According to this story, I was right to question the headline on the Archbishop’s article yesterday.

And, as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who thought this article was particularly interesting. Jon Snow says the following in Snowmail today:

I must say reading the Sunday Telegaph yesterday on the plane back from interviewing Blair in Egypt, and seeing the headline suggesting the tsunami made the Archbishop of Canterbury question the existence of God, made me sit up – ‘I am a jealous God?’ ‘wrath of God?’ tricky one…

As usual, you read it here first!

This is the Diary of a London Call Girl, featured in many of the papers today. The blog is to be published as a book on 13th January. The bits I’ve read have been very well written, shocking, and entertaining.

In The Guardian’s second Best British Blog competition, Simon Waldman said:

The winner in this category however is Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl. There’s obviously a prurient and titillating element, but the quality of her writing took her blog well beyond that. Some judges were concerned it was a work of fiction, but even if it is, it remains an impressive piece of writing.

As Bruce Sterling, one of the judges said: “Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors. It’s not merely the titillating striptease aspects that are working for her, but her willingness to use this new form of vanity publishing to throw open a great big global window on activities previously considered unmentionable . . . She is in a league by herself as a blogger.”

Cynthia Payne is less than convinced, and she certainly knows more about ‘the game’ that I do!

So this Belle de Jour is supposed to be on the game is she? A high-class hooker with high-class partners? Hmmm … I’m not convinced. I’m not an expert on literature or anything like that, but I do know a fair bit about sex and men, and this doesn’t sound like anything I have ever come across.

I have to say, Cynthia’s article is as interesting a read as the blog itself in many way, and you should probably have a look at both anyway, considering the blog is talk of the literary world (or so it would seem) at the moment. Worth a click.

I’ve now uploaded all of my LBSC posts to this blog. You will see these posts marked with the following logo, just above the footline:

Originally posted on The LBSC

In the event that The LBSC ever recovers from its current crippled state, then any posts I author on there will be copied over to here, and marked as shown above. I hope that you will find it helpful to have all my blogging activity archived in one place – I know I will!

You will also notice that I’ve added a search feature to the site, so that you can find the particular post you’re looking for. The site will be re-indexed every Friday, so the Search Engine will not be able to find anything posted since the previous Friday.

And, on a completely unrelated note, I’ve updated my sig with five new images, though still based on the same ‘real world’ theme. You can see a randomly selected one in the bottom-right hand corner of this page.

How the world heard the grim news (Guardian)

Some interesting points here. I personally was very disappointed with the response of the terrestrial channels to this news, and I hope that the BBC issue some sort of response to the criticism levelled at them from many quarters for failing to provide adequate coverage of an obviously huge story due to a desire not to interrupt their Christmas schedules. But I’m not entirely sure they’ll give one.

No sex is safe sex for teens in America (Guardian)

I was just formulating in my head a fairly complimentary post based on this article, along the lines of “It’s not how I’d go about it, but they’re clearly doing better than us so perhaps their strategy is better.”

Then I got to this bit.

‘What do you also hear will keep you safe?’ [the teacher] asked. ‘Condoms,’ they answered.
‘Do they keep you safe?’ she asked. ‘No,’ they chorused.
She is banned by law from promoting the benefits of correctly used condoms.

Oh deary, deary me. So those students who will inevitably have sex anyway will not be educated in how to protect themselves. I know the Americans are all for Abstinance Only, and I’d be perfectly happy with that if they didn’t take quite as strong an approach to “only”. This is getting dangerously close to misinformation. Though clearly not as close as this:

The Bush administration is funding sexual health projects that teach children that HIV can be contracted through sweat and tears, touching genitals can result in pregnancy, and that a 43-day-old foetus is a thinking person.

George, what are you doing to these young people’s minds?

Whilst I admit that the link is tenuous, I thought I’d tag onto the end of this post the winning entry in this year’s bad sex award, simply because it made me laugh so much.

Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.

Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog. . .

. . . the fingers went under the elastic of the panties moan moan moan moan moan went Hoyt as he slithered slithered slithered slithered and caress caress caress caress went the fingers until they must be only eighths of inches from the border of her public hair – what’s that! – Her panties were so wet down. . . there – the fingers had definitely reached the outer stand of the field of pubic hair and would soon plunge into the wet mess that was waiting right. . . there-there-

Taken from I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.

Prescott defends quake response (BBC News)

Prescott’s on the defensive. And all because Mr Blair won’t cut his holiday short.

John Prescott is an absolute dream of a politician, at least as far as comedians go. He’s always angry. He desperately tries to sound sympathetic to the poor people in Asia, and yet comes across as livid as the questioner. And despite what he actually said in the interview, his body language and tone really seemed to suggest that he thought Mr Blair should have come home from Egypt. So all-in-all, it was something of a failure of an interview.

Conservative leader Michael Howard said he would have returned had he been in the same position. However, Mr Howard said Mr Blair’s decision was up to the prime minister.

