It almost beggars belief that the UK government, rebuffed in its anti-democratic plans to use the EU Data Retention Directive as a cover to create a database of all communication between citizens, is ploughing the same sordid furrow, using public data from social networking sites to to create ‘profiles’ of potential subversives. We wrote about this [...]
Monthly Archives: April 2009
A bankrupt budget for a bankrupt country, from a badger and a pixie
April 23, 2009 – 6:50 pm
I can’t be bothered to go into detail about the UK budget, other than to say that fat man and his friend the badger have taken us all to Carey St. It’s our fault for letting loonies run the country into the ground. Or am I being a tad too harsh again?
This is NOT a [...]
Another plot foiled on fantasy island
April 22, 2009 – 9:45 am
Thus followers will not be surprised to hear of the release without charge of all the dastardly terrorists who were plotting to blow up Manchester’s Arndale Centre and other key installations over Easter. We predicted the outcome on April 10. Two of the Pakistani students were cleared more or less immediately and it was announced [...]
Why is Mandelson trying to push for Royal Mail privatisation?
April 21, 2009 – 7:50 pm
According to the Independent (21 April), Gordon Brown faces growing pressure from mutinous Labour backbenchers to ditch or delay moves to partly privatise Royal Mail. Party whips have warned the prime minister, who is already dealing with the ’smeargate’ scandal, that the plans have stretched the loyalty of his MPs to breaking point.
‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, [...]
The problem with world fisheries is nobody sticks up for the fish
April 16, 2009 – 8:18 pm
“The problem with world fisheries is nobody sticks up for the fish.” Charles Clover, The End of the Line.
While Somali pirates are taking hostages, killing and getting killed by the French navy, French trawlermen are blockading Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk. The Somalis claim they have taken to robbery and kidnapping because their traditional fishing livelihoods have been [...]
Call me Ishmael, but I'm pleased that the Japanese whaling fleet missed its quota
April 15, 2009 – 10:49 am
I’m no Cousteau, as you will plainly see from this article, but it has come to my attention that several species of the world’s fish stocks are running close to extinction. The success of the whaling moratorium serve as an example that positive action can lead to permanent results. By John J Kelly
Over Easter [...]
Random facts about funhouse Britain from Thus
April 14, 2009 – 12:30 pm
In no particular order, and with no special weighting, here are a few facts gleaned from the media with help from friends of Thus at Ten. Please feel free to send in your own facts. We need them in this era of spin and errant fantasy:
68% of Britons believe that MP’s salaries are ‘too generous’; [...]
Email update: Brown sends personal letters of apology and abdicates government blame
April 14, 2009 – 11:12 am
Over 72 hours after the McBride/Draper/Whelan poisoned email plot was revealed, and 12 hours after UK Government Minister Alan Johnson had denied the need to do so on national radio, Gordon Brown stopped saving the world for a minute and tried instead to save his own skin. The fact that he still refuses to issue [...]
Credit crunch contrition from the commentariat
This morning an Editorial Intelligence (EI) briefing on ‘The Credit Crunch Commentariat‘ debated whether the media had talked us into recession or had downplayed the crisis and thus exacerbated its impact. “What, pray, is all the fuss about?” wrote Ex Economist editor, Bill Emmott, in the Guardian in August 2008. “Unemployment is down, the economy is [...]