Is anyone else disturbed by the fact Ed Balls appears to have been replaced by Chris Dillow? Ed Balls, the schools secretary and only member of the Co-operative party in the cabinet, will today propose that 100 schools over the next two years become co-operative trust schools owned and controlled by the local community. He…
Read More tomorrow’s public inquiry todayAt number 7 in Total Politics’ Top 100 Left-Wing Blogs: “Alternate Seat of YTR”. That’s apparently me. At number 100 in Total Politics’ Top 100 Left-Wing Blogs: “The Yorkshire Ranter”. That’s also me. I thought personality went a long way, but it looks like looks have quite an impact. Or maybe it’s Don Blaney who…
Read More Towards an Empirical Determination of Sampling Error in Iain Dale’s SurveyAccording to the BBC, the Home Office really, really doesn’t get the basic truth that 0.01% of a really big number is quite a big number. The Torygraph reported that the Criminal Records Bureau had mistakenly told its customers between February 2007 and February 2008 that some 680 people had criminal records when in fact…
Read More A Truth Moment at the CRBWhere else but Northern Ireland would the government form a Consultative Group on the Past? In other news, the Kevin Myers review has achieved the rare distinction of links from ahem, reactionary ballbag hack Tim Worstall and Ken MacLeod, who reckons Al Gore would so have staffed-up from AEI and Patrick Henry College in order…
Read More ChanceAnthony Wells is arguing about what percentage of don’t knows in the polls for the Crewe & Nantwich byelection are actually Labour voters who feel embarrassed to say so – analogous to the “shy Tories” of the 1990s. I would think the number is considerable. During my candidacy in Egham Hythe, I knocked on and…
Read More Bashful BrownitesDespite the title, this is not a post about Boris Johnson. Can anyone trace this story, one of my favourite tech war stories, to an original source? It’s the early days of semiconductor fabbing at Texas Instruments; the process is still a bit of an art, both in the sense of a science with more…
Read More My God, it’s full of chips!As a change from the austere scientism hanging around this blog after Arthur C. Clarke’s death, Michael O’Hare reminded me of another wonder of British postwar culture today. Among the religious doctrines that run me axle-deep in the mud whenever I try to follow them is literal resurrection to eternal life. I’m astonished to learn…
Read More I always hoped there’d be dogsSo, the Obscurer snagged an interview with Gordon Brown. And what did he have to say? Well, he spoke of identity cards. And the news is not good at all. It seems that Brown is ill-informed about his own proposals (something which we have seen already from past ministers), is still committed to the most…
Read More Still addictedOK, so by chance we have some real data to put into the sums in this post. The head of MI5 has just announced that we should all be very scared, because he reckons there may be 2,000 people in Britain who pose a threat to national security because of their support for terrorism. So…
Read More Some data pointsIn Texas, a man suspected of homicide has escaped from prison. How he did it tells us something about the inevitable failure of ID cards, and the importance of false positives. Via Bruce Schneier. What happened? Well, the suspected killer was in a cell with another remand prisoner, a car thief named Garcia. He memorised…
Read More Well, it went through!