Abigail Brady

You may have seen recent news coverage of allegations that an armed police officer inserted song titles into the evidence he gave to an inquest. Prompted by this revelation, I wondered if other people have been doing this. Possibly even public figures? So I analysed David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Party Conference last month. In the first half of the speech he drops in mentions of the following song titles:

*"I Want To Tell You" by the Beatles
*"Remember" by John Lennon
*"Stood Up" by Ricky Nelson
*"Good Times Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin
*"Tribute" - Tenacious D
*"Dividing Lines" - Citizen Fish
*"Give & Take" - Kina
*"Respect" - Aretha Franklin
*"Bloody Sunday" - Stiff Little Fingers
*"Stronger Together" - Rockmelons

I'm shocked to have discovered many song titles in it. Presumably there would be more in the second half. Further, I found, like the Law of Fives, that the harder I looked for song titles in the speech, the more I found. Next up, I suggest we try the same thing in Shakespeare, to see how many songs he was referencing. Also that Bible book I've heard about.

The Independent's science coverage fails today. The platypus has been DNA-sequenced. As far as I can gather, it has been found to fit rather exactly where it was expected to. The Independent claims


They found the animal's genes are indeed an unusual amalgam derived from the disparate worlds of reptiles, birds and mammals.


No they are not. "similar to", yes. "derived from [birds]" NO. unless there was some hot Archaeopteryx/Castorocauda inter-species action going on. which I would rather not know about.

so, how come nobody is asking the important questions, like: are they going to rename the cat?

went up to leicester for weekend. exhausted but much enjoyed it. saw too many people to attempt to list. seem to have ordered new corset.

TOS box sets were on sale at Virgin, so I bought season 2. I feel the Star Trek Drinking Game may be a good use of this.

I notice we have another 25-year-old news story being passed off as a recent one. Probe into ex-KGB agent poisoning. I mean, really, do they think we wouldn't notice? At least choose a story that doesn't date so badly.

Sometimes the order words are put in can be very important. Police bill government on mergers is one story: "Government Bill on police mergers" would have been another...