Now here’s a party proposal I can get behind. Lib Dems want to introduce a Great Repeal Act, which would consist of a single sweeping revocation of a whole catalogue of liberticidal, stupid and expensive Blairite nonsense. Details are here. 1. Restrictions on protests in Parliament SquareSections 132 to 138; Serious Organised Crime and Police…
Read More Repeal!That MR post also raises an interesting point of language. Out of 50,000 acknowledged private security personnel in Iraq, their trade group, the PSCAI (for Private Security Companies’ Association in Iraq, a nice echo of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq or SCIRI) describes them as follows: 3,000+ Americans, 15,000+ third-country nationals…
Read More Geographies of mercenarismEvery blog and its cat has been discussing the tale that Richard Armitage supposedly threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the stone age, but no-one seems to have mentioned a very obvious fact about this: Pakistan has an estimated 20-60 nuclear warheads deliverable by various means. Now, you don’t go round threatening to bomb nuclear…
Read More All the Pakistan that’s fit to printAh, those fine Blairite institutions. South Maidstone is apparently to be blessed with a school where some rich person gets 51 per cent of the votes for 20 per cent of the money, but something has gone terribly wrong. Specifically, the Tory-run Kent county council is trying to do something unfashionable. According to our sources,…
Read More AcademiesMy thoughts on the Thai coup, free signup required. Which will explain the title. Interesting to see the classic model coup in action again. Turkey in 1997 had the so-called “virtual coup”, when the army didn’t actually leave barracks but did cause the government to fall by indicating its displeasure. But this was your Bolivian…
Read More Thax lossIf you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know most of the stuff in this Washington Post story, but it’s good to have it all in a handy quick-reference guide.
Read More In their own worldMost things in this report are terrible, but I’m especially worried by this.. General David Richards, the British general who recently assumed command of Nato forces in Afghanistan, had expressed his reservations about this strategy and was expected to withdraw them when he took over at the end of July. But so far this has…
Read More A bad signRemember the strange case of Khalid Rashid? South African muckrakers Noseweek have much more news on it.
Read More Noseweek has NewsYou may remember this story from March on how the British-designed VAAC control system for the JSF project was being used by the Americans without any apparent return. Well, Sir Digby Jones, the outgoing director of the CBI, has weighed in. Link. “One of the most shocking and worrying aspects of loss of independence has…
Read More Too little, too lateRemind me not to go back to Dubai if at all possible. It’s what happens when you leave the keys where the postmodernists can get at them, a formless mass of rapid urbanisation running along the coast from the border with Sharjah to beyond the docks at Jebel Ali. “Sprawl” doesn’t describe it, because sprawl…
Read More Brainfuck City