When Richard Nixon went up on national TV following the announcement that he was under investigation for Watergate, he uttered the infamous line: “I am not a crook”.
And everyone instantly, regardless of their opinion on the affair, involuntarily thought of him as a crook. According to the linguist (hold in here, this is actually quite [...]
In response to: ‘Give us Wings’-Brendan O’Neil, Guardian Unlimited 8/07
Has to be said, Brendan, you have a point. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of an accelerating plane and the sudden jolt as it lifts off the runway and begins to gracefully rise as the world gets smaller and smaller around you. Not to mention [...]
Is ‘greenness’ simply a lifestyle choice? A lot of us, this blog’s readership included, might be perfectly comfortable with that assertion. Thanks to events over the past decade or so, the ‘green’ lifestyle has become an option for the West’s middle classes, but it is by no means the only one. The suburban ideal, like [...]
When Oscar, a furry emerald Muppet living in a trash can down Sesame Street coined the phrase ‘it’s not easy being green’, it was a fair description of the environmentalist’s dilemma. A relatively short time ago (by some of your standards anyway!), I grew up with Bert and Ernie’s bathtub exhortations to save water, [...]
A few days ago The Guardian newspaper reported on an MOD study looking at the strategic situation for Britain’s armed forces 30 years down the line. One of its main assumptions, with good reason, is that by then, it will be China and India, rather than the so-called transatlantic ‘anglosphere’ which set the global agenda. [...]
If various reports are to be believed, by the time you’ve read this I will have scrawled graffiti over your walls, stolen your car’s right wing mirror and shouted expletives at your elderly mother, all whilst kidnapping your cat. In fact, given all the wonderful press coverage our hooded recalcitrant ‘yoof’ receive, it’s a wonder [...]
