November 2011

After the last post, I think it’s worth nothing that it’s not just an isolated lapse. The Guardian has recently been sucking up to the Treasury in a revolting fashion. Yesterday’s paper, in an astonishingly hagiographic profile by Nicholas Watt explained how clever George Osborne is in defining his “fiscal mandate” as being to get…

Read More 12 heads in a bag, I read it yesterday, buried like the others on page 27-A

So, if you wanted really informed commentary on the Theresa May/Brodie Clark upfuck (now there’s some slash), where would you go? Wouldn’t you want to ask a distinguished civil servant? I bet you would. Specifically, a career immigration officer with 39 years in the service. Who’s just retired, and is therefore allowed to be snarky.…

Read More Operation Logroll is go for launch

So Viktor Bout is guilty. Some discussion is here, including the suggestion that the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) is losing out politically. Dunno about that, but it’s striking that the best politician they could find to speak out for him was someone from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s outfit, and not even Anna Chapman or Andrei Lugovoi at…

Read More belated blogging

So Viktor Bout is guilty. Some discussion is here, including the suggestion that the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) is losing out politically. Dunno about that, but it’s striking that the best politician they could find to speak out for him was someone from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s outfit, and not even Anna Chapman or Andrei Lugovoi at…

Read More belated blogging

Eh, Charlie Stross’s blog is a machine for destroying time. Anyway. This post is going to be so wonkish it’s to not come back from. An occasional theme on this blog has been the intersection between the Bush wars and the mobile phone industry. In fact, looking back, that’s not been so much an occasional…

Read More The Penrith problem – structural incentives and mobile service networks