US election humour

It's time for a round-up of the best election humour so far. Stepping back to pre-Convention days, this flow-chart gives a useful look inside the mind of Dick Cheney. This SNL sketch is quite amusing; I like the idea of the Republican ad voiceover man whose voice drips with sarcasm even in normal conversation. Jon Stewart skewers some GOP hypocrisy in this clip. And here you can watch David Letterman blasting McCain's no-show on his programme. (Surely McCain's 'suspension' of his campaign will backfire?)

And finally, to demonstrate this blog's entirely non-partisan nature, here is some gentle ribbing of Barack Obama's rhetoric, courtesy of The Onion, under the headline Obama Modifies 'Yes We Can' Message To Exclude Area Loser.

Tory posters online

I'm more happy than I can say that the Conservative Party Archive poster collection has now been digitised. What a brilliant resource! The poster above is from 1929. And to think that they still managed to lose the election ...

Free Our Bills!

Here's a link to an important campaign to get Parliament to update the way it makes information on legislation available to the public. That may not sound awfully thrilling, but they do make an interesting and amusing case for it.

Gordon Brown's nightmare

Some words I never thought I'd type: here is a genuinely funny performance from William Hague in the House of Commons.

A joke ...

Q. How many UN officials does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Removing the old bulb is the responsibility of the dedicated agency UNSCREW. However, the agency for inserting new bulbs has not yet received its mandate. It has been provisionally entitled SCREWUP.

Times Higher Award

To my amazement, I won the Times Higher Education Supplement's Young Academic Author of the Year Award last week. Here is a picture of me with Gerard Kelly (left), editor of the THES, and Bill Rammell, the Minister for Higher Education.

Churchill's parents' sex life: a footnote

In an article in the Daily Telegraph Andrew Roberts discusses a new book by Celia and John Lee called Winston and Jack: The Churchill Brothers. Roberts suggests that Lady Randolph Churchill is unlikely to have been pregnant at the time of her wedding, as between then and Winston Churchill’s birth there were only 230 days, i.e. just ‘one day short of the 33 weeks of normal pregnancy’. However, the period between conception and birth is usually calculated at 266 days / 38 weeks. This doubtless explains why the announcement in The Times ran: ‘On the 30th Nov, at Blenheim Palace, the Lady RANDOLPH CHURCHILL, prematurely, of a son.’ Of course none of this proves that Lord and Lady Randolph had sex before marriage (and what does it matter if they did?) but the question must remain open.