This Times column by Daisy Waugh (the link is to a discussion of said column) is pretty unabashed in its entirely unnecessary ridiculing of Wales and the Welsh and the Welsh language. The gist of Waugh's column seems to be that house prices in rural Wales are such that they allow one to purchase a bigger house there than one would in central London ( Read more... )

There was a follow-up article of sorts in The Sun today to the one yesterday. It's somewhat sinister IMO.

Deva Kumarasiri from Sri Lanka is a Nottingham postmaster and Lib Dem councillor, and he refuses to serve customers except in English. ( Read more... )

More or less explicit in this hateful article (front page today) in the red top The Sun is the supposition that anyone living in the UK who does not have English as a first language is automatically less intelligent, or at least less worthy, than those who do. (Edit: the headline was 'Broken English'. Make of that what you will.)

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I'm a little upset by this story. Basically, the town council of Aberdaugleddau (Milford Haven) in Pembrokeshire in south Wales have drawn up plans to go against the law, as posited by the Welsh Language Act 1993, and not automatically provide both Welsh and English versions of council documents, just English ones. Their argument is that it costs ( Read more... )

Thank fuck.

I admired David Davis MP for his rather unorthodox way of demonstrating his distaste for the recent law on detention, and was worried that I had felt positive emotions from a Conservative politician ( Read more... )

Right, so to fan the flames of the apparent current crusade against anyone who drinks alcohol (after Ally Darling ups the tax on booze), plastic surgeon Peter Mahaffey has suggested that "public drunks" be fined by the police just for being drunk (rather than being drunk and disorderly). He suggests the fine be levied on those who are three times ( Read more... )

Lord Goldsmith starts to unravel at the edgesMy first (and enduring) response to this story is: ahHAHHAHAHAHAhahahhhahaaahHAHAha aHA aHA aHAHAHAHAHahahaaHAHA ( Read more... )

Ooh, BBC Online have changed their look. Now it's like Facebook. Good thing: I can bring "this day in history" box to the top of the page and find out that 1620 years ago Theodosus effected the creation of the Catholic Church, and that some centuries later, the predecessor of the Labour Party was formed. COINKYDINK ( Read more... )

Recently dyddgu directed me to a wonderfully acerbic cite called Speak You're Branes, which essentially highlights the worst offenders on online "leave a comment" fora, particularly BBC Online's "Have your [probably racist] say" pages. Whoever runs the site then calls the culprit a "walrus minge" or something, which frankly never ceases to be amusing ( Read more... )