United States of England: There's really no point, is there?

At some point between the apocalyptic thunderstorms that have been lashing Auld Reekie, this year's Edinburgh International Festival Fringe officially kicked off, bringing exciting and diverse entertainments from around the world to our sleep little corner of Scotland. Also, Jimmy Carr.

Let's not forget the most important people in all this: London's Britain's cultural intelligensia who have decamped north en masse to sample pints of ale in Rebus' local, soak up the atmosphere in the world's first City of Literature and get in the way of the locals. The annual occupation more or less renders any coverage we'd be offering on the festival season irrelevant, except for those occasions when lame punning and excessive sarcasm are required, so we're just not going to bother.

A couple of hints, though, for the festival rookie - Spiegeltent is so 2005, all of the good parties are flat parties and you're not invited, and, whatever you do, don't heckle Daniel Kitson.

If you need us, we'll be in the Assembly Rooms Lane Bar.

United States of England: doomed

United States of England: because you know you can go further north than Newcastle, right?


Via Londonist.

United States of England: Then clearly there's no fire

United States of England: because you know you can go further north than Newcastle, right?

It's been, ooh, what - a year? - since Scotland's smoking ban came into effect. Of course, seeing as the English will be joining the party on July 1st, they're getting all interested. Hope they bring some decent wine this time.

Anyway, the article makes a couple of points that stood out at Dirty Old HQ:

Perhaps more than any other city in the UK, Edinburgh's identity is closely bound up with its dark, gloomy drinking dens - a fug of smoke always having hung inside them alongside the smell of hops and a murmur of Caledonian accents.

The presence of the word "fug" here leads us to suspect that the BBC won't employ a copy editor below the age of 74.

Next up, a quote from our stalwart enforcement officer regarding a friend...

"She worked as a barmaid in working men's clubs from the age of 20," he grimaces. "Never touched a cigarette in her life, but the doctors said they'd never seen a worse set of lungs.

"She was left with two stumps where her legs should have been. I don't have any trouble getting up in the morning when I think of her."

Just make sure that righteous anger ain't pointed at us. More towards to those bastardish, alleged limb-thieving tabacco companies, please.