Thoughtful man of the day

A few days ago, in the Guardian, Sam Waley-Cohen, who rides the favourite in the Gold Cup today, gave one of the most interesting and humane and thoughtful interviews I have read in a while. I am putting it here in honour of Gold Cup day, but even if you have absolutely no interest in racing or horses, you should still give it a look.

I want Kauto Star to win this more than I can say. But Waley-Cohen is a Corinthian and I salute him.

The interview is here.

Photograph by Getty Images. 

Good News of the Day

Is here. You can guess what it concerns. I shall be thinking of nothing else all week.




Lovely photograph of Kauto Star schooling this morning, with a very serious look on his face, by George Shelton for Racingphotos.

Horse of the day

Today is all about Kauto Star, as his Gold Cup bid hangs in the balance. You can listen to a nice song here. Or read an excellent piece in the Telegraph here.

Lovely old photograph from Getty Images. 

Attempt to not editorialise of the day

Usually, when I put things up here, it is because I have very strong views about them. But sometimes there are things which are so difficult and complicated and combustible that they don't really need me pontificating. You will know what conclusions you wish to draw. I just want to bring the thing itself to your attention.

Today's story I think is interesting for about eight different reasons. Jenny Tongue, the Liberal Democrat peer, has said some things about Israel. She has form on intemperate and unfortunate and odd remarks.

As always, there is the bashing up of free speech against the yelling of fire in a crowded theatre. How much should politicians be punished for speaking their true mind? Is it just cheap grandstanding for leaders to dismiss members of their party who say the wrong thing?

And yet, the free speech defence can go too far. Humans self-censor all the time, usually from politeness. I wonder, quite apart from anything else, whether this is just an example of really, really bad manners.

Also: I am interested in the role of context. It is context and history, I think, which make some remarks much more inflammatory than others.

Generally, though, I tend to agree with the Chief Rabbi. He is such a thoughtful and moderate man. If he thinks something is beyond the pale, I am inclined to think it is so.

Read it here, and see what you think.

Soothing picture of a Nubian Ilex in the Negev Desert:

Oh dear. After all that, I did seem to pontificate a bit. The more I think of this, the more I think the oddity and wrongness of Tongue's statements were to do with a conflation of two different things. Surely it is possible to question the policies of a government, as people do with many different countries, without questioning whether the state itself should or will exist in the future. It is that, with its horrible echoes of past and current prejudices and hatreds, which strikes one as extreme and sinister.

Horse of the day

This should also be called Apology of the Day. I have been neglecting this blog shamefully. I am in the south, away from my desk, desperately trying to combine an enormous amount of work with family life with my cousins. I am used to living alone, where I have the luxury of great expanses of time. As a result, I get hopelessly behind when I am in a different environment.

Anyway, I do not love the Daily Mail website, but sometimes I have to look at it for my work. As I went there today, I found this rather enchanting equine story. I don't know if it because there are horses here, and I have been riding, but it touched my my heart in a keen way.

Have a look; it really is incredibly moving. And the photographs are astonishing. You can see it here.

Picture is of the three horses I have been spending time with today. They are a little woolly and muddy after being in the field all winter, but very charming, nonetheless:

Jaw-dropping thing of the day

If I had my way, I would put up Rachel Maddow clips every day. She has a particular genius for teasing out the astonishing stories that the rest of the media gloss over. She has been on about the really strange and alarming vaginal probe law that is being passed in Virginia for a few days now. Yesterday, she brought that together with  Bob Dole, Viagra, and Rick Santorum. For anyone interested in politics and morality and hypocrisy, it is a brilliant mix. Also, you get the bonus of watching the very professional Andrea Mitchell actually lost for words, live on air. It's fourteen minutes, which is long in internet terms, but it is worth every moment of your time:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Funniest thing on the internet of the day

I think I come rather late to this; I have a suspicion it has been flying about for a while. But it is the kind of thing that is so funny it makes tears come out at right angles, as my old Irish godmother used to say. I really would not listen to it in a public place, for fear of embarrassment.

