July 2005

Just to say there will be no ranting for the rest of the week, as I’m off to the West Highlands and am unlikely to have internet access, or for that matter a computer.

On terrorday last week I read a very worrying report in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard regarding an interview the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gave to Hurriyet. I haven’t been able to find any mention in the anglophone press, but it’s very important if true. Here is a link to Der Spiegel‘s report…

Well, now we know. The man the Met shot five times in Stockwell tube station was completely innocent. What went on in south London in the last two days (the shooting, the multiple arrests) was a major battle in the war that seems to be emerging about us. And we lost. Fortunately, the dead man…

..the reason why they shot the Stockwell tube “bomber” five times might be that a pistol like the Glock 17(I think) that fires bursts of three rounds as well as single shots, rather like a tiny submachine gun, was used. The point is that, if you need to be sure the target is dead (for…

Mark Steyn: “t has been sobering this past week watching some of my “woollier” colleagues (in Vicki Woods’s self-designation) gradually awake to the realisation that the real suicide bomb is “multiculturalism”. Its remorseless tick-tock, suddenly louder than the ethnic drumming at an anti-globalisation demo, drove poor old Boris Johnson into rampaging around this page last…

Reports of small explosions at The Oval, Shepherd’s Bush and Warren Street tubes, plus an “incident” on a bus in Hackney. Maybe I should make that last one clearer – they’re now reporting a small explosion on a bus in Hackney. Buses in Hackney probably experience dozens of incidents a day. One injury reported so…

Good afternoon, hello, and welcome, ladies and gentleman, to this week’s inaugural Orwell Awards Ceremony! This week’s Orwell goes to Ms. Beverly Hughes, who scooped the palm by naming her all-new scheme to issue all teenagers with a smart-card that would “allow them to access activities and sports” and could be revoked if they don’t…

Spam reaches its logical extreme. A few minutes ago I received the following unsolicited commercial mass email: email Spam Lillian Moore to me More options 2:59 pm (15 minutes ago)External images are not displayed. Display images below A Great Deal for all website owners!You can, at last, enjoy the benefits of a bulk email campaign,…

In all the excitement, I didn’t bother to write about the “Reid memo” regarding a proposed drawdown of western forces in Iraq. Yet another big story broken by the Times‘s Michael Smith, the document suggests that US forces might be down to 66,000 next year and UK forces to 3,000. Among “Risks” given in the…

There still seems to be a lot of doubt as to exactly how the bombs were triggered, or in other words whether or not the killers were true suicide bombers rather than own-goals or unwitting assassins. Amongst other things, property belonging to one of them was found at both the Edgware Road and Aldgate explosion…