasing absent fathers and compelling them to contribute towards their children. I wonder if he knows that the state has been attempting to get absent fathers to pay for their children since 1576, and has never been particularly successful. The Child Support Agency may be a spectacular failure, but it's ( Read more... )

Apparently ITV are going to do a dramatisation of Prescott's affair with his secretary. Since I could hardly bear to contemplate the idea of him having a sex life at all, I can think of few things I'd be less likely to watch...

Just reading another story about the loans-for-peerages investigation, and came across this:

A Conservative party spokesman said: "...We have received legal advice from the world's biggest law firm that all our loans comply with the law."
Size is obviously the most important thing. 'Oh, I'm sorry, I understand you're only the second-biggest law ( Read more... )

Out for a quick drink after work this evening with a friend who's back from the Middle East, who told us about Abdul Hamid II of Turkey banning various words that might encourage people to rebel against him, like 'freedom' and 'parliament' and 'deputy' and 'dynamite'. Oh, and 'nose'. Because he had a very large one. Apparently a French theatre ( Read more... )