The Yorkshire Ranter

17% of a 40% turnout equals a thick 6.8% of the electorate. Get real.

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,…

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…

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…

On my way to Big London yesterday, sitting in a slow train (and on South West Trains that’s really slow). About Hounslow way a school trip of girls was loaded into the carriage. Or should that be poured? I feared the worst and prepared to go into mindless tube mode, eyes blank, brain emptier, but…

This is the text of my resignation from the Labour Party, more than a year ago today. Alexander Harrowell (address here) 08/05/03 Party No. B045893 Dear General Secretary, One week ago I decided to destroy my Labour Party membership card and cancel my subscription. This letter is intended to be a formal statement of resignation,…

Well, they’d been plotting it for a while, but now the mobilisation order has come through. Tony Blair is no longer a viable option. The Labour Party is now the third placed party in Britain. The people have spoken and they have comprehensively dished the myth that Blair is still an election winner. If we…

Is here. The degree to which each state voted for either Bush or Gore is plotted against the percentage of the population self-reporting obesity. There is a distinct correlation. This suggests a slogan or two – “Fat, Dumb and Happy? Vote Bush!” perhaps. Thanks to King of Zembla

The Ranter is the no.1 Google result for “monkey arrest frenchman yorkshire”. And for “yorkshire wurlitzer”. And no.8 for “quasi government in yorkshire”. I could have sworn that I’d never used the word wurlitzer, but it seems that back last November I did. But who the hell searched for “male belly bulging”? We are result…

Professor Alan Turing of Manchester University, founder of computer science and breaker of Nazi naval ciphers, died by his own hand after being threatened with jail and stripped of his security clearance because he was gay. He ate an apple dosed with cyanide. In case you have ever wondered, Apple Computer’s logo is a memorial…