Suzanne Moore decides the House of Lords is great. I think this graf. is missing something: What sounds like a broken alarm clock goes off to call a vote. They all creep out of their warrens and file in, and I manage to find Baroness Shirley Williams. “This place swallows legislation like other people swallow…
Read More Quality controlThink Defence has been having a very good discussion (practically a CT-style blog seminar) about the Falklands. Which reminds me…I note that Bob Howard has yet to visit, despite the eldritch conjunction of an implausibly massive geostrategic commitment, the deep links between right-wing political Catholicism and the sinister occult, the Antarctic (and you know what…
Read More RecommendedIf the last post scared you rigid, what about some more Bradford-related links? Alternate headline for this probably Predictable Twat Has Good Time Despite Self. Stupid TV show, meet much better writing. Scenarios for a better future, and a worse future. Mind you, the better future includes Westfield building a giant shopping centre in the…
Read More Bradford LinksIn a perfectly normal Jamie Kenny comments thread, weird machines are seen, circling the skies of West Yorkshire. What’s up is that someone has been reading Richard Aldrich’s book on GCHQ (my five-part unread series of posts starts here and refers here). Basically, the intelligence services maintain various capabilities to acquire electronic intelligence. As well…
Read More Do this help?A couple of piracy links. Thomas Wiegold (German link) reports that India is very angry indeed about a group of Italian security men protecting a ship who fired on a fishing boat, thinking she was a pirate skiff, killing several people. Of course, the Indian Navy has form here, having destroyed a Thai trawler in…
Read More Pirate LinksBack from MWC. Heavy cold. Browser queue jammed with stuff. I’m going to do a brief succession of link posts to clear up. (Happenings last week; huge Leveson revelations, James Murdoch out, King Mob abolished workfare, horse, Borisbus fiasco, debate on Daniel Morgan, even more Leveson..) This one deals with everyone’s favourite global geo-political region,…
Read More Middle Eastern LinksI just got an e-mail from my MP, Lynne Featherstone, regarding publishing the NHS Risk Register. Here’s the important bit. Risk registers are used by government departments and more generally by private companies to plan for worst-case scenarios. They range on everything from flu epidemics to terrorist attacks. As you can imagine, publishing these documents…
Read More If I were you I’d do X. But obviously I don’t feel responsible for the consequencesI don’t often link to the Daily Hell but this is a special occasion. A4E in police fraud inquiry. On a similar theme, here’s a piece on Tory discontent with the NHS bill that names names. Specifically, Gove, IDS, Osborne, NI Secretary Owen Paterson, and horrible old thatcherite gargoyle Sir George Young. That sounds like…
Read More more nonprofit profitBack in the summer, as the News International scandal (well, beyond the scandal of its very existence) cranked up, we had a look at how the government buys newspaper display advertising and made an effort to reach out and touch the people in charge of it. I see no reason not to go round the…
Read More contacting the Government’s media-buying functionThis Afghan news item is telling. Mr. Hasas’ seven-mile road construction project went so awry that his security guards opened fire on some of the very villagers he was trying to woo on behalf of his American funders. Mr. Hasas was a point man in a $400 million U.S. Agency for International Development campaign to…
Read More non-profit, but nonprofit for who?