T Minus 11

While I’m in bellyachin’ mood, a long note on the education system in Northern Ireland.

Purple Patch

Robert Fisk is on the trail of an impostor:

Needless to say, I noticed one or two problems with this book. It took a very lenient view of the brutality of Saddam, it didn’t seem to care much about the gassed civilians of Halabja – and it was full of the kind of purple passages which I loathe.

As distinct from the kind of purple passages ‘which’ he loves, if The Great War For Civilisation is anything to go by.