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Right. I’ve been a split-brain blogger for the last month, putting all my election stuff over at General Election ’05. After tonight, there will be more TYR. There is some interesting news to come on what, exactly, is going on in the Yemen. On that theme, you will probably be pleased to know that our…

(With apologies to Gough Whitlam) It’s time to do a final election post. If you haven’t voted yet, kindly take a moment to read through the archives. We’ve had masses of Iraq and secret detention, mass surveillance, any amount of stupidity, cash-burning PFIs, schools controlled by anyone who will stump up one-tenth of their cost,…

It’s all over the press that various killer documents have been leaked: including the Foreign Office’s legal advice on the admissibility or otherwise of a war with Iraq, and the detail that contrary to his repeated denials, Tony Blair read it, and even further that Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, told the government…

We’ve just had a surge of traffic, for once not entirely associated with Viktor Bout. Metafilter linked to a story, from some time ago, regarding Shanaz Rashid, the grateful Iraqi woman who appeared on stage with Blair at the Labour conference. She had every reason to be grateful, because her husband had been named Minister…

The FAZ reports on regions of Germany along the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic. Apparently, despite predictions of a crime wave, it actually fell by 10%.

According to IT Week’s pet blogger, it’s now possible to go to India as a backpacker and work in a call centre handling calls from the UK. For Indian wages, naturally. I’m not sure whether to be amused at the stupidity of literally paying to be exploited, or revolted by the hypocrisy.

It’s been reported this week that the rate of violence in Iraq is now down to what it was in April, 2004, by no less an authority than General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I thought I’d look up the Ranter for that month and check what was going on. First we…

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has at last added a whole wedge of Viktor Bout’s companies to its asset blacklist. Not only that, but the key management including his brother Sergei, Richard Chichakli, Sergei Denissenko and Valery Naydo are on there too. It’s not as comprehensive as I might…

Via BoingBoing, across the wires the electric message comes that some random geek surfing Usenet has discovered what appears to be a 30 minute news bulletin on a major terrorist assault on the US, with plague, chemicals and crashing jets. All the stuff Mahmoud Abu Rideh would be getting up to, if he wasn’t confined…

Now, I know I’ve been seriously remiss here, but I hope this will satisfy both Chickyog and also Yorkshiresoul, who have both seen fit to demand that I answer five questions about books. You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? Well, I was tempted to say John Locke’s Second Treatise…