General Blog About Everything

1: “Police shoot dead woman in car park”The Metro, London

1. JAMES MURDOCH

Ahhh, can you smell it? Breathe deep. That sweet optimism and rancid doubt carried on the dawn of the New Year. It’s a giddy posy. Part exciting challenge, part bowel-churning dread. For adland’s workers have more reason than many to meet the coming year with mixed emotions. The business is changing, structures are crumbling, traditions are being blown apart. Our world in 12 months’ time will be dramatically altered. The agent of destruction ? and rebirth ? is technology, of course, and its pace is swift. Even as I write, the futurologists are surely forecasting their own demise: the future is no longer the next five years, it’s next month, next week, and by the time you’ve predicted it, it’s been and gone. So bear that in mind as you consider the following 10 pronouncements.

Dramatic new photographs taken seconds before the murder of Benazir Bhutto cast serious doubt on the Pakistan government’s official account of the death of the former prime minister. The three photographs ? first published by Pakistan’s Dawn News ? appear to reveal Ms Bhutto’s assassin advancing towards her vehicle, drawing out a pistol, and firing it at close range as the handful of security personnel duck for cover.

The business is only small scale but it’s a profitable one. It involves driving two hours to Lake Kivu, on the Congo’s eastern border, three times a week and bringing back to the town of Rutshuru a load of fish from the fishermen who work the lake: usually tilapia, big solid fish with plenty of protein. They are popular in Rutshuru, and they can be sold at a premium.

For the millions of Americans who are ticking off the days until deliverance, it is the perfect present ? a 2008 calendar countdown until George Bush leaves the White House, its every page adorned with a quote from the President who has mangled not only the country’s image, but also the English language, as no other in the history of the Republic.

You’re planning a party this evening? Marvellous. You’ve invited 40 pals round for drinks, dancing and furtive kissing just after midnight? Excellent. But how ambitious have you been? You’ve gone to Threshers to take advantage of their three-bottles-for-two offer, you’ve spent nearly £300 on wine ? three hundred quid! ? plus some beer for the teens and cranberry juice for the teetotals; you’ve bought 60 cocktail sausages and chicken drumsticks from Sainsbury’s, your wife has knocked up a pasta salad and unwrapped a walloping Stilton. And your friend, Chris, has promised to bring some of his industrial-strength fireworks to let off in the front garden.