A call for direct action from an unexpected quarter
It turns out that Richard Stokoe, the £90,000 a year head of communications for London Fire Brigade, thinks the Fire Birgades Union's proposed Bonfire Night strike was a good idea.
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Not all musicals are inconsequential rubbish
All the musicals that make their promoters millions ARE inconsequential rubbish, because the West End is so risk-averse. Why do something good when Cats will still pack them in?
But at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre near Piccadilly Circus there's a musical, whose tunes are just as catchy, whose dialogue is as much fun, whose girls are as pretty but twice as interesting, whose plot zips along as fast as any blockbuster, and whose dialogue is wittier; and yet which manages to be intelligent, and to say something interesting. And which has a twist at the end which suddenly turns it into something far bleaker and blacker and makes you think, yet still has you leaving the theatre with a song in your heart.
I'm talking about All I Want for Christmas by Katy Darby and Luke Bateman, and I urge you to get along to see it. You haven't got long. Unlike the rubbish, it won't be there forever.
Torture becomes respectable
Torture is getting a makeover. Goegre Bush claimed (without evidence) that it had prevented terrorist attacks on Britain, and suddenly respectable commentators are hustling us back to the Middle Ages as fas as they can.
My daughter's occupying. Good for her.
The student occupation at University College London - to which I delivered my daughter's sleeping bag last night - didn't look like fun. That's because, unlike the occupation I was part of in 1968, it wasn't fun. It was serious, and undertaken from a sense of duty.
Today's student demonstration and the children of the sixties
Watching the student march against fees of up to £9,000 ought to have made a politically active member of the baby boomer generation ashamed of our legacy. “Grandad stood up for peace and love – will you stand up for education?” said one of the placards, but it was unnecessarily kind. Grandad didn't stand up for anything - that was Grandad's problem.
Read more: Today's student demonstration and the children of the sixties