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On my way to Big London yesterday, sitting in a slow train (and on South West Trains that’s really slow). About Hounslow way a school trip of girls was loaded into the carriage. Or should that be poured? I feared the worst and prepared to go into mindless tube mode, eyes blank, brain emptier, but…

This is the text of my resignation from the Labour Party, more than a year ago today. Alexander Harrowell (address here) 08/05/03 Party No. B045893 Dear General Secretary, One week ago I decided to destroy my Labour Party membership card and cancel my subscription. This letter is intended to be a formal statement of resignation,…

Well, they’d been plotting it for a while, but now the mobilisation order has come through. Tony Blair is no longer a viable option. The Labour Party is now the third placed party in Britain. The people have spoken and they have comprehensively dished the myth that Blair is still an election winner. If we…

Is here. The degree to which each state voted for either Bush or Gore is plotted against the percentage of the population self-reporting obesity. There is a distinct correlation. This suggests a slogan or two – “Fat, Dumb and Happy? Vote Bush!” perhaps. Thanks to King of Zembla

The Ranter is the no.1 Google result for “monkey arrest frenchman yorkshire”. And for “yorkshire wurlitzer”. And no.8 for “quasi government in yorkshire”. I could have sworn that I’d never used the word wurlitzer, but it seems that back last November I did. But who the hell searched for “male belly bulging”? We are result…

Professor Alan Turing of Manchester University, founder of computer science and breaker of Nazi naval ciphers, died by his own hand after being threatened with jail and stripped of his security clearance because he was gay. He ate an apple dosed with cyanide. In case you have ever wondered, Apple Computer’s logo is a memorial…

..one of Viktor Bout’s old aeroplanes turned up next door in Rwanda. In a hurry, so will simply report that the Tupolev 154 that belonged to two of his operations, Mold-Transavia and Centrafricain, and was involved in the “she-guns” affair, is now apparently registered in Rwanda by something called “Regional International Air Services”. Given the…

I recently read up some useful information on how to interpret the designations of those fuel contracts for Viktor Bout’s airlines. According to the DESC website, a DoDAAC beginning with “T” is one used to supply a charter or contractor on US Government service, or aircraft (or anything else) belonging to a foreign government when…

A lot of the time, whatever the press say about the “atmosphere” or the “political climate” might seem to be a myth restricted to a few twerps somewhere in London. Surely, this is just what politicians say about each other and what journos write about them. Yesterday, though, it was concrete. Police helicopters clattered constantly…

A curious offshoot of the raging scandal around Ahmed “The greatest Arab since Mohammed” Chalabi and his exposure as an Iranian spy has been pointed up by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. As the far more important questions build up, a small British angle has emerged with a story in the Daily Telegraph about…