I’ve been told to take myself a bit more seriously, so the Baldie FAQs have been updated.

A decent picture is still worth quite a lot, even if you write your words really big.

Mitchel McLaughlin is coming to give succour to the Catalan separatists next week. Too bad the IRA issued its recent statement in Spanish and French but not in Catalan.

There’s a not particularly curious parallelism between Spanish defence minister, José Bono, who believes it better for his soldiers to die than to kill, and who appears to enjoy thoroughly the publicity he obtains when the coffins come home, and Barcelona’s leaders, who, of course, love their police force, but decline to give it the [...]

The Telegraph has found out about Vidstones and serenity panels and stuff, but it seems to me as if the depths still remain to be plunged.

I think Stephen Moss is wrong to suggest that the British have only recently become patriotic–I think they probably always were to a much greater degree than BBC programming suggested. Some kind of shift in perceptions of Britain has, however, taken place. Whereas the Union Jack used to associated with the European far right, now [...]

Says Gabriel Laguna here. Re his essay: I wonder if the sense of godliness induced by romantic love is why an inability to accept the existence of a deity used (sorry, can’t think of a ref) to be identified with an incapacity to love truly.

I have a funny feeling that Juan isn’t going to take up the reins after the holiday.