"Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me.

"But I am now eighty-one and a half!!!!

"Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."

Kurt Vonnegut

Diary 2015

Lazy journalism

20th May 2015

The Guardian tells us that black girls have a "prodigious appetite" for literature unlike white boys who are described as the "least enthusiastic" readers.

This is lazy journalism. What has colour got to do with it? I don't imagine either of these groups excels or flounders because of their colour.

The Guardian has history here, once describing Constance Briscoe as a "black barrister", whereas she is, in fact, a barrister.

Good grief, do we never learn?

Crossrail 2

21/11/2015

What a lot of fuss over the proposal to put a Crossrail 2 station in the Kings Road. Invest or die! Most of the objectors seem to be closer to the latter than the former.