2014

January 1, 2014 by yorksranter 6 comments

The Ideal Content-Free Politician Leaves…

It seems incongruous to cite Langewiesche and Michael White in the same post, so I broke this out separately and it grew. White worries that public anger at MPs’ pay and expenses and even actual thieving will rob us of inspiring examples of public service, such as Denis MacShane. What gets me here is that…

January 1, 2014 by yorksranter 3 comments

Reading

Things to read. James Meek on housing in Britain as part of a wider project to declare the basic fabric of life an illegitimate subject of political debate. Inside Housing‘s review of the year, mostly of interest for the way it paints the Coalition as a culture not just uninterested in facts but actively hostile…

Weltbund zum Schutz des Lebens – Wikipedia
Die Idee zur Gründung der Organisation hatte der Schriftsteller Günther Schwab, ein ehemaliges NSDAP- und SA-Mitglied // right. riight.
Labour denies plan for UK to rejoin EU customs union
Brussels would potentially be open to such a proposal, a person briefed on the European Commission’s approach to the UK told the Financial Times, and it is monitoring what might be possible under a Starmer government. “It would be a massive negotiation, but there would be openness from the EU side,” they added. “There’s been […]
The Real Development was the Friends We Made Along the Way
Hirschman’s theory of unbalanced growth is rooted in empiricism, allowing policy makers to test and gauge the reactions of the specific context rather than applying some universal formula. It recognizes that development is naturally a chaotic, messy process, much closer to a “chain of disequilibria” than the result of a master plan. To paraphrase another […]
Israel shifts back to the Apache as UAV switch fails
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been attempting to attain early delivery of 40 US-made Boeing AH-64E Apache combat helicopters. The development follows the failure of an attempt to prove that unmanned armed systems could be a fully capable replacement for combat helicopters.
Canadian DNA lab knew its paternity tests identified the wrong dads, but it kept selling them | CBC News
"paternity guesswork"
How a Monaco hedge fund boss got tied up with an indebted English town
Last November, Warrington council’s audit committee was told that the fund was expected to provide a 6-8 per cent annual return. Wirral told the FT in March that its investment to date had returned just 0.6 per cent // look you fucking council pukes can't you just use the PWLB to do some public works […]
Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at World’s Busiest Airports - WSJ
couple of interesting things here: the guy running the operation was extremely close to the Emirates elite (shades of Chichakli), also the sort of celebrity-adjacent recruiting policy
“This way for modern banking”: Deutsche Bank logo turns 50
The logo’s creator, Anton Stankowski, who died in 1998, described Deutsche Bank’s logo as follows: “The visual motif is the polarity between the solid base and a future-oriented dynamism. The staggered diagonal seems to be symmetrical but is in fact asymmetrical. The sloping forward slash is arranged in such a way that it does not […]
Mum died after medics checked wrong patient's 'do not resuscitate' note, family claim - Manchester Evening News
"During those short hours she went into cardiac arrest, the hospital staff checked 'her 'records' and said she was DNR so she was left to die. Five minutes later the staff realised the wrong records had been checked and she wasn't DNR....We then also had another two occasions where people entered the room, one lady […]
Ancient Foxes Lived and Died With Humans - The New York Times
A team of researchers recently examined the fox’s bones, which were unearthed among the remains of dozens of hunter-gatherers. The team’s findings, published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, posit that this fox lived alongside the humans it was buried with.