BY PAUL T HORGAN The return of David Cameron to front-line politics has elicited strong reactions from all areas of the political spectrum. On Sunday it was inconceivable that Cameron would be anything other than a former Prime Minister, travelling the lecture circuit and sitting on the board of numerous organisations while acting as a consultant for others. Elevation to a Knight of the Garter … Continue reading The Return of the King
BY PAUL T HORGAN Israel would cancel the blockade as soon as Hamas returns the hostages that this terrorist organisation has taken. Egypt’s participation in the blockade of Gaza is not due to pressure from Israel but because there is no love lost between Cairo and Gaza, despite ethnic affinities. Egypt has her own Islamist problem and does not want to add to it. There … Continue reading A Tragedy of Their Own Making
BY PAUL T HORGAN Twenty twenty-four is election year in the USA, when American voters may realise that the two major parties will present two very poor candidates, one who is obviously combating mentally-debilitating senility, and the other who is combatting criminal prosecutions, only some of which are politically-motivated. Away from the USA, it is also the centenary year for two major events of socialist … Continue reading 2024: A Socialist Odyssey, Part I
BY PAUL T HORGAN Twitter has once again shown its contempt for libel law, just as it showed that the social media site could ignore superinjunctions and name Ryan Giggs as an adulterer. Users of the site knew the name hours after The Sun broke the story on the basis that the BBC Presenter had been absent from an advertised appearance on a prime-time show … Continue reading The Sun is Being Darvo’d
BY PAUL T HORGAN The first Godfather movie in the trilogy is essentially a tale of three betrayals. The first betrayal is by Paulie, a Corleone soldier and the Don’s chauffeur, who calls in sick, and thus leaves the hapless Fredo with escort and driving duties. Don Vito narrowly escapes assassination as he walks to his car, but is instead badly woulded, when, if Paulie … Continue reading Boris’s Banishment & the Business of Betrayal
BY PAUL T HORGAN In a way, Jimmy Savile was responsible for Top of the Pop‘s persistence and success in its heyday, which I suggest to be the 1970s and 1980s. In an era of three-channel analogue television, it was strange to me that ITV never produced a competing peak-time programme in those decades using the same formula of bands miming along to their charting … Continue reading Virginia Plain Ain’t Big Enough For Moonwalking
BY PAUL T HORGAN It is usually crass to compare something in modern life to the Nazi Party. And yet its parallels with the SNP are compelling. The SNP, or rather the National Scottishist Damning Anglos Party, has followed the Bohemian Corporal’s playbook ever since it took power in 2007, and certainly since Nicola Sturgeon became Leader. Firstly, the SNP is a blatantly nationalist party, … Continue reading The Rise & Fall of the National Scottishists
BY PAUL T HORGAN It may be no exaggeration to state that the most eagerly-awaited music album of 2003 was Kraftwerk’s Tour de France Soundtracks. While other acts may have had larger fanbases, Tour was Kraftwerk’s first album of original music for 17 years. Well, that is not entirely true, the title track had been released as a stand-alone single back in 1983. Tour de … Continue reading From Dusseldorf To Albuquerque With No Hats
BY PAUL T HORGAN It was Bagehot who stated that the “Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it…Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.“. Unfortunately, rather than daylight, a portion of our royalty has been illuminated by something akin to a battery of 800,000,000 candela … Continue reading The Prince’s Dilemma
BY PAUL T HORGAN Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star was not the first single to have a music video made for it; that accolade seems reserved for Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The Buggles’ single was instead the first-ever video played by MTV back when MTV was good. However, music artists had been making promotional films for their singles years before as a way of avoiding … Continue reading Pop Bursts
BY PAUL T HORGAN Of course this is not the first time that the US Congress building has been successfully stormed by a hostile force. Back in 1814 the British Army mounted a raid on the American capital as part of the clearly incorrectly-named War of 1812. While the Redcoats respected the property of private individuals, no such mercy was shown to federal buildings, which … Continue reading Westminster Must Not Fall
BY PAUL T HORGAN Prince Harry has been in the news quite a lot, and the media seem to be in the process of casting him as the latest incarnation of the dissolute minor royal, a cause of embarrassment to the monarchy, perhaps even calling the monarchy into question. T’was ever thus. This is unfair. Harry has spent his adult life being overshadowed by his older … Continue reading In Defence of Prince Harry
BY PAUL T HORGAN One aspect of the current situation is that television viewers have been treated to a rather limited version of Through the Keyhole. The original programme had sauce impresario Lloyd Grossman touring the well-appointed interior of someone’s dwelling, inviting viewers to guess the occupant. The modern version is the inadvertent consequence of people having to appear on television while also practising self-isolation. Rather … Continue reading Bookcase Wars
BY PAUL T HORGAN The BBC seems to have fallen into bad habits in its news coverage of the current pandemic. Being a natural disaster rather than a scandal or a government crisis, it has been necessary for the state broadcaster to defer to the technical commentary of experts. The experts to whom the BBC defers have been, for the most part, Labour activists of … Continue reading Behind BBC Bias