Mr Howard, on the same programme, performed much better than in his rehashed article from this morning, handling the above question rather well, since he criticised the Prime Minister without explictly saying he was wrong. He toed the line, and he did it with great skill. Well done Mr Howard – I think you won this round.

Of course this makes us doubt God’s existence (Telegraph)

The Archbishop of Canterbury is obviously a big fan of this blog, having chosen to respond directly to this post in today’s Telegraph. There’s no possible other explanation.

It reads very much like he had difficulty writing this column – and certainly he should have. It works, though, in it’s own little way. It’s not the best column ever written, but it makes its point, and it works. Though, of course, it would be difficult for the Archbishop to write about God and it not work.

Just one other comment – I don’t know whether he wrote the headline, but I really would have expected ‘us’ to ‘question’, rather than ‘doubt’, God’s existence.

Free trade is as vital as aid (Guardian)

Oh, Michael. Michael, Michael, Michael. What is all this about? It’s a mess of an article. It’s difficult to read because of the. Very short. Sentences. That sound almost. Like legalese. You don’t want to appear to be playing politics with this tragedy, so you don’t criticise the government too harshly. You put forward this ridiculous idea of ‘twinning’ countries, suggesting it’s more logical for an individual country to help another individual country, rather than banding together to help many countries with similar problems. And then you finish it off with a flourish about the importance of the coming year. What’s it all about? What the heck are you trying to say?

I do not have the words to describe the feelings we all shared as we watched the dreadful pictures of the catastrophe that hit so many people in so many countries last week. The scale, the speed and the ferocity of the tsunami have been almost impossible to grasp.

It’s a nice sentiment. If I were you (which I’m thankfully not), I would’ve done a whole column of sympathy, highlighting the plight of the people affected by this tragedy. This might have helped a little in the fight to show you as a caring politician. Rather than Dracula. But you wander off…

The British people have recognised this and have given generously. And the British people have led the way in Britain’s aid effort, prompting the government to step up its contribution from the original sum of £1million first to £15m and now to £50m.

A bit of criticism, nothing too scathing. I’m not suggesting you could possibly do any more, and I would personally have suggested you didn’t bother with this little poke either. But you did. And we’re still afloat at the moment. But then you go temporarily insane.

Individual countries could be matched with some of those affected… Gap-year students could spend part of their free time helping in the work of reconstruction…

Without wanting to turn in to John McEnroe, ‘you cannot be serious’. No credible politician would suggest that when you have a number of countries needing nearly identical forms of aid, it is sensible to split the region up into small pieces, and for different countries to struggle alone in finding the aid needed. And what’s with the gap year student idea? Instead of responding with military assistance, you want to respond with an army of students? Get real.

This year, Britain has the presidency of both the G8 and the European Union.

Where did that come from? It’s very true, but it makes this look like a column that was written some time ago that’s been rejigged in response to this terrible tragedy. Which just makes you look cheap and uncaring.

2004 ended with great sadness, but Britain’s presidency of the G8 and the European Union offers a real opportunity in 2005. By reforming the way we deliver overseas aid, by promoting free enterprise and by encouraging freer, fairer trade, we can help lift millions of people out of poverty. Let us all make sure we do everything we can to use these opportunities to the full.

Nice sentiments, but, again, it looks very much like the first six words have been tacked on. Not least because it doesn’t fit in with the sentence structure you’ve used all the way through. That is, avoiding mid-sentence conjunctions like the plague. You like to separate ideas into difference sentences. You start paragraphs, not phrases, with ‘but’.

So, Mr Howard, if you insist on re-using your columns like this, please (at the very least) do it well.

Minibars now offer lovers’ kits (IHT)

It was the logical progression from selling drinks in a client’s room. I’m only surprised that it’s taken this long.

It’s also clearly the new way to rate the quality of a hotel: Does it offer a “Petite Love Box” (like the Montalambert in Paris) or a “Shag Bag” (like the Sagamore in Miami Beach)? Can’t you just see your grandma saying, “You’re not staying at a Shag Bag hotel?!?”

I tell you, It’s the new star rating.

£3,000 blow for trainee teachers (Guardian)

This is a rather silly idea. At a time when teacher recruitment is in crisis, the government is insisting on charging top-up fees to trainee teachers who have previously been exempt from fees altogether. And, apparently, they think that this won’t deter people. I can’t understand why the government are being so slow in this respect, especially with teacher training. I can imagine that alot of people do their primary degree, and then, unsure on what they want to do next, do a year of teacher-training since it is free and might come in handy. They then end up in the classroom, teaching kids. If you put a £3000 price tag on that extra year, then fewer people who are still ‘considering their options’ are likely to take that year: They’re far more likely to go out into the big bad commercial world and get a job, so that they have some money coming in and not a further £3000 going onto their student debt.

How does Labour MP who got a maintenance grant to see them through university (ie nearly all of them) can expect me to vote for them, now that they have not only removed the funding that supported them, but also introduced fees, and then increased fees?