The RBC’s James Wimberley posts on one of those wonderful “competitiveness surveys” rightwing people like. Apparently the US has fallen from 1st to 6th, which would be important if it meant anything. Wimberley did a more formal and scientific version of this old post of mine, in which I plotted GDP growth rates and rankings…
Read More Useless Competitiveness SurveysThis is the full text of John Reid’s speech to the Labour Party Conference. In it, Reid states unequivocally that he does not believe that the State should be subject to law. And let’s be clear. It cannot be right that the rights of an individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and…
Read More John Reid: the most dangerous man in BritainCeltel terminates its roaming charges between East African markets. Now, SMS credit transfer is a currency acceptable across East Africa. How long before this is recognised? How long before more operators start interworking? GSM airtime – the African single currency. You heard it here first.
Read More Connectivity as currency, againApparently an offshoot of SETI is getting tired of waiting – they want to send, not receive. Quite a lot of their pals disagree. The result is a hell of a thread. Curiously, it’s the Russians who are keenest on howling into the void to see if anyone howls back. The questions are spectacular, not…
Read More This is cool. Very coolSo Dave from PR’s got a vlog, then. Well, that’s only realistically going to be crap, isn’t it? It almost amounts to a definition of blogging that, if you issue a press release to the nationals before you start, that’s not it. May I recommend, instead, one of many fine British blogs? Daniel “Dsquared” Davies…
Read More Three far better things to read than Diddy DaveEveryone is talking about this New Statesman story in which so-and-so visits Westminster Council’s CCTV surveillance control centre, which rather wonderfully turns out to be situated in the bowels of the dire Trocadero on Wardour Street. Apparently we have 20 per cent of world CCTV capability in Britain. But it was this response at Spyblog…
Read More User 64It’s time to shake up the embers of Operation Firedump, our effort to monitor compliance with the UNSC asset freeze list on the Viktor Bout companies. Since December, 2005, the original list of aircraft shows a few changes. UN-76497, Ilyushin 76-D. Serial number 43402039. This is probably the aircraft referred to in the UN list…
Read More Firedump: UpdateOver at Slugger, they are discussing an alleged proposal from the UDA that the government give it £1 billion to end its campaign of violence and convert itself into a legal organisation. At one level, you’d be forgiven for spitting coffee on your keyboard at such shameless blackmail. But there is a valid point here.…
Read More Ending an armyDefenstech’s David Axe is going back to Iraq, this time to the British sector. Should be interesting.
Read More Axe in BasraThe Guardian carried a large excerpt from George Monbiot’s coming book this week in which he launched a formidable attack on aeroplanes, on the grounds that they are indefensible in terms of climate change. I find it hard to work out his logic. For a start, if you get the data, you’ll find that, when…
Read More George Monbiot is Wrong