Offmessage

I like Giles Coren.  This rant at the Times sub editors who removed a single ‘a’ from one of his pieces only makes me like him more. A brief snippet to whet your appetite…

I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you’ve fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it.

As always Manic has his finger on the pulse…

So – what happened here exactly? We all knew that we’d gone to war on a lie and then suddenly the BBC thought that it had found proof. So it went with it, and when Alistair Campbell et al came out all guns blazing the BBC, high on knowing they were right, stood up tall and fought back. And then David Kelly committed suicide. And then Hutton was a whitewash. And suddenly all the media can focus on is the mistakes made by the BBC.

Fundamentally though… We still went to war on a lie, we’re still embroiled in Iraq where more coalition troops have died since the “end” of the war than during it and the Government still cannot be trusted. This has the whiff of a Prime Minister with too much power. To me it smells all too similar to Thatcher and the Miners or Thatcher and the Students. For God’s sake don’t let them break the BBC.

In about an hour and a half the clocks go back, as we move from BST (British Summer Time) to GMT. What a load of arse. Like we really need the clocks to go back – the days suddenly get dark depressingly early, and by all accounts we’re actually more prone to accidents. I vote to can it altogether, and move to “double summertime” in summer and keep BST through the winter… It would make for a much friendlier winter.