The Yorkshire Ranter

I notice in my newspaper that a wedge of university principals, vice chancellors and other Mucho Pomposos have signed A Statement in favour of the government. I didn’t see that in a report. No. They took out a full-page ad – seventy thousand quid at least! Worst of all, the principal of my own dear…

BBC NEWS | Politics | Leading fee rebel to back Blair Damn. Didn’t see that one coming – Nick Brown, their leader has changed sides at not quite the last minute. Apparently the offer of a “review” of the top-up fees’ effects convinced him. It doesn’t convince me – since when would any action that…

“On Wednesday our darling Iraqi Puppet Council decided that secular Iraqi family law would no longer be secular- it is now going to be according to Islamic Shari’a. Shari’a is Islamic law, whether from the Quran or quotes of the Prophet or interpretations of modern Islamic law by clerics and people who have dedicated their…

The Ranter welcomes the Young Fogey’s Agreeable World: link Not quite sure how to categorise this one yet.

I learnt a new German verb recently – torten, or to cake, as in hitting someone with a custard pie. The reason for this was that the students at Vienna University are out protesting again, and this time it seems they have seized the media after unknown persons successfully “torteten” the Rektor, Georg Winckler, and…

Link to report The Reverend Ian Paisley, a not infrequent target of this blog, has decided to leave the European Parliament. Not surprisingly, the reason is not to remove his unpleasant influence from public life but to concentrate on “negotiating” with Sinn Fein. (I suppose that means “making sure the underlings don’t agree to anything…

BBC News Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s representatives have announced a direct action campaign in the event that Paul Bremer’s planned “indirect” elections go ahead. Well, we’ve finally done it now. Shia rage was one of the biggest worries anyone had at the time of the war, but the restraint shown by their leaders has so…

The Americans have apparently owned up that there are “problems” with airport screening in the US. No surprise there after the Sudanese chap who appeared at Heathrow on a Virgin flight from Washington Dulles (of all places) with live ammunition in his baggage was arrested. Question – if they can’t spot someone who really has…

FOX News link for rightwingers Australian ABC News Wired for net weirdos

Mind you, just so I don’t give the impression of liking the Grauniad too much, I think it’s a bit rich of a paper that runs a weekly Bad Science column to run huge two-page ads for a device that “gives off streams of positive and negative ions, components of healthy air” which apparently “actively…