Horror! I missed the blog’s birthday!
The Yorkshire Ranter was one year old on the 10th of June. And I failed to mark blogday in any signal fashion. Shame, shame, shame
Read More Horror! I missed the blog’s birthday!Uncategorized
Al-Qaida videos turn up in hacked server
Der Standard is reporting that a video of Paul Johnson, the Lockheed engineer being held hostage by al-Qa’ida, has turned up on a server belonging to a surveying firm in California. The paper referred to a German techie news site, Heise Online, which in turn referred to this story from Der Spiegel. The firm in…
Read More Al-Qaida videos turn up in hacked serverPrivatised beatings – a criminal charge at last
Civilian Charged In Beating of Afghan Detainee (washingtonpost.com) A privately employed interrogator has been charged with assault over the case of an Afghan man who was beaten to death during three days of interrogation. According to a “source”, the CIA men then tried to blame the army: “Immediately after Wali’s death, he said, the CIA…
Read More Privatised beatings – a criminal charge at lastOfficial – ASLEF president hit woman, thumped gen sec
Mind you, this is funny enough to be worth blogging. The TUC’s report into the drunken brawl at the ASLEF barbecue is out. “After about half an hour the general secretary physically removed the president from the decking on which the bar becue had taken place,” says the report. “The general secretary was in the…
Read More Official – ASLEF president hit woman, thumped gen secChips are a vegetable
The US Department of Agriculture is obviously in mourning for Ronald Reagan, as they have acquired a federal judge’s ruling that chips – in fact, chips in *batter* – may be considered a vegetable. It seems, sadly, that despite the Reagan nostalgia (when ketchup was officially a vegetable for school dinners) this only applies to…
Read More Chips are a vegetableDo you like my new pull-down menus?
That UKIP surge in full
17% of a 40% turnout equals a thick 6.8% of the electorate. Get real.
Read More That UKIP surge in fullIt only gets worse. Much worse
How much worse can it get? Seymour Hersh, who broke the torture scandal in the first place, has this to say(via Brad DeLong): “He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said,…
Read More It only gets worse. Much worseWhen Voters Attack
To my horror I see I was very, very wrong about the local elections, specifically the BNP contribution. Looks like I spoke too soon. Poor Bradford will have to put up with some four fascists. Worst of all, one of them was elected for Keighley West! This is a shocker, as back in the riot…
Read More When Voters AttackReports from a funeral. Not that one
Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Election blow for Labour Still the horrors pour in. A good example of the rare case when Field Marshal Haig was wrong about “the situation never being as good or bad as first reports indicate”. The whipping is now up to 330 seats lost. Ouch! Pleasantly, though, it…
Read More Reports from a funeral. Not that one