Friday Night Music
As Barack Obama tells it :More than once, my mother would point out: “Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.”

Enfants de la Patrie (again) ?
I've written about this sort of thing before. Now even the Indie is noticing :"No," he said. "I'm not watching the match. I never watch France play football. The team disgusts me because they are not really French." What did he mean, I asked (although I knew exactly what he meant). My neighbour mumbled something about not liking the team because they didn't sing the Marseillaise before matches (something that has not been true for more than a decade). What he really meant

Reality 1, Satire 0 (Again)
It's got to be the number one item on every prisoner's Christmas wish-list - their freedom.But there was incredulity today when it emerged that one convict is actually going to have their wish granted - as first prize in a raffle.The lucky inmate whose ticket is drawn in the £1 draw will be able to spend a day on the outside, enjoying themselves to their heart's content.It is a reward being offered at Kirkham open prison in Lancashire in return for helping to prepare a Christmas dinner for elderly residents at a nearby day centre.

More 'Education'
a sad but by no means unusual tale via (of all people) Stephen Fry. No, I don't subscribe but enough people do.But it's the comments that strike me.Anyway, I'm one of those supply teachers, freshly arrived from Australia with a few years under my belt and a sense of freedom to supply teach. I ended my first week with a stiff drink and let go of the breath I was holding in for the whole week.Wow.

Calm Down, Yazza !
Yazza has two personas for her two main media outletsIndie : "I blame white men"The world only feels right when women are removed from the public space. We know that is what the Taliban believes. The discouraging truth is that all nations would dearly like it if women went back indoors again to seek and find total fulfilment in babies and baking and these days 24-hour sexual availability.Chance would be a fine thing. But not 24 hours. One wouldn't like to be doing a 10-hour day and worryin