2013

So Andy Coulson, famously, was subject to a background check by Control Risks before joining Downing St. There was some doubt as to whether he had actually gone through the positive vetting process. Supposedly he had, and he was cleared to see “Strap 1” material. But then it turned out in fact the DVA hadn’t…

Read More We didn’t let Coulson see anything sensitive except for the SIGINT

The Ed has got everyone’s attention by promising to freeze consumer energy prices. It’s one of those moments, as with hackgate and Syria, when he succeeds in making the prime minister look irrelevant and bypassed. Having whined a bit, at least some of the energy companies moved to accept the policy voluntarily. The most interesting…

Read More Rolling back the frontiers of privatisation

So I went to the Royal Academy’s Richard Rogers exhibition. Pretty interesting, but bloody hell, the privilege and self-satisfaction, it is to laugh. All the way round, there’s a belt of little personal quotes, photos, artefacts and the like that constantly remind you that his parents’ flat in Florence overlooked Brunelleschi’s Dome (I count three…

Read More Occupying Rogers

Here’s Tory MP Greg Barker just giving up, giving up and passing out the talking points from his financial backers directly, without any further intervention on his part. npower response to Labour energy policy announcement http://t.co/hf1lbbZZj3 — Greg Barker (@GregBarkerMP) September 24, 2013 He may yet delete it, so: Ha ha, Tories doing PR for…

Read More A slight return to Gambetta vs. Npower

Note: This is going to be both technical and long. If you find this difficult, skip, unless you also have an Ubuntu Linux system, other than the current developer version (13.10/Saucy Salamander), with an ext4 filesystem. In that case, upgrade your copy of e2fsprogs immediately to version 1.42.8 or above. You can obtain it here…

Read More When your filesystem attacks, to say nothing of USB sticks