Although I rather liked Taste of Cherry. Link: Roger Ebert’s web site. (via MeFi)
Travel notes: Venice
Venice was as wonderful as it always is, with the usual hordes of tourists around the Piazza thinning out nicely as we walked round past the Goldoni theatre and la Fenice to Campo S. Stefano. The pistachio ice-cream at Paolin’s there is a good thing. Jane slipped into a reverie at the Ponte dell’Accademia, which was great (I always think I might be a bit too Venetophile).
The Doge’s Palace is beyond words, again. Tom got a cat mask from a shop called il Ballo del Doge, near la Fenice.
Missed my usual trip to see Goldoni’s statue in C. San Bartolomeo. If they ever make a statue of me, I’d like to be smiling like Goldoni is (not self-satisfiedly, whatever the article linked might say).
Why railways don’t run hotels any more
I am posting this from a hotel (with wifi) apparently scientifically situated in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near Marseille. This is thanks to SNCF voyages who, while good at booking rail tickets, are apparently absolutely incapable of understanding the concept of a hotel being close to their own railway station, as opposed to a €30 taxi ride away from it.
Tories vs. Human Rights
Another stall-setting rant by David Davies confirms his credentials at righter than right.
Most of it is Tory-paranoia boilerplate, but it repeats surely the most stupid of all Tory policies, the repeal of the Human Rights Act. Apart from the obvious implication – in the headline of this post – it also is supremely pointless. Unless the Tories also want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention will still bind Britain, it will just be harder for people to exercise their rights, because they’ll need to go to the European court every time. The Tories – they don’t mind you having rights, they just don’t want you to exercise them (unless you’re rich enough to afford expensive lawyers).
Travel notes: Paris
A pleasant stay in Paris at the Hotel Patio St. Antoine, on the rue Faubourg St Antoine, metro Faidherbe-Chaligny. Also, right by the metro, a lovely friendly cafe callled Le cafe Faidherbe.
Tricky question
The unanswerable questions posed tothe Urban Legends Reference Pages. via MeFi.
Quackwatch
Interview with a British Jihadist | MetaFilter
Prospect interviews a Jihadist from Manchester, and Metafilter discusses.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ludicrous self-publicist Robert Kilroy-Silk has quit the party he founded, Veritas.
Apparently, the ideas he espoused, such as immediate withdrawal from the European Union, abolishing inheritance tax on houses and expelling all asylum seekers (except those with children) are “now part of the political mainstream”. I can’t say I’d noticed, to be honest, but perhaps that’s what all washed up has-been xenophobes like to think.
We are what we are
Tristram Hunt (author of the excellent Building Jerusalem) invokes Orwell in an excellent article in the New Statesman, on the nature of Britishness.