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Those crazy Canadians, eh? It looks like they’re about to do that rare thing in a Westminster-type constitution, throw out the government on a confidence vote and substitute another. Not just that, they’re going to do that even more rare thing in a Westminster-type constitution, form a multi-party coalition. Not just that, they’re going to…

Read More Westminster 1.4; the developer’s guide

OK, so there’s this Il-76 with something called “East Wing” stuck a week in northeastern Brazil on its way from Dakar to Cochabamba in Bolivia. Not the busiest route, you might think. But “East Wing” was formed as a successor to none other than GST Aero, sez ATDB.aero; and out of their six aircraft, three…

Read More we give it straight, it ain’t no trivia…

Macau’s government decides to save a strategically important industry: casinos. Now they really are taking a gamble with public money; shovelling it into a hole in the ground. Etc. There’s actually an interesting sidelight further down the story. It regards Sheldon Adelson, the casino boss who funded Freedom’s Watch, a creepy rightwing campaign group established…

Read More Best. Bailout. Ever!

think I’ve said before that I find public sector accounts incredibly weird. Here’s a great example; it’s a very good FT story on the bank nationalisation plan and how it affects the national finances. Bizarrely, the £25-50bn of government bond issuance required to raise the money probably won’t count towards the public sector net cash…

Read More HOWTO: remove giant statue of Sir Fred Goodwin

If you can read you should read this if you read nothing else this decade. It’s all about how the Americans started torturing people, whose idea it was, how men like John Yoo came to provide the legal justifications, who was keen (the ideological core of the administration), who didn’t want to know (the FBI…

Read More Torture Lawyers