The Yorkshire Ranter

Does this surprise anybody at all? Yeah, the worst department of state is up to its old tricks again. Its accounts are so dire that the National Audit Office finds it impossible even to tell how bad they really are. That’s pretty fucking bad, I think you’ll agree. Apparently they can’t even do their bleeding…

Kathryn Cramer is under some unwelcome pressure from a PR flunkey for the UN force in Haiti after her series on the activities of a bizarre bunch of mercenaries calling themselves “Consultants Advisory Group” down there. Specifically, one David Wimshurst at MINUSTAH headquarters responded to an inquiry from her side with a very unpleasant slab…

In fact, it might well be. Nokia just released an implementation of Python, the well-known scripting language, for Symbian Series 60 phones – and it’s all open source so anyone can have a go at making their own fancy “services”. What’s the betting that a) 90% of its uses will be completely frivolous and b)…

BoingBoing recently posted regarding the long-tailed boats used in South-East Asia, essentially traditional designs with old lorry engines installed on a long steerable propshaft in the stern. I was reminded of a curious piece of history and wrote to the BBsters as follows: It’s not well known that those boats originate from a change in…

Sources are great, aren’t they? Especially when they’re “police sources”. Police sources said Jean-Charles de Menezes may have been found with cocaine. Well, I may have been found with cocaine, but not by a policeman, and not by anyone else – indeed, I may not have been found with it all. Enough semantics. Police sources…

Hear that weird whistling and crackling radio noise? That’s the technicians trying to get Simon Heffer’s Gaydar lined up. What does it tell you about the Lib Dems that the only one of the potential leadership candidates who had anything like interesting and attractive policies has had to drop out because his colleagues refused to…

Robert “Paradise and Power” Kagan, the global expert hyperpundit famous for determining that someone like Jacques Chirac is unwilling to take action to defend his interests, being more interested in maintaining an illusory island of Kantian peace in his backyard, thinks the capital of Australia is Sydney. Apparently, according to leading US scholars, the essential…

Shaul Mofaz has been at it again, threatening that Iran’s president, novelty fascist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would spread misfortune and suffering over the Iranian people if he attempted to build nuclear weapons. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he. Even though Iran wouldn’t have a bomb for at least three years from now, long before which…

I don’t, as a rule, indulge in fisking – I think it’s a slightly dubious piece of blogospheric tradition, perhaps the online equivalent of fox-hunting – but this Simon Heffer screed in the Telegraph is hard to miss. The appliance, Nurse, and 50 ccs of snark! Doing nothing in Iran is not an optionBy Simon…

So..the day after the Lords rained on Tony’s ID parade, the Sun gets an exclusive superspook leako that the Metroplod is investigating a plot to kidnap Leo Blair. Naturally, there is no danger. Nuh. No arrests, and the lad was never apparently at risk. Anyone else spot a connection between these two facts?