Phyllis Dixey - 1914 to 1964 - Striptease Artiste - lived here in flat number 15. - The wording proposed last November for a new British Heritage blue plaque, but it proved controversial. I only just came across this story. Since then, I don't know what has happened. Is this plaque actually going to materialise? What it says at the bottom of this recent news item, about another proposed blue ...

Yet another day here in Westminster that's all about the economy. Nick Clegg has just delivered a speech on the subject to Mansion House, focusing on ‘responsible capitalism’, which we'll blog shortly. And two prominent forecasting groups, the Ernst & Young ITEM Club and the Centre for Economic and Business Research, have suggested that we're effectively back in ...

Britain is already in technical recession, and unemployment will rise further, economic forecaster the Item Club warns.

Some commenters on this blog got more than a little sniffy when I had a few critical things to see about Ron Paul the other day. I stand by my remarks, which actually were hardly the sort of fire-eating stuff that some people come up with, but I'll happily repeat my respect for his genuine good points, as I see them. David French, over at National Review, has an interesting item reflecting on...

I listen a lot to Radio 3, the classical music channel, especially first thing in the morning. This inevitably involves listening to BBC news bulletins, which can be quite an ordeal. This morning, as my brain surfaced into consciousness, I heard a strange item, about how the government intends to switch the subsidies it gives to the British movie industry towards more popular movies, presumably aw...

The Department for Education is lifting restrictions that force schools in England to charge the same price for the same item for every pupil, in order to allow them to offer price promotions. I’m sorry? What? We’ve had the central government in a country of 65 million people determining the school lunch pricing policies of

There are a couple of items worth examining on this today. The first one was a response ( obviously cleared with higher authority) to Iran's threats to close the Strait of Hormuz from the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet's spokeswoman Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, who warned Iran that any disruption "will not be tolerated." She added that the U.S. Navy is "always ready to counter malevolent actions ...

On Boxing Day the whole family sat round to watch The Borrowers. This is the latest TV retelling of the charming tale of the two inch tall people who live under floorboards, scavenging from us big people for food and other useful items. Much of the plot of this version revolves around a professor played by Stephen Fry who captures some of the little people, wants to show them off to the world as a...

While we're talking Christmas, how about this release from the Office for National Statistics today? It reveals how the cost of certain ‘Christmas shopping basket’ items has risen over the past year. We've put them into a table below — but let's just say, you might want to start stocking up on carrots.

As I head to London's Heathrow Airport en route to Malta for the holidays, I see this item during a spot of web-surfing. It is a piece by Gerard Baker, in the Wall Street Journal. Baker has spent a fair while in the US, and clearly, he's been infected: "But I discovered football when I first came to New York in the late 1980s and my prejudices melted away. It was the era of New...