Blogs

Opponents of taxation, like the right-wing Taxpayers Alliance, like to characterise their position as a populist one. They're representing the "ordinary taxpayer", the common working man and woman, they insist, against the rapacious state which wants to take what they can least afford.

A few months ago we noted the difficulties the good people at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation seemed to be having meeting basic standards of charity oversight - like filing their company returns, or finding human beings as trustees rather than off-the-shelf companies.

My friend votes in Virginia. Since she lives in West Yorkshire, I recently had the privilege of witnessing[1] her postal vote, and thus being present as the US electoral process takes an early tottering step.[2]

Take a deep breath. The Olympics are finally over. Daytime TV can return to reassuring re-runs of Murder She Wrote. Huw Edwards no longer has to pretend nightly that anyone gives a shit about dressage.

I love local authorities. The petty corruption. The bakelite councillors with their Dennis Norden glasses. The endless 'wheelie bin Nazis' news stories. The sheer, unashamed, slightly retro municipality of it all.

And so to New York, for the celebrity-studded launch of the 'Tony Blair Faith Foundation', dedicated to promoting "religious faith....[to] help unite the World and shape its direction for the better." Of course.

'Meet Max Gogarty - 19, from north London, spends his money on food, booze and skinny jeans, writes for Skins in his spare time. He's off to India and Thailand to have a good time, and you can join him in his weekly blog'.

There's a very addictive website called "the Darwin Awards."

Darwin Awards are given to "honour people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion."

Controversy recently struck Facebook, the “social networking site” that serves as the front organisation for a global collective consciousness, albeit one with diminutive intelligence.