I was going to fisk the Government’s depressing sudden love affair with the discredited nonsense of “lie detectors”, but I see the Ministry has already done it. Go and read; it’s an instant classic. And as a bonus, there’s a great comment from the Great Simpleton, who you occasionally find in comments here, about some…
Read More G.729 and the welfare stateThose crazy Canadians, eh? It looks like they’re about to do that rare thing in a Westminster-type constitution, throw out the government on a confidence vote and substitute another. Not just that, they’re going to do that even more rare thing in a Westminster-type constitution, form a multi-party coalition. Not just that, they’re going to…
Read More Westminster 1.4; the developer’s guideBack in the spring of 1997, the sterling trade-weighted index stood at 93, exactly the average since 1990, and the deficit (PSBR at the time) was 8% of GDP (See note). This, according to the Conservative Party, was a golden legacy Labour were squandering. Now, the sterling trade-weighted index is at 93, exactly the average…
Read More further OsbornewatchOh yes, gleeful leftie hacker tournament after the BNP did a 0.16 megarecord datafart. My effort contains absolutely no personally-identifying data; it’s made with this guy’s count by region and population data from National Statistics, to show the number of BNP activists per 100 citizens in each UK region. People kept asking for that kind…
Read More don’t compromise, visualiseOK, so there’s this Il-76 with something called “East Wing” stuck a week in northeastern Brazil on its way from Dakar to Cochabamba in Bolivia. Not the busiest route, you might think. But “East Wing” was formed as a successor to none other than GST Aero, sez ATDB.aero; and out of their six aircraft, three…
Read More we give it straight, it ain’t no trivia…Information is filtering through that an Antonov-12 has been lost on take-off from Al-Asad airbase in Iraq on Thursday. So far there is very little available, but we do have a few facts. The ASN is currently describing it as operated by “Falcon Aviation” and states that the entire crew of 7 died. We’re getting…
Read More paranoia is total awarenessMacau’s government decides to save a strategically important industry: casinos. Now they really are taking a gamble with public money; shovelling it into a hole in the ground. Etc. There’s actually an interesting sidelight further down the story. It regards Sheldon Adelson, the casino boss who funded Freedom’s Watch, a creepy rightwing campaign group established…
Read More Best. Bailout. Ever!So, if World President Brown was to ask me what to do about the headless Viktor Bout empire, and the operators like it, what would I say? Here’s what I’d do: Let’s draw up a big list of dodgy airlines. Better, let’s use rules; ex-Soviet aircraft, or old 737s, based in the UAE, registration in…
Read More Operation Firedump – the great rampcheckthink I’ve said before that I find public sector accounts incredibly weird. Here’s a great example; it’s a very good FT story on the bank nationalisation plan and how it affects the national finances. Bizarrely, the £25-50bn of government bond issuance required to raise the money probably won’t count towards the public sector net cash…
Read More HOWTO: remove giant statue of Sir Fred GoodwinIf you can read you should read this if you read nothing else this decade. It’s all about how the Americans started torturing people, whose idea it was, how men like John Yoo came to provide the legal justifications, who was keen (the ideological core of the administration), who didn’t want to know (the FBI…
Read More Torture Lawyers