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How hetero are your tweets?

Monday, July 20, 2009
I am indebted to those lovely people at Swedish daily The Local for writing about an initiative by Stockholm Pride whereby "Visitors to the website are asked to input their Twitter microblog user names and the test then surveys their 200 latest "tweets" searching for words that conform to perceived sexual stereotypes such as "fishing", "schlager" and "fashion"....Stockholm Pride makes no claims as to the scientific nature of the test however".

The nice SP people offer the option of English as well as Swedish. My score was 72% hetero: "Found words - chaps, rent, blessing, shopping, monster". "You're boomerang hetero. It doesn't matter how hard you try to gain new experiences, magically you always return to your starting point". I have tried a few of the usual suspects, but I am not going to show the results.

Take the test here.

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posted by Croydonian

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now...

Saturday, July 11, 2009
From the Unite website:

"Unite, the UK’s largest union, is preparing to ballot its members at the Guardian Print Centre (GPC) for industrial action over the company’s proposals to make a quarter of the staff redundant.

Industrial action at GPC, based in London's Docklands, would halt the printing of the Guardian newspaper in the south of England".


What will the latte left do if its house journal is printed by scabs?

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posted by Croydonian

A late breaking *pearl* from Hansard

Friday, June 26, 2009
The Lords, naturally:

Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, as a person over 60, I am continually bombarded with spam emails? They are always the same and are usually about penile extensions, Viagra or inkjet cartridges. Do I look like a man who requires inkjet cartridges?

A noble Lord: Yes!

This exchange came as part of a debate on internet access for the over 60s etc, sparked by Baroness Rendell of Inspector Wexford, and is worth a skim.


(Mackenzie has a fairly colourful recent past, judging from his wiki entry)

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posted by Croydonian

How to upset one's uncle - an object lesson from France

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The nephew in question is one Frédéric Mitterrand, and the uncle currently rotating at speed in his grave is Le Sphinxe himself, the deeply odious Francois.

And for why? Because young Freddie has just taken Sarko's Louis d'or Euro in the form of the job of Minister of Culture.

Mitterand jr would appear to have passed a comparatively blameless life as a thespian, producer etc and head of the French Academy in Rome, in stark contrast to his jailbird cousin Jean-Christophe Mitterrand.

Our French chums, always alert to nuance, will either be laughing themselves into convulsions or crying into their pastis.

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posted by Croydonian

Obama: the American Ségolène Royal.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Or so the lady herself would have it:

"Barack Obama's team spent two days at [my HQ] during my campaign. They adapted my method to the the American system".

As Libération puts it, 'it is easy to mock'. Just *a bit*.

In fairness, she caveats a little concerning the scale of things, although in Le Monde she goes further - "Yes, I inspired Obama and his team copied us”. I do not expect a namecheck for La Royal in his speech and Swedish bookmaker Betsson has the odds for words Obama will use in his inauguration speech (United States - 1.01, God Bless America 1.05, United Kingdom - 35.0, banana - 800.0, a four letter word beginning with F followed by off - 1000.0 etc etc), and there appears to be no market in 'France', 'Ségolène Royal', 'Desirs d'Avenir' etc etc. Maybe I should take this as insider knowledge and dive in and clean up?

Still, she has made some decidedly odd pronouncements in the past, so this is just another day at the office for the soi-disant Joan of Arc of Poitiers.

If nothing else, she continues to add to the gaiety of this nation as well as of her own, and I trust she will be providing me with amusement for many years to come, although I hope never from any position of power greater than that of the Presidency of Poitou-Charente.

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posted by Croydonian

What's the French for 'hanging chads'?

Monday, November 24, 2008
Most native conspiracy theorists have tired of banging on about the 2000 US Presidential election, so maybe they can switch their attentions to the shenanigans among their fellow travellers on the other side of the Channel.

Given that Sego lost by all of 42 votes to Martine Aubry, I suppose it was unrealistic to think that Madame Poitou Charente would accept defeat with anything other than her usual gracelessness and peevishness. Anyway, both camps have evidence of 'irregularities' in the voting so this one could run and run, generating huge amounts of amusement for the rest of us, and - with any luck - end up in a split in the PS. A statistically worthless self-selecting poll of the readership of right-leaning Le Figaro Online has 84% thinking a split possible, by the way.

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posted by Croydonian