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05 Nov 09
Bloody betrayal raises fresh doubts about Britain's campaign in Afghanistan - Times Online
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Lord Ashdown writes
in The Times: “There is now a real chance that we will lose this
struggle in the bars and front-rooms of Britain, before we lose it in the
deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.”
22 Oct 09
£1m-a-week cocaine factory found by accident, court told | UK news | guardian.co.uk
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The sophisticated operation
Faced with such an attack, it would be folly not to strike | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | The Guardian
"Postal workers have been left with little option. The real madness lies with those itching to pick a fight before an election"
Unspeak » To do at least something
Christopher Hitchens - spastic missiles etc
19 Oct 09
70 Free Useful Portable Applications You Should Know | Tools
Portable applications in general are software and programs you can run independently from a removable drives (like flash/pen drive) without going through the hassle of installing them. They are widely used and have been a favorite approach for professionals of different various industries.
18 Oct 09
Joseph Cirincione -- Five Myths About Iran's Nuclear Program - washingtonpost.com
"the prospects for developing a strategy with a solid chance of success improve if we dispose of five persistent myths about Iran's nuclear program: "
Men should 'stay away from childbirth'
For many men, attending the birth of a child is a momentous and emotional occasion. However, one of the world's leading obstetricians says the father's presence can lead to his partner needing a caesarean delivery, and even to marriage break-ups and mental illness. Michel Odent, a childbirth specialist, also believes the mother-to-be's labour can be longer, more painful and more complicated because she senses his anxiety and becomes nervous. Babies' arrival in the world would be more straightforward if women were left alone with only a midwife to help them, as they used to be, Odent will tell the Royal College of Midwives' annual conference in Manchester next month, where he is a guest speaker.
Noddy returns without the golliwogs
Noddy returns to Toyland later this month in the first official new book for more than 45 years, but the golliwogs have been banished from his circle of friends. In a bid to avoid any controversy for Noddy's 60th birthday, the golliwogs will not appear in the latest book. Enid Blyton's granddaughter, Sophie Smallwood, who wrote the new adventure, had considered including the characters but decided it would be too controversial – a decision which has been described as "unnecessary" by fans of the series.
China corruption trial exposes capital of graft
Six decades after the country's new Communist rulers all but wiped them out, China's organised crime gangs are a major force again and the corruption they bring with them is touching every city. Such is the scale of the problem in Chongqing that it has taken China by surprise and the public anger it has provoked cannot be airbrushed away by propaganda.
Liz Jones: The modern male, he's softer than a slug with a beer belly
Look at Jamie Oliver, a body as soft as butter. Gordon Brown has a body mass index that probably far exceeds his own Government guidelines. Peter Mandelson? Man boobs. Simon Cowell? Peacock chest and underdeveloped thighs. I could go on. And on. These men might all wear trainers and tracksuits and workwear such as denim jeans and combat trousers, but it is all just dressing up, an illusion, a hark back to the days when men actually knew how to do physical things like, ooh, I don’t know, put in a light bulb or change a duvet cover or make love to a woman. Honestly, the number of times I have wanted to exclaim, while prone: ‘For God’s sake, put your back into it, man!’ (MrP Says: Jeez! I wouldn't criticise any man for a lack of enthusiasm when it came to humping this sad-faced old witch. Now where's that neighbour with the shotgun?)
Whatever age children start school, teaching will be dire
Bad teaching is at the heart of all this. It’s true the Labour ministers have tried to micromanage teachers in every way, but there was a reason. They recognised, like their predecessors, that there were too many inadequate teachers getting poor results. But rather than sack them or revolutionise teacher training, they chose to try to make education teacher-proof by micromanagement. Daft, but understandable. Micromanagement is what you do when you don’t trust the employee. What’s wrong with the Alexander report, for all its right-minded ideals, is that its proposals depend on trusting teachers. And the truth is that teachers here and now cannot as a group be trusted. That’s why the curriculum and league tables and Sats were originally introduced, counterproductive though they proved. I apologise to the many good teachers out there. But the system has been brought low by poorly qualified, trained and motivated teachers, supported by their unions.
Kirstie’s in charge now, so fill your boots, banker boys
David Cameron is apparently determined that the presenter of the inane TV property programme Location, Location, Location, Kirstie Allsopp, should be appointed to the House of Lords, on the Conservative ticket. Kirstie would then presumably act as a property adviser to the Tory front bench — although, given the killings some of them have made on their second, third and fourth homes, happily unremarked upon by Thomas Legg, they scarcely need her input. “Grandmother” and “suck eggs” are two phrases that spring immediately to mind, not least in the case of two members of the shadow cabinet, Messrs Grayling and Gove. Kirstie can tell you how coating the kitchen-diner in Farrow & Ball might squeeze an extra 5,000 quid out of some poor sap further down the line, but she was light years behind the MPs.
