Dadblog

Rather wonderful to see that Pepys had exactly the same problems with builders 300 years ago as we do now:

“In the morning seeing a great deal of foul water come into my parlour from under the partition between me and Mr. Davis, I did step thither to him and tell him of it, and he did seem very ready to have it stopt, and did also tell me how thieves did attempt to rob his house last night, which do make us all afraid. This noon I being troubled that the workmen that I have to do my door were called to Mr. Davis

It’s a pretty good day to be a Labour Party member, and there haven’t been many of those recently. I think Blair’s comments today on his “Big Conversation” (an awful name which might just catch on in a Lyndon Johnson sort of way) are very interesting. And Polly Toynbee has written a good piece about the nihilism of metropolitan dinner party bien-pensant leftwingers.

Astonishingly, the Register is running a massive Microsoft campaign at the moment, including a rich-media overlay without a chuffing close button.

Is the food industry really in for a kicking? It begins to seem so, judging by the anecdotes of a select committee meeting today, in which:

- The managing director of Cadbury admitted that consumers are being “deluded” by food labelling, using the example of a pot of yoghurt carrying a low fat label which he had bought recently, believing it to be a healthy snack. In fact, he said, the yoghurt contained more calories than a Cadbury’s Crunchie bar.

- An MP claimed an adult would need to go on a nine-mile run to work off a McDonald’s meal.

- David Hinchliffe, the MP who lobbied for and won a ban on tobacco advertising in the UK, said there were “parallels” between the fast food industry and tobacco, and called for more hard-hitting health warnings on food products.

- The managing director of Cadbury (again) said health warnings were for “dangerous things”, adding “I don’t think a Curly-Wurly is a dangerous thing”. I wonder how much he weighs…..

Blull: the lull in regular blogging which happens when people keep organising meetings in the small part of the day when you’ve got used to blogging. This can only be obviated by a: installing a proper wireless broadband network at home so blogging becomes really easy or b: by refusing to attend such meetings and getting fired. Obviously, pursuing path b very quickly makes path a impossible.

Zeugma: “A construction in which a single word, especially a verb or an adjective, is applied to two or more nouns when its sense is appropriate to only one of them or to both in different ways, as in He took my advice and my wallet.
Syllepsis.” Courtesy of dictionary.com and Sheila Pulham, and hence a real word.

Interesing article from A List Apart: Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards.

We’ve launched the beta version of the digital edition of the Guardian and Observer. Check it out (but you will need to register….).

Interesting piece from the Online Journalism Review about integrating online and print news teams, courtesy of Luke Hoyland.

A great birthday haul this morning: new leather jacket, new car stereo, Brick Lane, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, The Adventure of English, It’s My Life, The Big Sleep, The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1, Think Tank, two books of Hardy poems, a pictorial history of Sevenoaks (this is bizarre), Vernon God Little, a vest, Odeon cinema vouchers, a Konditor & Cook custard tart and some Baci chocolates, and it isn’t even 11am yet….

Being comfortably ensconced in the “unconvinced” diaspora when it comes to war-in-Iraq matters, it’s easy to get the impression that Britain is now, overwhelmingly, anti-American, anti-war and, particularly, anti-Bush (only the last of these being something I can wholeheartedly sign up to). But this probably isn’t true. According to a Guardian/ICM poll:
62% of British voters believe the US is “generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world”
Only 15% of agree that America is the “evil empire” in the world (the fact that this question was even asked in this way speaks volumes for how anti-Americanism has taken root in London media circles)
Opposition to the war has slumped by 12 points since September to only 41% of all voters (which is still massive, I would say. Normally, Brits like a good war)
Two-thirds of voters believe British and American troops should not pull out of Iraq now but instead stay until the situation is “more stable”.
Blair’s net popularity rating of minus 12 points is a significant improvement over last month’s net rating of minus 18 points.
43% say they welcome George Bush’s arrival in Britain than the 36% who say they would prefer he did not come.
Only Liberal Democrats are marginally more unhappy about his arrival, with 43% against and 39% willing to welcome him.
Most “twentysomethings” welcome Mr Bush. Hostility is strongest amongst the over-65s.
A majority of men - 51% - welcoming the president’s arrival, compared with only 35% of women.
Pro-Americanism is strongest among Tory voters with 71% saying the US is a force for good. But it is nearly matched by the 66% of Labour voters who say the US is a force for good. Anti-Americanism is strongest among Liberal Democrat voters but is still only shared by 24% of them

So, if you’re a leftwing woman aged more than 65, you’re really, really pissed off.