Dog of the day

Sometimes, it is important to have something uncomplicatedly lovely on which to rest your eyes:

Yes yes yes YES of the day

I have long loved Eugene Robinson, most excellent and wise writer for the Washington Post. Interestingly, the spat about religion vs secularism is being played out in America at the moment in a very similar way to here, mostly because of the Republican primaries. (I have written about my bafflement over Rick Santorum on this blog before.)

Robinson nails this nuttiness much, much better than I ever could, and with humour and lightness of touch, where I get grumpy and earnest. I take off all my hats. You can read it here.

Uncredited picture of Mr Robinson:

Odd religious argument of the day

I genuinely do not understand today's broadside against Richard Dawkins by Stephen Pollard. It made me fretful and cross, and I blogged about it at awful length on the other blog.

It's not the specific Dawkins thing; he can look after himself. It's the wider fury at secularism. Have a read here and see what you think.

Because all this religious fighting is making me so grumpy and sad (see Baroness Warsi yesterday), I'm going to put up a beautiful picture of a horse instead of anything germane. Although you could say that equine loveliness is very close to godliness, if you were so inclined. It is transcendent, anyway.

Here you are - my absolute favourite fellow, Kauto Star, whose name I shall be shouting up the hill at Cheltenham in March:



Absolutely ravishing photograph found on the BBC website; photographer sadly uncredited. But very talented, whoever she or he is.

Dog of the day

My own little canine star:

Awards ceremony of the day

I did not know there were awards for best film dog. I do now. They are called the Golden Collars. Very funny slideshow from The Guardian here.

Adorable picture by Gus Ruelas for Reuters.

Inexplicable statement of the day

I try not to get cross about my atheism. I think of it as a quiet, personal thing. My default mode is: each to each is what we teach. (Which of course originally came from from each according to his ability etc etc, but which I have bastardised into everyone must think what they will, as long as it is not cruel and unusual.)

The weedy liberal in me thinks: there is good and ill in the religious and the secular. It really is not four legs good, two legs bad. Religion does horrifying things - child abuse, blowing people up, oppression of women - and marvellous things - charity, solace for the afflicted, needed human ritual. Secularists may be anything from the selfless carer to the homicidal maniac.

Then Baroness Warsi comes along and compares me to a totalitarian regime. (Yes, I damn well am taking this personally.) Militant secularism, she says, is taking over society, and demonstrating traits last seen under totalitarians, by which she must mean Stalin, Mao, the Jong-ils, or similar. At which point, the muscular liberal in me stands up and starts shouting about freedom of expression and thought. The pedant starts yelling about intellectual laziness.

I really do try to avoid ad hominem, but this is such a stupid thing to say. It is simplistic, offensive, and empirically incorrect. Why would anyone in public life think this is an interesting or useful thing to state? Quite apart from being provably wrong, it has no utility.

You can read all about her very odd speech here, and see why it made me quite so grumpy. If anyone says anything else like that, I shall have to start going about invading places and getting the populace to perform daily leader worship. Because that is what we secularists really, really like.

The Guardian also covers it here.

Rather brilliant photograph sadly uncredited.

Dog of the day

Last dog for a while, as I am away from my desk for a week, and there shall be no blogs. Back to business as usual on the 12th.

Lovely sound of the day

Dog of the day

Taken in the late afternoon, in a fading, rose pink light that suddenly appeared after an unremittingly black day:

Riveting political hypocrisy of the day

Rick Santorum, who is running for the Republican nomination for president, will soon disappear from public consciousness, as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney duke it out. But before he does, it is worth contemplating something interesting about his candidacy. He has, from the very beginning, wrapped himself in the cloak of piety, religious belief, and general godliness. Whenever challenged about his policies on homosexuality and abortion, he always states that he stands where he stands because his bible tells him so. Christianity, in this case, is automatically conflated with goodness and kindness. His policies might sound harsh, but they cannot be, by definition, because of the milk and honey of his devout belief.