221 dead for what, a nation of Pashtun Cherie Blairs?
If a terrorist bombing campaign murdered 221 of our finest young men and women, and seriously injured another 600, can you begin to imagine the reactions of our knee-jerk Government? But this event has happened in slow motion and far away, and so we are urged to accept it as a necessary sacrifice in the alleged ‘War on Terror’. It is our futile, indefensible, bird-brained military operation in Afghanistan which provides British citizens as targets for Taliban killers. If it has another purpose, you will not be able to discover what that is from the Government, which cannot make up its mind for more than five minutes what our troops are doing in Afghanistan. Propping up the joke President? Protecting futile rigged elections? Banning the growing of opium poppies, which is permitted in Oxfordshire? Sponsorin a Cherie Blair-style sexual revolution among the Pashtuns, so all their women can become QCs?
Arrested: The grandfather who 'attacked' an RAF Apache with an £8 torch
A lighting expert who has worked for the Queen has been arrested for shining an £8.45 torch at an RAF Apache helicopter gunship outside his home in the early hours. Torben Merriott, 63, was woken by what felt and sounded like an ‘earthquake’ outside his bedroom window at 1am. The grandfather used the torch to identify the aircraft. He spotted one of two gunships on an exercise just ‘10ft above my garden’ at his farmhouse in Stradbroke near Eye, Suffolk, and called the Ministry of Defence complaint line. But instead of receiving an apology for the September 18 disturbance, Mr Merriott was visited three weeks later by police, who arrested him on suspicion of endangering an aircraft by dazzling the pilot.
Peter Mandelson urged to drop Gordon Brown in secret talks
Gordon Brown's hopes of surviving suffered another blow last night after it was claimed that two of his most prominent Labour enemies told Peter Mandelson it was up to him to tell the Prime Minister to resign. Leading Blairite ex-Ministers Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers are understood to have had secret talks with the peer in which they said a new leader was the only way to stop David Cameron. A senior Labour source said: ‘Milburn and Byers told Mandelson he was the only person who could tell Gordon what to do. They said he must get him to go but Peter resisted, saying he doesn’t want to be accused of betrayal. The report came as Labour MPs and Downing Street insiders said new moves to oust Mr Brown were being discussed at all levels.
Actress Pia Glenn's stinging attack: 'Cowardly, immature and dysfunctional...Salman Rushdie should just have got a prostitute'
It was hardly a surprise when some of Manhattan’s more waspish social observers began to suggest that the unlikely liaison between the striking young Amazon and the portly, balding and dishevelled 5ft 7in writer almost 30 years her senior would never last the summer.Since then, the cynics have been proved right. According to Pia, Sir Salman abruptly dumped her by email three months ago after they shared a trip to Capri and London. Last week, in her first interview since the split, a furious Pia accused Rushdie of being ‘cowardly, dysfunctional and immature’. Once they had become lovers, she claimed, the great novelist showed little real interest in her, apart from sex and parading her around in public as a trophy girlfriend. She says he was also obsessed with his fourth wife, the beautiful Indian-American model and TV presenter Padma Lakshmi – and would begin the day by putting his own name into Google, the internet search engine, to see what had been written about him.
Sir Ian Blair fights back: Former Metropolitan Police chief defends his reign in remarkable and controversial book
In one passage that will inevitably invoke anger in some quarters, he praises the two officers who shot Mr de Menezes, the men identified as Charlie 2 and Charlie 12 who were told earlier this year they will not face charges. 'Given what they thought they were dealing with, Charlie 2 and Charlie 12, in running towards and getting within a few feet of a suspected suicide bomber, and Ivor [a surveillance officer], who sprang on him and pinned his arms to his sides on the Tube train, should each have been awarded the George Medal. 'Instead they live for the rest of their lives with the knowledge that they took part in the killing of an entirely innocent man. Had he been a suicide bomber and they had not shot him and the train had blown up, then, if not dead themselves, they would have faced an investigation for manslaughter.'"
Open season on school closures
Multi-culturalism has reached new heights in the London boroughs of Waltham Forest and Newham. Both councils require all state schools under their control to close, not just for Easter and Christmas, but also for the Muslim religious holiday of Eid-Ul-Fitr, the Hindu celebration of Diwali, and the Sikh commemoration of the birthday of Guru Nanak, the religion's founder. Britain is still, at least nominally, a Christian country, so forcing state schools to close for non-Christian holidays is bound to be a controversial practice anywhere in the UK – but perhaps one that makes sense in communities where an overwhelming majority of the school children are being raised in the same, non-Christian religion. What is odd about Waltham Forest and Newham councils' policy of closing all their schools for Muslim, Hindu and Sikh holidays is that each of these religions is a distinctly minority commitment in the borough: only 0.6 per cent of Waltham Forest's population is Sikh, for example. There are significantly more children of Jewish descent: but does the council require its schools to close for Jewish religious holidays? It does not.
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