Gavin’s Gaily Gigest

Prince Harry has been demoted in the latest Royal reshuffle.
Following derogatory remarks about a military colleague, the former third in line to the throne will now be twelfth, taking Zara Philips place in the succession. She will move up to fourth, replacing Beatrice, who is far too ugly to be a real princess.
Prince Philip was [...]

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Immigration minister Phil Woolas is one of those delightful left-wing racists history throws up from time to time, and in the Guardian yesterday he had this to say:
“Enoch Powell was trying to divide this country. I’m trying to heal this country by allowing us to have a mature debate on immigration”
Here’s what he meant, as [...]

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As seen on BBC News today, an obscure word from the English language:
Gove - to stare stupidly

Yup, that sounds about right.

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Pitney Bowes, leaders in corporate bullshit:
Production Mail and Document Solutions
Pitney Bowes helps you engineer the flow of communication with end-to-end intelligent mail solutions
I’ve absolutely no idea what they offer, but you can insert your own obvious joke about end-to-end solutions here.

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Just come across a light-hearted article I worked on for Total Politics during its early stages. The concept didn’t make the final cut, but I’m posting it here as some of the jokes aren’t half-bad. As you can probably tell, it was written around the time the Peter Hain and George Osbourne donation stories were [...]

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Adobe’s legal department have gone a bit nuts and come out with guidelines on the “Proper Use of the Photoshop Trademark“:
The Photoshop trademark must never be used as a common verb or as a noun. The Photoshop trademark should always be capitalized and should never be used in possessive form, or as a slang term. [...]

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The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg* has compiled a more thoughtful linguistic analysis of Hilary Clinton’s lie "misspeak" a couple of weeks than I did when conjugating political verbs:
"Along with its various derivatives, “misspeak” has become one of the signature verbal workhorses of this interminable political season, right up there with “narrative,” “Day One,” and “hope.” [...]

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Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s (who?) former Chief of Staff, appears in an interview with the Guardian today in which he discusses, amongst other things, the possibility of negotiation with Al-Qaeda, that charitable organisation responsible for such piffling things as the 11th September 2001 attacks and the 7/7 bombings. All very interesting, but that’s not why [...]

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Via the BBC, words of wisdom from our dear leader, Mr Nick Clegg:

“When you have a system that is as sclerotic as this - tied up between the two parties - it is quite right for a principled party such as the Liberal Democrats, which believes in political reform from saying, from time to time, [...]

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