The Fallen Idol was the film Carol Reed made before The Third Man and it's nearly as good. If you've not seen it, there's a good introduction in this interview with Richard Ayoade. It was filmed in and around Belgravia, so I went to look for it on Friday before a Liberator meet up. The external shots of the embassy were of 1 Grosvenor Crescent, just off Belgrave Square. You can see it in the photograph above. I you know the film you will recognise the curving terrace below - it's Grosvenor Crescent. And you will also recognise Belgrave Mews ...
Sat 11th
21:25
Government's proposed legal duty to report suspicion of child sexual abuse is a fudge, says inquiry ...
Embed from Getty ImagesAlexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, has said she is deeply disappointed by the weakness of the government's proposed law making it a legal duty to report suspicions of such abuse. The Guardian reports: Alexis Jay said she was "deeply disappointed" by the new legislation. "The victims are upset and angry and I'm not surprised. It's a fudge and an opportunity missed," she told the BBC. "I am deeply disappointed in it and very much more so for the victims and survivors who had such high expectations that what the inquiry had ...
Embed from Getty ImagesThe past week has reminded us of the friendly relations between Putin's Russia and some prominent supporters to Brexit. The i held an interview with Dominic Cummings, not in the basement of his parents's castle or the Tapestry Room of his Islington town house, but in a North London pub. That interview is behind a paywall, but the Politico report has plenty of detail: In an interview with the i newspaper, Cummings — who led Britain's Vote Leave Brexit campaign and spectacularly fell out with Johnson in 2020 — declared that the West "should have never got ...
Sat 11th
14:56
If you are thinking of starting to take Rapamycin for its general health benefits start by photograp...
Now this might seem an odd suggestion. However, if you are starting Rapamycin I think you should first photograph your nails. That is because Rapamycin affects the growth of many people's fingernails and you may wish to titrate your usage of Rapamycin by how you see the effects on your nails. Rapamycin is known as an mTOR inhibitor. mTOR is a kinase in each cell that passes signals around
Happy Eurovision! Today is the highest and holiest days of the camp calendar – the grand final of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest from Malmo, Sweden. Growing up in Thatcher's dismal 1980s in West Lothian (immediately to the west of Edinburgh but with none of the cosmopolitan colour of Scotland's capital and getting all of the bust and none of the boom of those Tory years), I never travelled abroad until I left school. Eurovision was a glimpse into another exotic world. Eurovision wasn't cool in the 1980s (and ABBA were yet to be reborn in Gold) and I often ...
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention poll from each pollster currently operating in Britain. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls – indicates that party didn't feature in the polling questions separate from 'Others' or that the data is not yet available. RUK = Brexit Party or Reform Party. Numbers ...
It is time for a review of the hip thigh bone theory of the world. The theory is based on the 1920s African-American spiritual "Dem bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones." The ditty in turn was based on a Biblical passage in which a collection of dry bones reassemble themselves before the astonished eyes of the prophet Ezekiel. The foot-tapping, hand-clapping tune is a roof raiser in evangelical churches around the world. It is also a popular song in young children's anatomy classes. For the purposes of this article, however, it is a perfect metaphor of how the rapidly shrinking ...
The walesonline website reports that First Minister, Vaughan Gething has travelled 4,500 miles to meet senior figures in Tata Steel in an effort to persuade them to adopt a different plan for the Port Talbot Steel works. The only problem is that he has no money to put on the table to mitigate Tata's one million pound a day losses, and he could have had the same meeting a week before in London. The website says that: Wales' new First Minister Vaughan Gething has defended flying to India for his first overseas trip since winning the top job, despite meeting ...
We have had a number of residents raising concerns about some of the right turns at the above junction, particularly vehicles from Perth Road turning into Hawkhill across the flow of traffic. We therefore have raised this with the council's roads safety team leader asking if the operation of the junction can be checked out and additional measures such as a review of the lights sequence or better lining be considered.
As the "war" in Gaza continues and the death toll increases, efforts at bringing about a ceasefire have also stepped up. Earlier this week talks mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt briefly gave cause for hope that some kind of arrangement, however temporary, may be within reach. However, with Israel determined to press on with its assault in Rafah and raising objections on "several central issues" no deal has been reached. Israel's intransigence and outright rejection of a plan that involved a captives-for-prisoners exchange and the return of displaced Palestinians raises the question: what would be a good outcome ...
