Scott, I hear you ask, how do you manage to watch all these wonderful old movies on your TV screen without needing a DVD player?

To be strictly accurate, three people have asked me this question recently, and I promised each of them I'd post some advice: here it is. I'm sure there are other ways of doing it, but I'm no expert, so I'll just describe how I've gone about it. For starters, we own a Samsung "Smart" TV - i.e. a set which can be hooked into your broadband network and which is festooned with USB ports so you can plug other devices into it. We used to be able to access YouTube videos from the TV, but the app was pretty useless, and was finally removed. In order to restore this capability, I bought an Amazon Fire Stick (approximately £50 when I last looked) and connected it to the TV vis a USB port. (As far as I can tell, the Fire Stick communicates wirelessly with your broadband router, rather than piggybacking on any connection between your TV and your broadband network.) Instantly, I could once more choose to watch any of the thousands of films available for free or pay to rent one of their pay films (the only movies I pay to watch on YouTube are those offered by the company itself - many other pay films are available on the platform from other providers, but they all require a monthly subscription, and ...

An apology to recent commenters! Normal(ish) service has been resumed.

There I was, feeling a bit Billy-No-Mates because no one was posting any comments on this blog, only to discover that there's currently a problem with Google's Blogger platform - namely that some bloggers haven't been receiving the email notification that tell them a new comment has been posted. New comments have been appearing in my admin section - but I rarely visit it, relying entirely on email alerts since I started "moderating" comments last year in order to prevent crazed racists and hysterical SJW troublemakers from regularly leaving malodorous little piles of excrement on the site...

Modern politics is like The Archers - you take a break from it, only to discover that nothing has changed

I'm hoping someone turns this parody cover into an actual book in time for next Christmas - what a brilliant stocking-filler!

After a three-day hiatus...

The latest examples of madness, mayhem and mirth from social media...

Very bad taste, that. Mind you, England not playing at the World Cup would prevent...

Virtue-signallers, traitors, racists, politicians without balls, wisdom...and some snow-related japery

Nothing to See Here is a new BBC One crime drama series...

I'm preparing to bid a tearful farewell to a dear companion - my six-year old Kindle

I asked Santa for a Kindle for Christmas 2011, because we were about to run out of space for book. To be honest, I didn't know whether I could bear to read whole books on a little grey screen, or whether the lure of owning physical copies would prove irresistible. But I simply couldn't face having to choose yet more paperbacks and hardcovers to throw out to make room for new purchases - I'd conducted numerous culls over the years, and I didn't feel up to yet another bout of bibliocide.  So I was determined to give the Kindle a proper go. Turned out I didn't need to steel myself, because - with the exception of poetry, illustrated works in general and art books in particular - I was perfectly happy to read a book on an e-reader: more than happy, in fact, because I could change the font size whenever I felt like it (I had yet to discover the joy of reading glasses), and I could download articles from the web - a real boon, as I...

The grammatical errors that drive me mad... by the man in the grammatical glass-house (glasshouse?)

This tweet by a Conservative MP contains what is currently my least favourite mistake:

"Less" youngsters? Fewer. Fewer.  FEWER! After all, you is like talkin bout edukashun innit? This is a bit hypocritical of me, I know (or, if you prefer, a bit Brendan Cox of me)...

A special bumper round-up of social media madness, mendacity and mockery from the past fortnight...

Do you like Oxfam's proposed redesign for its shop-fronts?

The Oxfam sex scandal prompted one of the oddest tweets so far this year:

The problem with mobile phones - as predicted by a pre-War Daily Mirror cartoonist

I initially assumed this was a modern parody of how an earlier generation would...

The Grønmark Blog 2017 Politics Awards: Part Two

The Most Deranged Newspaper Headline of the Year Award:

The Most Morally Insane Attempt by a Left-Winger to Justify Mass Murder:

Gay lions, the wisdom of four-year olds, poppies, and cuddly Marxists...

Hard not to agree with the little twerp for once - even though this is pretty much exactly what he was saying about the Labour Party this time last year.  It's also hard to disagree with any of the following tweets: 

My misspent youth has come back to haunt me... in the form of Nick Sharman eBook covers

I love the slash-marks across the title! I didn't misspend my young adulthood...

Either these American kiddies were brainwashed - or they said no such thing

It's strange that the offspring of left-liberal Americans never say things like:

Twitter suspends right-wing satirist Godfrey Elfwick for being mean to multimillionaire BBC leftie, Gary Lineker. Shame!

I became aware of Twitter's attitude to right-wing snark-meisters a few years ago when Old Holborn used to disappear on a regular basis, only to pop up under another, similar name - but "Britain's vilest troll" appears to have learned how to play the thought-police's game. America's alt-right twitterati felt the mighty force of the platform's disapproval in 2016 (the actor James Woods stopped tweeting for a while in protest, but his splendidly splenetic fellow-thespian Nick Searcy kept on swinging). Now, possibly emboldened by Jeremy Corbyn's unexpectedly strong showing at the general election and the tsunami of ersatz leftie fury following the Grenfell Tower fire, British Twitter is falling into line by suspending various alt-right/right-wing/libertarian troublemakers. This comment on Gary Linkere's eye-wateringly vast BBC salary is what earned Godfrey Elfwick - currently the funniest thing on Twitter - a ban (if fruit language offends you, please don't read it).

Sunday's Comic Cuts... aka "We really are going to Hell in a Handcart"

Feeling safer already...

It's too hot to think, let alone write anything, so here's the result of another lazy trawl...

Conservative Hollywood actor James Woods is as splendidly acerbic off-screen as on

James Woods turns 70 on Tuesday - but there's precious little sign of him doing much mellowing. Following his Twitter feed is a bit like watching a highlights reel of lines from his movies:

It's safe to say that, unlike most Hollywood stars, he's not a committed Hillary fan:

Passwords - we've all been there...

No wonder otters are such huge internet stars - prepare for cuteness overload

Looks like he's ready for his close-up - but then...

The problem for the West's left-wing leaders praising Castro is that we now have a public forum to mock them

THE NAT ONAL (its logo would suggest that's its name), is a Scottish daily newspaper which supports independence for Scotland...

I'm feeling prestalgic for a technological future full of huge, red and blue bulbous things that look like kids' toys

A new media boss of mine at the BBC used to start every talk by mentioning "prestalgia"...