The team representing the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland (shortened to Team GB for some reason) finished fourth in the medals table with 19 Gold, 13 Silver and 15 Bronze (a grand total of 47 - also the fourth highest behind the USA, China and Russia).With a British population of 60,700,000, that equates to a rate of return of one Gold per 3.2 million and one medal per 1.3 million. As the ...

TV's Iain Dale has nominated me and so here I go! Where was I when...Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997I had just returned from a nice holiday in the South of France and was woken by telephone by my then girlfriend to be told the news. It was the first time I became aware of the benefits and drawbacks of the 24 news schedule. The BBC kept going back to the same footage and ...

Poor Gerhard Schroeder. Not content with being Putin's poodle he has now endorsed Russia's actions in Georgia.

So Barack Hussein Obama has chosen the 65-year-old US Senator Joe Biden as his running mate - 20 years after Biden's first run for the presidency when he famously plagiarised a Neil Kinnock speech. Given that Obama has plagiarised material himself maybe this is what he feels they have in common - as well as a very liberal voting record. Biden is the Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his foreign policy ...

A new film has been released in the United States called IOUSA. It focuses on the excessive spending that is destroying the US economy. The film seeks to shock Americans into realising what needs to be done. It'll boost John McCain's chances - perhaps a similar film could be made in Britain?Here's the trailer:

At last night's History Channel debate launching its 50 Things You Need to Know About British History (chaired by TV's Iain Dale and featuring a spat between Douglas Murray and Polly Toynbee), Labour MP Diane Abbott proudly mentioned that her child had yesterday received 11 A* grades at GCSE.She failed to mention that that child had been privately educated. I wonder why?

Barack Hussein Obama - the man who transcends racial divides and unites a fractious America (if you believe the media hype) - seems not to be transcending the racial divide at all. His website lists a host of groups but seems to be omitting one for white heterosexual middle class men. I guess he doesn't want their support then, which is just as well. Despite months of fawning media coverage he's still somehow neck and ...

Gordon Brown is understandably nervous: his poll ratings are even worse than those of John Major and Iain Duncan Smith at their lowest points. And so Brown stammers and stutters when he speaks, he cowers in his Downing Street bunker, he bites his finger nails, he smiles nervously, he picks his nose and, so I discovered yesterday, he also does something else.Yesterday I took two interns who have been working for me on a tour ...

A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field.While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him.As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out!He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to ...

Are you a nudger, a poker or neither? Don't worry, this isn't another innuendo-filled piece about homosexuality in the Church of England (ooh matron!). Instead I've been reading James Forsyth's piece in The Spectator about Richard Thaler, David Cameron's latest guru and the author of Nudge.Thaler argues that while nobody likes to be poked or ordered around, people don't mind being nudged in the right direction. Providing consumers with more information, for example, is a ...

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.They rub it and a Genie comes out.The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.''Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk. 'I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.'Puff! She's gone.'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii, ...

When the Tories took control of Barnet Council, speed humps were abolished there. Now the Tories running Swindon Council are abolishing speed cameras. This is great news. A series of chicanes is far better at slower down traffic in villages or small towns than a big brother camera. The siren voices are already being heard ("but if it saves just one ickle child...") but the Tories who have the cojones to stand up to the ...

What will banning the carrying of knifes achieve? And what is defined as "a knife"? Are penknives to be prohibited? Could one be gaoled for carrying a Swiss Army knife? In the current wave of perhaps understandable hysteria about knife-related crime, the reaction from press and politicians alike risks being excessive.Let us remember the carnage of the Dangerous Dogs Act - another piece of legislation brought through after a press campaign that saw MPs panicked ...