Stiff necked how to pronounce

Flood waters lapping the playing fields of Eton finally pumped David Cameron into action but incompetence will leave him high and dry. The Prime Bumbler’s panic after complacency gives him the air of a man drowning not waving, stranded all at sea when tested. Voters forgive much but the impression of incompetence is fatal, as poor old Gordon Brown discovered in the end. I watched Cameron at the weekend testily walk away from a TV interview when quizzed about his Tory-led Government’s inadequate response to torrential rain and storms. He’s a PM happy to dish it out but Cameron’s thin skin leaves him ­whimpering when given some of his own medicine. Tory squabbling over who's to blame for the floods would’ve shamed a bunch of kids. Perhaps Eric Pickles was used as a sandbag because the Tory heavyweight’s vanished, carrying a can for Cameron. So inept is the PM few people believe him any more, one of the reasons a poll found most think he’s as … [Read more...] about Floods leave David Cameron up to his neck in it

LONDON is experiencing a rise in violent crime, with 100 suspected murders in the capital since the start of the year. It meant, for the first time, that London's homicide rate momentarily overtook that of New York which has the virtually same population numbers. What is London's murder rate and when did it overtake New York? The London murder rate has hit 131 in 2018 so far. The latest killing was a man who was shot dead in Enfield on December 18. There were 116 murders in the capital during the whole of 2017. In that year New York had 286 - but that was its lowest since the 1950s.In 2018, NYC celebrated its first weekend without a murder or shooting in decades. Shootings are down two per cent on 2017. The city recorded 147 murders between January 1 and June 30, police data shows. During the same period London had 70 - less than half.This means that the NYC figures are higher than London. However, at the beginning of 2018 it was reported that the crimewave in the UK capital was … [Read more...] about London murder rate 2018 – how many murders have there been so far & which city has the world’s highest murder rate?

Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life. For some people it's Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, but for me it is Great Expectations. I first read it at 14 or so and, apart from some infatuations with Orwell, Fitzgerald, Salinger and Hardy, it has remained my favourite novel ever since. By some miracle, a story written in the mid-1850s had captured much of how I felt in a small provincial town at the end of the 1970s. Yet if I saw myself in the book, it wasn't a particularly flattering portrait. It's clear why a young reader might aspire to be Elizabeth Bennet, but who would want to be Pip Pirrip? A singularly un-heroic hero, he's pretentious, pompous, ambitious, in love with the idea of being in love yet tediously masochistic, self-indulgent, self-pitying, all the -selfs except self-knowing. He is abused, tortured, mocked, he rejects the love of others and is in turn rejected, and although he is, finally, capable of courage, decency and … [Read more...] about David Nicholls: Adapting Great Expectations for the screen

Wesley Ira Purkey, 67, is scheduled to be executed on December 13, 2019 Attorneys for one of the five federal death row inmates newly scheduled for execution have opened up multiple last-ditch legal challenges in a bid to spare his life, including petitioning President Donald Trump for clemency. Wesley Ira Purkey, 67, is scheduled to be executed on December 13, 2019 for the rape, murder and dismemberment of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in his Kansas home in 1998. He was also convicted of beating 80-year-old Mary Bales to death with a hammer. Last month, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that the federal government would resume executions for the first time since 2003, setting execution dates for Purkey and four other death row inmates whom he called 'the worst criminals.'  'Mr. Purkey is not 'the worst of the worst,'' his attorney Rebecca Woodman said in a statement to DailyMail.com on Tuesday. 'He is a man who grew up in a house of horrors, beaten and humiliated by both … [Read more...] about One of five federal death row inmates set for execution, who raped and dismembered teen girl and beat an 80-year-old woman to death, petitions Donald Trump for clemency and claims he ‘isn’t the worst of the worst’

These are the five federal prisoners who are set to be executed within months following a surprise announcement by the Justice Department on Thursday that the federal government will resume capital punishment for the first time since 2003. Daniel Lewis Lee, 46; Lezmond Charles Mitchell, 37; Wesley Ira Purkey, 67; Alfred Bourgeois, 55; and Dustin Lee Honken, 51, are scheduled to be executed in December or January. All are convicted murderers whose victims include children, and in some cases the children were horribly tortured and sexually abused.  The condemned men are being held on federal death row at Terre Haute USP in Indiana, and the Justice Department says all five have exhausted their appeals and post-conviction remedies. However, attorneys for some of the men have already spoken out, pleading for leniency based on the traumatic childhoods of the murderers and alleged legal lapses at trial - though so far none have argued actual innocence.  … [Read more...] about PICTURED: Four of the first five men to be killed by the federal government since 2003: Murderers whose victims all include children will be executed in months as their attorneys plead for leniency