The Yorkshire Ranter

Well, it’s come to my attention that the Inquiry is sitting in public. Apparently all that is necessary is to present oneself at 0915 sharp at the Bell Yard entrance of the Royal Courts of Justice and get in the queue. Obviously, this (the main story of the times) cannot go unblogged. Watch this space!

An interesting document about the British intervention in Iraq during the second world war…Download here

An interesting but little remarked revelation from the Hutton Inquiry was that Jack Straw is now officially a liar. Some people will, of course, remember that Wor Jackie brutally smuggered (like buggered, but referring to smugness) the Foreign Affairs Committee over the false claim that Iraqi WMD could be deployed within 45 minutes. Deployed means,…

Trusted psychic canines speak But this beats the lot….”We phoned Jacqueline Stallone, matriarch of the “Rocky” brain trust, and got the official forecast from her clairvoyant canines, Rachel, Hannah and Friday. As you might recall, in July 2000, the miniature pinschers astounded the political world by correctly predicting that George W. Bush would defeat Al…

LA Times story Well, the last day of nominations is here, and so far no-one knows who’s standing and who isn’t! “With California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley scheduled to certify a final list of candidates for the recall election today, confusion continued over how many candidates will appear on the Oct. 7 ballot. Shelley’s…

Details on the weapon recovered Several persons, including a British arms dealer, have been caught smuggling an Igla man-portable surface-to-air missile into the US. The operation apparently involved a giant sting set up by the Russian Federal Security Bureau, which planted a weapon modified so as to be useless on them. (The British Army in…

BBC NEWS Eyewitness: Policing the Solomons On the same theme…

BBC: Solomons warlord surrenders An early success for the largely Aussie intervention on the Solomons. Typically for a group of Pacific islands, political weirdness has been rife there. But most of them have avoided race war and the collapse of the state to the point where, as the Solomons finance minister said, the cabinet couldn’t…

As has been widely reported, those crazy folks in California have decided to recall their Democrat governor Gray Davis. Recalling is a Californian constitutional oddity, introduced in 1911, under which any citizen may raise a petition to dismiss the governor. If enough people sign up, there has to be a vote – effectively a referendum…

Jordan’s embassy to Iraq bombed The Jordanian embassy in Baghdad has been blown up by a truckbomb containing between 130-230kg of explosive. 7 dead so far. Apparently the wrecked embassy was then sacked by an angry crowd – gets to be a bit of a tradition, no?