The little-observed oddity about Rick Santorum is that he does not seem to be a very nice man. I very rarely do ad hominem in politics, because I think it is often cheap and unfair. If you present yourself as good and kind and faithful though, you must expect those claims to be examined. There are numerous video clips from the campaign trail where Rick Santorum becomes impatient, dismissive and even aggressive when faced with dissent. I noticed this in particular with a group of bright, engaged university students, who were asking him about gay marriage. Instead of debating with them, he hectored and talked over them, in a most unChristian fashion.

Rachel Maddow, who goes where the rest of the press pack do not, has picked up on this, and had a brilliant segment on it in her show this week. She shows two really shocking moments, where Santorum loftily ignores, even mocks, the concerns of a brave little boy who asked him a question (I am always incredibly impressed by children who are bold enough to do this; it must be so nerve-wracking) and a mother with a child suffering from cancer. These are not hardy political opponents or toughened hacks. They are very ordinary members of the public, in some ways the most vulnerable among us: a worried mother, a young child. Santorum acts as if they count for nothing.

I don't know quite what I take from all this. But I was shocked. The Maddow segment is quite long, sixteen minutes, but if you have any interest in politics, morality, and people acting on their beliefs rather than just mouthing them, it's really worth a watch.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dog of the Day

Slideshow of the day

Is over at The Guardian, and combines the two enchanting traits of good photography and rampant adorableness.

See it here.

One example, by Helen J Arnold:

Extremely funny thing of the day

This was not necessarily supposed to be a comical blog. I am traditionally a little suspicious of all those cats/babies/teenagers doing hilarious things on the YouTube. But it turns out that the people on my Twitter stream have most discerning taste. They truffle out the funny like Basset hounds. (Did I just compare the people I follow on Twitter to dogs? Although, coming from me, that is a high compliment.)

Anyway, @liz_buckley found this list of proverbs as completed by students. I think it is a work of genius. My favourite by far: 'The pen is mightier than the pigs'. I don't think you can argue with that.


I always like to put up a picture with each post. Usually I type whatever the subject is into the Google, see what comes up, and hope it is apposite. If you type in proverbs you get an awful lot of faux numinous nonsense, because the bots think you mean the biblical version, rather than the stitch in time saves nine version. But as I waded through, I found this lovely, gentle, uncredited photograph. It has nothing to do with anything proverbial, but I just liked it:

FUNNIEST THING ON THE INTERNET ALERT OF THE DAY

I'm really sorry about the capital letters, but it is THAT FUNNY. Do not watch whilst in the presence of important people, as there is a very real danger that snot will shoot spontaneously out of your nose.

I've never heard of the Bad Lip Reading people before, but thanks to @archiebland on Twitter, I now know they are comical and technical geniuses. Today, they take on Rick 'man on dog' Santorum. And, oh do they take him.

My favourite line: I just want to practice soft algebra, please.

Interesting Scottish analysis of the day

Is from Alex Massie in The Speccie. I am still struggling with the arguments for and against independence. He brings up an element of the debate I had not yet thought about. . Read it here.

Oh, and the takeaway, as the political bloggers say, is that Mr Salmond is not persuading the ladies. Interesting.

Any excuse to put up a picture of a highland coo. This one is from Wikipedia:

PS. I was going to say that Massie gets bonus points for using the word 'trumed'. I assumed this was from some marvellous Scottish dialect, and carried a subtle meaning that only those north of the border would truly understand. Having not found it in any dictionary, I went back and looked at the context, and realised it was just a plain old typing error. It should have read 'trumped'. Still, I think trumed sounds beautiful and am going to attempt to make up a meaning for it, and get it into common parlance.

