The more things change...

Hey, did you know one of the classic tabloid PC Gone Mad urban legends had cropped up again recently? I had no idea, but a couple of months ago, the old favourite 'can't even sing Baa Baa Black Sheep any more' story got a brand new airing in the Daily Mail.

There's something new in this latest version. I hope you're sitting down for this, because it might be a bit shocking for you. Ready?

This time, the Mail reports the story honestly. Well, almost.

Crackers SMASH!

I just got a new phone. I synced my Five Chinese Crackers account with it, and then deleted the Picasa pictures because I didn't want them taking up disk space.

It seems I deleted my entire Picasa account - and every photo I ever put on this blog.  

I are an arse.

Looks like I'll be bringing forward those plans to give the place a new lick of paint.

What about the existing evidence on Hunt?

Less than a year ago, John Yates resigned from the Metropolitan Police over his handling of the Met's investigation into phone hacking.

One of the major criticisms that led to his resignation was, as Nick Davies said before Yates went:

Amid a political storm, Yates agreed to look at new evidence to see if it [The New York Times article of September 2010] justified any further prosecution. Again, he has a series of difficulties. 

First, it is difficult to understand why, knowing that Scotland Yard had a mass of material seized from Mulcaire and knowing this had never been properly searched, he ruled that only "new" evidence should be explored.

So, I found out I've got superpowers

Finding out you've got superpowers isn't like they tell you it is in stories. Stories all make it seem exciting and mysterious and sexy and full of motorbike chases and explosions and shady government departments, but it's not. It's boring.

I found out about my special mental abilities in an ordinary room in a yellow brick building on a busy road in Bromley. I didn't have to go through a fake lobby at the bottom of a mysteriously empty office block, I hadn't been kidnapped and taken in the back of a van by men in black suits, Professor X never turned up on my doorstep, I didn't take part in any experiments with powerful psychotropic drugs and I never once met any Cherokee hitmen with an eyepatch.

I told you - there are no space hoppers in football

As if to prove the thrust of yesterday's post, Chris Grayling apparently popped up on Radio 4 this morning to claim that campaigners against Workfare were part of a front for Socialist Worker, and pretend mistakenly assert that they'd hacked his email.

There are no space hoppers in football

When I arrived back from India a few weeks ago, I hadn't even got as far as leaving the airport before I was welcomed home by the oh-for-fuck's-sake cortex of my brain being prodded awake for the first time in weeks. "Oh yeah, this again," it said, as my shoulders slumped.

My dad's better than your dad

One of the weird things about growing up without a dad is that you don't really have a concrete idea of who he was. At least not from your own perspective.  What you get is cobbled together mostly from what other people who loved him and want to remember the good things have told you. Your own memories are few and seen through a gauze of childish idolatry, so you don't really have a clear idea of what he was actually like as a man.