The Yorkshire Ranter

I am the No.1 result on Google for “botulism anorak”, immediately ahead of this amusing site. I’m also a hit for dubai dominatrix, if a long way down the Yahoo! rankings. More interestingly, someone on the Government Secure Intranet googled tom kelly guardian iraq visit private. I’m result number three. Interestingly, again, one “Tony Evans”…

The LA Times, a frequent reader of this blog, reports that the Kurds are cutting their own deals to explore for oil, and the Iraqi central government are Not Happy. After all, they have every reason not to be, given the burning issue of how the oil revenue from the existing oilfields is distributed –…

Many other bloggers have descended on the CIA secret jail story and are probably doing it better than I am. If you want a round-up I endorse and recommend Soj. But there are some things I feel ought to be flagged. As anyone who reads this regularly ought to know, I suspect that Taszar airbase…

Three terrorist cells exposed in Baghdad. Two were led by the same renegade Interior Ministry official and the other by the director of a private investment company. Does anyone else wonder if he was playing the markets (petrol? cement? security/protection racket?) in relation to his spare-time activities? This really is getting like Vietnam with worse…

Cole quotes Arabic press reports that representatives of the “guerrilla movement” in Iraq met with the Iraqi political parties, other Arab states, and US intelligence at a conference in Cairo, where they stated their terms. The terms are as follows: 1) working to end the foreign occupation;2) compensation to the Iraqis for the damages arising…

..has a use. Who knew? “The Attorney General’s ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act … we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up. If someone passes me the document…

So there’s this comment that appears in one of my old threads and it says “Nick Griffin is a paedophile”, giving what is clearly a string of random letters as a name. Then it appears again. Identical. So I goes and I asks da comment, whatta you know about Nick? Comment doesn’t answer, stares in…

At the World Summit on the Information Society in fun-loving Tunisia, it seems the goons tried to make Richard Stallman wear an RFID tag. Yes, that Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and hammer of digital injustices of every kind. Apparently he wrapped it in tinfoil (see! it works! the MIT study is…

I, I, THOMAS NISBET AITCHISON, Returning Officer at the election of a Councillor for the No. 15 Murrayfield Ward of the City of Edinburgh local government area on Thursday, 10 November 2005, do hereby, in accordance with Rule 43(1)(c) of the local elections rules set out in Schedule 2 to the Scottish Local Government Elections…

The Orwells, specifically. I’d like to resume Orwelling, and in a big way, by citing an organisation rather than an individual. This week’s Orwell nomination goes to the Association of Chief Police Officers, or ACPO for short. The reason? Not just for Brazilian-blasting or acting as uniformed whips for the Labour Party, nor for suggesting…