Hugh Matthews

Like many kings who came into power having won a war, doubtless Aragorn would have had many debts. Interest payments, to quote a famous orc, would have been back on the menu.

However, Middle Earth appears to have had no taboo on usury, and the elves have a vested interest in long lending.

I'm not a body language expert but these smiles have total 'divorced couple making the best of things for the kids on Xmas day' energy

Decided to fire up BBC Parliament for first time in ages and rewarded by Chris Chope talking about the 'New Labour Stasi'

Switched on LK for a minute, saw Nadine Dorries on the panel.
Switched off again.

Never seen Rubio looks so jittery in the back there

In the Italian version of The Simpsons, when Homer tries to strangle Bart he doesn’t use the phrase “why you little...” but instead says brutto bagarospo. It basically means “you ugly cockroach-frog.”

I've figured out the boy's punishment. First, he's grounded. No leaving the house, not even for school. Second, no egg nog. In fact, no nog, period. And third, absolutely no stealing for three months.

I’ve posted about this before: German chancellor Konrad Adenauer stuck out in the 1950s for not smoking, but he would regularly take Ritalin and methamphetamine, to the point where his son worried about it in his diary.

The thing it is easy to forget is, for MPs your intake really matters. Being in the 2005 intake in the Labour party is like being a centenarian, people respect you, but they aren't going to vote for you, they're more likely to ask you what it was like being an MP when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

I'm very anti-monarchy in general but this constitutional monarchy having to pretend to be a business forcing someone to spend their time making charts in Word about how many garden parties the royal family had is very very funny. Charles II would never.

But do not underestimate the major parties’ ability to turn this around before the next election, *especially* the Tories, who will find it all the more easier to bounce back as Reform inevitably fall apart

Only the British far left is capable of producing a party which has just one member and yet has a "co-leader".

Conventional nuclear physics cannot deal with that level of fission. The Trots have split the political atom.

1942. Things were challenging then too.