2004

The courts have ruled in a groundbreaking decision that a man who can only be named as “DB”, who has been detained without trial or even a reason in the Home Office since 2001, must be released from his duties immediately on the grounds that his ordeal has caused him to develop a psychosis. Sources…

Airport Screeners Do Poorly, Panel Told (washingtonpost.com) Apparently, the TSA’s security screeners miss 2 out of every 10 prohibited items sent through their checkpoints in a test. According to the Post, there was no difference between state-run and private security. Which is no surprise when they hire the kind of people who stick their heads…

Right – is the Ranter now showing normally?

So – it’s official. We are to have a referendum on the European Constitution. And – of course – we are going to vote No. What happens next, no-one is very sure of. This depresses me deeply. After all this time, says Blair, we are going to have the grand showdown argument to whack the…

More and more reports suggest that the Coalition and specifically the US Army and Marines in Iraq are having serious difficulties keeping open the roads. This was no doubt behind the announcement that several major highways would be closed to civilian traffic, despite the rather pathetic attempt to spin this as “repairs”. After all, by…

You are Paul Krugman! You’re a brilliant economistwith a knack for both making sense of thecurrent economic situation and exposing theBush administration’s lies about it. Yousomehow came out as the best anti-war writer onthe Op-Ed staff. Other economists hate yourguts for selling out to the liberals. To hellwith ’em. Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist…

We now have referrer tracking.

I’ve changed the way the Ranter’s blogroll works. From now on, blogs with RSS/XML feeds will be included in the RSS display under Ranter Coverage. Blogs without will simply be linked. At the moment I can’t display Atom feeds, so Atom users will get a link but not feed coverage. We welcome British Spin, Bloggerheads,…

I recently commented on this blog entry concerning the Right’s fascination with vouchers – education vouchers, health vouchers – and some possible extensions. They seem to consider that all problems may be solved simply by invoking the magic of vouchers. A couple of things stand out: firstly, what’s the point of a voucher? The entire…

It is reported that a US Army psychological operations team is broadcasting the songs of AC/DC, combined with a nice line in taunts (“You shoot like a goat herder!” Well, I rather suspect Iraqi goat herders are the sort of folk who learn to shoot straight before they can walk, but it’s the thought that…