The Yorkshire Ranter

As seems to be the way of it, as soon as anything seems to get better we find it’s just got worse. You would have thought that it was nothing but good news that the people detained in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act (that’s the one which allowed them…

Anthony Wells has a very interesting post about the possible sources of surprises in the election campaign over at the Polling Report (a species of advanced headquarters he’s set up for the campaign). Read it, it’s worth while. Broadly, his argument is that the apparent stability of the polls conceals a considerable potential for shocks,…

Via Kos, it is reported that wounded US servicemen returned from Iraq are being billed $450 a month for their meals in Walter Reed Army Medical Centre. Now, you can probably think of a few things to snarl about this without my assistance, but things aren’t that great over here. After all, the Reserve Forces…

The Dutch armed forces have, it seems, encountered a slightly unusual difficulty in Iraq, where they contribute 1,350 troops to the British-led MND(SE)’s northernmost sector. Simply, the soldiers’ trade union isn’t happy about their T’s and C’s. Yes, you read that correctly – the trade union. It’s called the AFMP and it’s angry that the…

Not so long ago I responded to a post on Mark Kleiman’s weblog concerning the “competitiveness leagues” that (usually) rightwing organisations like to prepare. I produced some methodology questions and some questions about content, here. I also proposed to check the performance of one of these against results, and in the end I did. The…

Neeka’s Backlog refers to this really unpleasant and deeply weird story from the Moscow News. Apparently some 20 Russian MPs (drawn from the batshit crazy Liberal Democrats of Vladimir Zhirinovsky but also the Communists and the “Motherland” group, which some claim is a front for the government) have signed a petition for the prohibition of…

Back in November, a row broke out when the rightwing thinktank MEMRI attempted to sue Juan Cole of Informed Comment for being rude to them. Specifically he accused them of being biased towards the Israeli government in the summaries of Middle Eastern media they give away to opinion-formers in the US. As the row developed,…

AP reports from Baghdad that air traffic control diverted both the Royal Jordanian flights to the Iraqi capital yesterday due to the airfield being under mortar fire. Which probably explains why (as pointed out to me) neither the BGIA nor the Airline Transport flights from Sharjah to Baghdad have left for two days. Neither have…

A Fistful of Euros have opened voting on their European Blog Awards at the link given. Why not consider voting for the Yorkshire Ranter for Best UK Blog, Best Political Blog, and why the hell not Best European Blog? Famously, politics without patronage is like kissing your sister, so we now move to your chance…

“whose links to the US government would be embarrassing if disclosed”. Apparently they may be found in a new covert-operations organisation being created in the Pentagon, focused on “emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia”. (Eh? And there was I thinking the new government in Georgia was a plot thought up…