After Parliament has published the MPs expenses claims in the greatest of detail, there would seem to have been no need for the Telegraph to publish any more information. Unfortunately, and presumably in order to save the taxpayer money, the printer used by Parliament appears to have printed huge black splodges over most of the [...]

…I feel slightly nauseous myself, having just used a Bon Jovi song title, but it’s perhaps the most one I could think of for this quotation I came across. To set the scene: the article talks about drugs used as a legal ‘high’ — stuff like Salvia, amyl nitrate and isobutyl nitrate, which do not [...]

You know how sometimes there’s a big breaking story that makes international news, because it somehow ‘fits’ the story the media are selling that day, despite how it’s not really that newsworthy. This one, for example: Police in Belgium are investigating a complaint from a teenager who says a tattooist peppered her face with stars [...]

…is that I’m fairly certain some people would do this normally. But what a great ad (hat-tip: @bengoldacre).

I’ve got no objection to people who want to use complementary, alternative, holistic, wholefood sorts of therapies, as long as they can afford to spend their money on them and haven’t been conned into thinking that serious scientific tests have shown them to be worthwhile. After all, these are now generally termed complementary medicines; they [...]

…a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat, snake or bugsWikipedia: Geek Or, as the modern day freak-and-geekshow is now referred to, “Britain’s Got Talent”. I had been conteplating whether or not to write anything about this, given the rather inevitable coverage [...]

Newcastle’s Spanish left back, José Enrique, is apparently currently pondering a question which The Clash posed back in 1982… Should I stay or should I go?The Clash It would appear however, that either his mind has changed significantly over the course of only 22 minutes, or that various media sources are speculating and having fun [...]

One of my issues with party politics is the fact that because people are partisan, they take a particular side, and are likely to support those things which attack the other side (or the baddies, as people probably consider them), whilst lashing out at anything which attacks their side. So when you had the whole [...]

I subscribe to BBC Newcastle’s twitterstream — @bbcnewcastle — in order to be informed about news and events which are local to me and therefore have some interest or relevance. So when I came across this tweet: BBC Sport NUFC News Newcastle v Fulham: Team news ahead of Saturday’s Premier League match. http://tinyurl.com/qeqrsn @bbcnewcastle …I [...]

At least, that’s how the statistic was presented to me. Christians more likely to support torture: God must be turning in his grave http://rly.cc/67ANF@bengoldacre Only if you actually look at the research itself, that’s not quite what it’s telling us. For example, there are estimated to be around 2 billion adherents to Christianity (one third [...]