Public Interest.co.uk

And now we know why.

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Liz Jones spends a week pretending to be on the dole and discovers that life is tough:

I looked at the teenager at the till and thought how awful I must have seemed a couple of weeks before when I had marched up to her and said 'Why is your wine so cheap? Don't you have anything vaguely expensive?', and I humbly apologised.

Yes, of course you did.

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The idea that a politician, somehow, can't have it both ways is seriously deluded.

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If the Guardian banned the use of the words "Daily Mail" and "seal the deal" it might almost be worth reading.

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Jon Worth, who by all accounts is a bloke, bemoans the rising tide of men:

"Of the 27 heads of government at today's summit in Brussels, 26 are male". He simpers.

"What sort of sign does that send to Europe's citizens? Essentially that the EU is a closed, gentlemen's club".

Depends whose receiving the signal. Not all of us care.

"Some Brussels-based bloggers were not content with the state of affairs and decided to act to change things. Maria Weimer, Eurosocialiste and I launched Gender Balanced Commission 72 hours ago. The website has a petition demanding that at least one-third of the European commissioners should be women and that the European parliament should not approve the Commission unless this is the case. In the short time the campaign has been running we have received an overwhelming response, both online and in the mainstream media across Europe".

Overwhelmingly negative, I trust. We're not all interfering liberaloids.

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The most annoying thing about that Henry fellow is the way football commentators routinely refer to him as Thierry Henry. I can't think of any other player who gets his full name read out every time he touches the ball. Hey, we know who he is.

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No less than TWO former Big Brother contestants got a combined total of 848 votes in the Glasgow by-election last night.
This is a welcome trend. I seem to recall the dreaded Carole failing to get onto the council last year, and of course, the less said about blue-eyed Georgie the better. But if Imogen were to ask for my vote, I'd certainly consider it. We do, after all, need more women in politics.

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The idea that there should be any Crown Jewel sports is demented. There seems to be a debate going that this is a difficult one, a complex issue in fact, where you have to get the balance right between money gained from satellite tv versus the number of people watching.

Apparently a bunch of bureaucrats are better at figuring that one out than the businesses themselves.

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Simon Jenkins Writes Completely Pointless Article Intended to Provoke Shocker!

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So much for all that for better for worse malarkey.

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I've heard about this one, but never seen it before. What's so odd is that the runner didn't really have any excuse for losing his barings. It's not like he'd fallen over or nuffink'.

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Bring on the All-Blacks. Polly won't be pleased.

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It's just like reading the Guardian.

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I think the Hills Have Eyes one is the best.

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Hard to keep up with blogging these days. Okay, I've been in semi-retirement for the last five years or so, but I like to think I still read them on occasion. But there are just so many. For example, Call me Ishmael. No, I'd never heard of him either. But I came across him just now, and for invective and bile he knocks Devil's Kitchen into a cocked hat. I mean, this is one hell of a first post.

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The noted political philosopher and former deputy leader of the people's party Roy "Lardbutt" Hattersley thinks all is not lost for our current overlords:

"The party is facing a crisis of personal courage, confidence and conviction — not of social democratic policy. If the worst were to happen in May, some of us would make sure that the blame was laid on the politicians, not the winning idea that they have ignored".

I think this is the "socialism hasn't failed, it just hasn't been tried" gambit.

"It is not too late to escape from the Government’s failure to assert a belief in a different and better society. But time is running out. Mr Brown can redeem two years of missed opportunities by speaking at last about freedom and equality. If his nerve fails, it will be up to the rank and file to prove that the Labour Party still stands for something".

I think, in common parlance, Mr. Hattersley is guilty of that most contemporary sin: not getting it. It's the things it stands for that is the problem. I don't want to listen to Gordon Yellow Belly lecture me about freedom and equality any more than I want to hear the lardbutt do so. The idea of the rank and file bellyaching about their core values doesn't fill me with too much rapture, either.

There is a reason that the Labour party has failed, and it isn't the personal courage, confidence and conviction - or lack thereof - that is the problem. It's the ideology, stupid.

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Michael Blowhard has quit. Damn. My favourite culture blogger, gone.

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Mrs. Self is now writing for the Guardian! This is just the beginning. As the Independent starts to jettison its star writers, getting ready for that much-looked-forward-to closure, it's inevitable that the rest of us are going to have to suffer for our sins. I notice the Yazzmonster crops up with alarming frequency in the Daily Mail. We can expect more of that when the plug is finally pulled.
Who else? Robert Fisk in the Sun? Johann Hari in the Telegraph?
In an ideal world they'd surely all be banned for life. Or at least given a six month sabbatical, and sent off to The Writing School to fine tune their talent. The paper fails and their writers get rewarded by being picked off by their former competitors. You'd have thought these papers' proprietors would put two and two together. There is a reason these papers fail, you know.

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Last week I got an email from a group blogging at Nothing British, whose mission in life is to expose the lack of patriotism among the British National Party. On the one hand, one, I'm rather touched that anybody still asks me to link to anyone. Flattery will still get you somewhere, I suspect. And, two, I'd have thought patriotism, albeit a pretty eccentric - that's putting it mildly - is about the only thing the BNP have got going for them.

However, looking closer at the blog, they do seem happy enough to lambast the left for its role in promoting the rise of the BNP, and that's a view I'm delighted to support. The nerve some of the hardcore left has had in pretending that the BNP is right-wing is always slightly irritating. Collectivism, identity politics, separate but equal, capitalism is the same as fascism - these preoccupations are hardly libertarian/conservative ones. Let's face it, the BNP is basically the Labour party as it was in the fifties. What's the difference?

So more power to Nothing British's elbow. I'll stick'em on the blogroll soon, too.

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We have a solution! I found it here. Thought I'd share it with you, because I sure in hell aren't the only person to have this problem. How it was caused was still a mystery, but at least it's done, and I can now listen to Subo covering the Rolling Stones in all her majestic glory.



I believe this will be her next single, too.

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