Paul Simpson
Journalist, author, editor
- One of the few downsides of being a rocket scientist must be the frequency with which new acquaintances feel compelled to drop the phrase “It’s not rocket science!” into conversation.
- Random thought: how many jobs at the Washington Post could have been saved if Bezos/Amazon hadn’t spent $75m on the Melania documentary nobody wanted to watch?
- “I leave to your own devices … your phone is the best relationship you have now, the first thing you pick up in the morning and the last thing you touch at night.” A telling, yet sad, line from Kara Swisher’s Burn Book: A Tech Love Story (2024)
- I haven’t heard of Rob McClure but his blistering attack on Trump’s mismanagement of the Kennedy Centre is hilariously accurate: apple.news/AP5SO31hYRoq...
- Full football misery bingo card for the Foxes on Saturday. Early red card ✔️ Injured midfielder ✔️ Missed penalty ✔️ Fans leaving before final whistle ✔️ Pundits insisting we’re too good to go down ✔️
- “In books and magazines on how to be and what to see, while you are being, before and after photographs teach how to pass from reaching to believing”. Janis Ian’s finest song ‘Between The Lines’ is brilliant, acerbic and prophetic: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSmS...
- These posts are islands of sanity in a mad world.
- This is what an editorial aneurysm looks like …
- Just to clarify, Badenoch really means “ideas are no longer wanted in Conservative Party”. Hope that’s helpful: apple.news/A_qzEOyuZSAG...
- “The penguin does not concern himself with the opinions of those who cannot comprehend.” The White House’s response to those who pointed out there are no penguins in Greenland sounds like a cryptic Taoist saying by the master to David Carradine in the 1970s TV action-drama series Kung Fu.
- Not exactly surprised that Marti Cifuentes has gone but with nine Championship clubs now having changed managers already this season, it is increasingly clear they are being used as a human shield by inept owners and directors of football.
- Hard to disagree. apple.news/ACxSFDJDjQFm...
- This is the unofficial anthem for the first disastrous year of Trump 2.0. Ry Cooder singing How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live? youtu.be/LI0BtL_6Y50
- Donald Trump has cemented his place in American history. Fairly sure that more American civilians have been killed on home soil by the authorities on his watch than under any president since Nixon.
- I am grudgingly impressed by the remorseless consistency with which each software update makes my iPhone slightly more difficult to use.
- “Even if you are very industrious you can’t rely on writing more than two books a year, which will employ your public for six hours each. For every hour you employ their attention, you’re giving them a month to forget you.” Evelyn Waugh on top form in his travel book Labels.
- A gut-wrenching story about America’s new ‘Golden Age’.
- One tenth of the way through Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket and I am already baffled and enthralled in equal measure.
- Reposted by Paul Simpson[Not loaded yet]
- United’s Class of 92 increasingly resemble a toxic remake of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen.
- Cutting down 20,000 word transcript into 5,000 and beginning to seriously detest the word ‘really’.
- “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - get it out with Optrex”, Spike Milligan, dad’s favourite comedian
- Gold standard slop. BBC Countryfile asks how two questions about Shakespeare was and concludes, rather anti-climactically, that a) we don’t know and b) probably not because someone would have said. A strange, and irrelevant, story.
- During the 1970 election campaign, Edward Heath and film director Bryan Forbes were driving through the poorer parts of Newcastle, when the Tory leader said: “if I lived here I wouldn’t vote for me. Or Wilson.” Intrigued, Forbes asked who he would vote for. Heath replied: “Robespierre.”
- When David Hockney first brought his mother to California she looked out of the window one day and remarked: “All this sunshine and no washing out.”
- List of funniest books ever but somehow no Catch 22, Thurber or Spark. Are they having a laugh? apple.news/Agdu5mw7RRmy...
- “I hope if dogs ever rule the world and they choose a king, they don’t just go on size because I bet there are some chihuahuas with some really good ideas,” a deep thought from Jack Handey
- A good, if troubling read on a mystery brain disease: apple.news/AU1YpH46KQLu...
- Ahead of the FA Cup third round, you might enjoy this: www.fourfourtwo.com/features/whe...
- “Kate Hepburn is a combination of Jekyll and Hyde, Mary Poppins, Lady Hester Stanhope with perhaps a touch of Gandhi and Falstaff thrown in.” Marvellous line from Bryan Forbes’ delightfully frank memoir A Divided Life, the find of the day on my charity book shift.
- This story prompted me to a) rank my 5 most beautiful World Cups and b) realise that there won’t be another uncorrupt one until at least 2038. My top 5: 1) Mexico, 1970 2) Spain, 1982 3) Sweden, 1958 4) Argentina, 1930 5) Mexico, 1986 Here’s the piece: apple.news/AOje9EX8gRW6...
- I’m sorry but Connections has definitively jumped the shark.
- “He’s gone, but eternity knows him and it knows what we’ve done”. From Don McLean’s breakthrough album American Pie, The Grave is one of the most beautiful but harrowing anti-war songs I’ve ever heard: www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05a...
- Hello BBC News why the f**k are you so behind the curve on Iran? Asking as someone who grew up trusting you as the most authoritative broadcaster in the world.
- DNA is for organisms not organisations. The idea that it can and/or should define football clubs is pernicious nonsense.
- Not playing well and winning isn’t always the mark of a good team. Sometimes, as Leicester proved last night, not playing well and winning is the sign of a bad team that got lucky or was saved by the keeper (in this instance, Jakub Stolarczyk). Not as catchy as the cliche but more accurate.
- “It starts to look like Paige might just be a small cog in a larger, more nefarious-looking clock.” My favourite line from Metro’s review of Netflix thriller Run Away left we wondering how a clock could appear nefarious. Perhaps by pretending to be a wheel?
- Disgraceful.
- Business as usual at today’s Daily Mail. ‘Unrivalled reports and analysis’ about why Starmer is to blame for EVERYTHING.
- How many members of FIFA does Trump have to assault, bomb and wage undeclared, illegal war on before someone at head office summons up the nerve to convince Infantino that his sycophantic peace prize is the biggest own goal the federation has ever scored?
- One of the simplest, most underrated pleasures in life is to wake up somewhere different for the first time and listen to the morning unfold.
- News - as defined by the Mirror.
- One new year resolution I’d like retired footballers to adopt is to stop trashing their former teammates for the sake of a few column inches in the tabloids.
- I don’t like derby games being named after motorways, I prefer to think of tonight’s clash between Leicester and Derby as the David Nish derby.
- Discovered this great statue in Kingston yesterday, promoting a great cause: lovethelast.com
- Is Stephen Miller the biggest moron working for Trump? The toxic blend of ignorance and arrogance in this post makes you pity his family Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.
- Breathtakingly but beautifully cold here in Shepperton. Birds are sitting on second tier balconies of blocks of flats, rather than on the roofs. Goodwill to all even those without goodwill to others.
- John Updike once told Martin Amis: “You have the air about you of a man who’s read Finnegan’s Wake.” Amis never decided if this was meant to be a compliment.
