When I was growing up the words 'spastic' and 'spaz' (more commonly pronounced 'spa' with a kind of glottal stop at the end) were part of our rich palette of insults. Even back then they were mildly frowned upon.Slightly surprising, then, to hear Tiger Woods liken himself to a 'spaz' the other day, not least because I'd thought this was a uniquely British pejorative and because it seems to breach some of the notions of political...

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Interesting item on BBC2's about the limited availability of Tamiflu, the anti-bird flu drug. Rich countries are likely to buy up the bulk of the stocks, leaving little for the Third World, the programme pointed out, suggesting that the developed world had a duty to behave altruistically in this matter.Fair enough but Newsnight could also have pointed out that in the UK Tamiflu will go first not to the sick and elderly but to...

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Props, maximum respect, a big shout out etc to Guido Fawkes who devised an innovative way of gaining support when he wanted to break an injunction taken out by Rupert Murdoch. Guido used pledgebank to promise publicly that he would publish a picture of the News of the World's Fake Sheikh provided ten other bloggers did the same.There is safety (of a sort) in numbers and we can expect to see this mechanism used in future cases...

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The BBC's trial of its Integrated Media Player (iMP) has been a success, apparently. Families with the player watched an average of two programmes a week on their computers, rather than on TV.No launch date yet as the iMP has to be analysed by Ofcom to see what effect it will have on the internet market. At a time when a lot of companies (including the one I work for) are looking at ways of making money out of video, either by...

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David Cameron is doing his best to make the Conservative Party hip, cool and metropolitan. This description of the birthday party of a senior Tory figure shows just how much he still has to do:"Jasper Carrott compered the whole evening, one highlight of which was an hilarious tour de force by William Hague. We were also treated to John Culshaw from Dead Ringers, Lulu (who I've never really liked, but she was superb!), the Band...

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