That might be of passing interst to our readers


1) Torchwood starts October 22nd. The opening trailers look ... yummy.


2) Read this. The Government is apparently in total shock.

3) Tomorrow I do Parts 1 and 2 of my ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence). Much egg will adhere to face if I fail.

Scenes that appear to glamorise smoking are to be edited out of Tom and Jerry cartoons

See the Guardian story: http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,1855226,00.html

The violence, of course, can stay.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5250250.stm

Could be even cheaper to come and see you guys next year.

Of course, it will make it harder for you to come and see me.

The Observer, by the way, is the Sunday edition of the Guardian.

These two stories caught my eye ...

Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target
Evidence shows increase in number of executions as homosexuals plead for asylum in Britain
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838222,00.html

Our men are dying at the hands of enemies abroad and friends at home
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1838285,00.html
(One of those "It figures" stories)

From the New York Times:

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

WASHINGTON, July 21 — The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said.

Read more here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/world/middleeast/22military.html?hp&ex=1153627200&en=ccb5206208860925&ei=5094&partner=homepage

This is a fascinating article about when we had Iraqi peackeepers ...

in Britain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,1821179,00.html

It's now become the craze to blame everything, no matter how unlikely, on the Atkins diet.

Have a look.

Forgive me, but isn't this the diet where you're meant to drink lots of water to prevent dehydration? If you don't read what it says on the tin, then that can you're opening may well be full of worms ...

Someone one one of my lists sent this. I couldn't put it better myself.

"While looking around for information about Margaret's experiences and cyclones I stumbled across this little gem.


"I'm just disturbed that it would be asked often enough that it has to appear in a FAQ."

US army blunder 'kills eight Iraqi officers'

( Read more... )

The Met Office's world renowned climate prediction model will soon be used by Internet surfers around the world as part of new international climate experiment. climateprediction.net, launched today (Sept 12) at the London Science Museum and the BA Festival of Science in Salford, is an innovative project which aims to allow computer users anywhere in the world to participate in climate prediction work.

climateprediction.net is a collaboration between the Met Office, the Universities of Oxford and Reading, the Open University, the CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Tessella Support Services plc. It works by allowing each user to download their own unique copy of a specially tailored version of the Met Office's global climate model and run it on their own PC. The user can see the signal of climate change unfolding in their model and, when the experiment is completed, the information will be fed back to the team for analysis.

Read the full press release here ...

And take part in the experiment here ...

From Canada.com ...

The "quite plump and unthreatening" Montreal-based mafioso Frank Cotroni always loved food, Canada's National Post reports. So it was hardly surprising that he used his 15-year jail sentence for smuggling cocaine to write a cookery book.

"We used to joke among ourselves about what Frank liked more, eating or cooking," one of his associates recalled fondly. "I honestly think he would rather cook. He'd spend hours on it. Hours. He'd have pots bubbling away on the stove and wear an apron and he'd talk forever about his ingredients, how this was such-and-such cheese and these were such-and-such tomatoes.

"It was a bit ridiculous 'cause none of us f***ing really cared. But he was the boss and if he wanted to talk about tomatoes, then we talked about f***ing tomatoes."

Read more ...

This might be interesting to anyone who wants to see how US and UK prisons compare.

Virtual tour of prison

( Read more... )

And so farewell, Alistair Campbell.

Sorry to keep harping on about British politics, but for us, this is really interesting.

Campbell was an important and influential figure - and now, at a crucial moment, he's gone.

Why?

Well, perhaps this could explain it.

After all ... if you're the press spokesman and people's faith in government falls to an all-time low ...

ooops.

This is such a sad story from today's Guardian.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/wormseyeview/story/0,13268,1031016,00.html

And probably female ones too ..

is this.

Well ... of all the scenarios ...

No-one thought Tony Blair would do this.

Talk about wrong-footing his opponents ... again.

This is really for Theresa ...

Two news stories today have caught my eye ...

We have the mad and the really heart-warming.

First, the mad one:

New bill will make teenage kisses illegal

from
The Guardian

A bill due before parliament next week will make it a criminal offence for two 15-year-olds to kiss in public, the Home Office said last night.

But officials said those below the age of consent were unlikely to be prosecuted if both were enjoying the embrace.

The revelation came after the Family Planning Association warned that the sexual offences bill, due for second reading in the Commons on Tuesday, threatened the young people it was supposed to protect.

But this was the one, also from the Guarian, that really made me feel good ...


Enough is enough

Polly Toynbee: A lottery-winning couple who gave millions to charity could give world leaders a lesson in wealth distribution

Here is a good story. Barbara and Ray Wragg recently won £7.6m on the lottery, and naturally it changed their lives. Ray was a roofing supervisor, often leaving home at 4am to get to distant building sites. Barbara had worked for years as a nursing assistant at the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, on 11-hour night shifts in the urology department, taking home under £150 a week.

Their lives were hard but they were an exceptionally contented couple, with married, grown-up children and a council house they managed to buy for £10,000 in the 1980s. "We felt we were kings of our castle," Barbara says. "We never dreamed of anything more." But if you think this is going to be another of those schadenfreude tales of money bringing misery, think again.

Once they recovered from the shock of the man from Coutts bank arriving on the first day bearing £5,000 in cash for their immediate needs, the Wraggs bought themselves a bigger house nearby and a Range Rover. They gave £1m to their children to pay off their mortgages and have plenty for the rest of their lives. They took several cruises and gave money and presents to friends.

Then, once they felt they had everything they wanted, the Wraggs decided to give away the rest: they have donated £5.5m to charities so far. They have visited projects, supported ventures large and small and they even gave a sizeable sum back to the Hallamshire hospital where she worked so hard for so little all those years. "We have never had so much pleasure in our lives," Barbara says.

As I make my living trawling the news ... I find things that amuse .. or intrigue ... or make me cross.

Have a look at these ...

Coma Man Wakes After 19 Years
A man has regained consciousness after spending 19 years in a coma.The first word Terry Wallis spoke on reawakening was 'Mom'. The second was 'Pepsi'.The 39-year-old can finally get to know his daughter of 19 who was born shortly after he was involved in a car crash in 1984 in Arkansas in the US which left him comatose and a quadraplegic.

This just seems strange ... and set my mind going off in all sorts of directions. 19 years ... that was 1984 ...


And now - cross:


Government stands by Iraq-Niger nuclear link
LONDON (Reuters) - The government has defended its allegations that Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons programme, saying its evidence is separate from forged information used by Washington to make the same case.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said Britain had "different knowledge" from the United States to back up its charge, set out in Blair's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.


Oh, for heaven's sake, just admit it, guys! You tried to con us with dodgy intelligence info - which you downloaded from the net! We weren't fooled then, and we're not fooled now! There were reasons for going to war with Saddam (not that I think they're very good reasons, but that's another kettle of fish) but the idea of Saddam with an itchy fingers hovering over a little red button was never one of them! Just because our societies think that you have to spend billions on nukes, doesn't mean that everyone thinks the only way to get the West is with the Bomb!

Think of the quote in Lindsay Anderson "If ... " - A bullet in the right place can change the world.

I'd see it as being in the wrong place myself - but there's no denying it can change the world ...

But DON'T expect me to believe a dodgy dossier that even the Foreign Secretary has admitted was a complete Horlicks! Grrrrr.