Letter of the Day

There is a lovely and fascinating blog which I follow called Letters of Note. Yesterday, it put up a letter which has had more responses than any other in the blog's history. It is being tweeted and re-tweeted, linked to and passed on all over the internet. When you read it, you will see why. You can find it here.

Victory of the day

The lovely Big Buck's, powering up the hill to win the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham. Read about it here.

And a touching back story here.

Dog of the day

Oh, the nobility:

Picture of the day

This is where we all live. It is the latest picture of the earth from the wizards at NASA.

This astounding image was not just achieved by flying up into space and taking a snapshot. It was a long, composite process, very well described here. Despite my awe at the cleverness of NASA and their brilliant use of technology, what I mostly think when I look at this photograph is: oh, how beautiful that planet is.

Perspective of the day

I talk a lot about the perspective police. These are the armed operatives who break down your door when you are getting a bit grumpy and moany and remind you of your manifold blessings; the ones who force you at gunpoint to see the wider picture. These metaphorical cops might sound a bit trigger-happy, but they really do it for me. Sometimes one needs a bit of a jolt to open one's eyes.

This morning, on Holocaust Memorial Day, I read this short letter, which is perspective of the most profound and humbling kind.




Wonderful picture of Anita Lasker, second from left, with her friends and family. She survived Auschwitz and Belsen. She played the cello in the women's orchestra at Auschwitz, which saved her life. You can read more about her extraordinary story here.

Photograph, uncredited, found via the Imperial War Museum website.

Oh, and since credit where credit is due is an important part of blog etiquette, thanks to @martinbright, who guided me to the piece via Twitter.

Apology of the day

Is from me, for neglecting this blog. I got behind for 48 hours, and have been unable to catch up. Here is a picture of the dog with her stick, by way of penance.

Bad sentence of the day

Everyone says that Alex Salmond is a political genius. He is so much better at politics than anyone else, goes the consensus. I can't see it, myself. I find his manner bumptious, his tone often patronising, and his words unilluminating. But I know this is one of those things where everyone else is right and I am wrong.

However, I will claim that he cannot write a decent sentence. I have just read the vital premise of the big speech he is about to give on the future of Scotland. This is the fulcrum, the motherlode, the beating heart of his argument. And this is how he expresses it:

"An independent Scotland can be a beacon for progressive opinion south of the border and further afield, addressing policy challenges in ways that reflect the universal values of fairness and are capable of being considered, adapted and implemented according to the circumstances and wishes within the other jurisdictions of these islands and beyond."

This is just awful. How do you address a policy challenge in ways that reflect the universal values of fairness? What even is the universal value of fairness? Fairness is fairness; it does not contain universal values; it is a intrinsic thing.

I don't know much, but I know a bad sentence when I see one. If I had a blue pencil, I would write; TOO LONG. If you can't break it up, at least use a couple of semi-colons, for sheer breath. In my cross blue pencil I would write: BE SPECIFIC. I would put all this in capital letters because I would be so grumpy, and the rotten prose would be making my eyes hurt.

I would say: adapted and implemented just sounds like you are holding a meeting of middle managers. I would scribble: what does 'the other jurisdictions of these islands and beyond' even mean? I would scrawl: why use ten words where one would do?

What's wrong with saying:

An independent Scotland shall be a beacon of fairness. It shall be a haven of progressive thought.

Or something. Just don't bloody address policy challenges.

I know Alex Salmond probably does not write his own speeches. But he reads them. If he is willing to commit such bland, predictable, horrid hurt on the English language, then I am going to judge him for it.

Eilean Donan castle, photographer unknown.

Political journalism of the day

There is a really interesting piece by Ian Dunt on the Politics.co.uk site, regarding the possibility or even desirability of achieving balance in political news. There is tremendous stuff about false equivalence and other idiocies. You can find it here.

                               Photograph by Getty Images, from The Evening Standard, 1968.