A great secret has been revealed. Personally I think it explains a lot. Brian Micklethwait is really Gully Foyle.
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A press release from the Association of Chief Police Officers, not surprisingly, welcomes the latest police-state measures. But it seems they were taken by surprise, too:
(Sic. Really – a direct cut-and-paste from here) The unnamed (conceivably fictitious, since no-one is offered for interview) spokes Can the Home Office not even get its news management right? A huge and complicated Bill is launched which will tear up important parts of common law, create major data-mining powers of an unprecedented nature, and create severe sanctions backed by imprisonment for people who have done nothing wrong at all if their conduct is deemed potentially helpful to criminals anywhere in the world. It was not drafted over the weekend. It is a surprise the department failed to get a Chief Constable briefed and ready to stand up to say how wonderful it is in glorious detail, complete with scary illustrative anecdote – preferably involving paedophile terrorists. ACPO are left not knowing what the Bill is called. Or how to spell what they think it might be called. Still, they are so desperate to kiss the governmental arse that something supportive is rushed out, regardless that it is gibberish. At some point current ACPO members will have sworn to uphold the law and keep the Queen’s peace. Is that not incompatible with being political lapdogs? [Thanks to PJC Journal] January 20th, 2007 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I happened to read a ‘house’ copy of the Daily Mail (not something I would pay good money for) whilst having lunch at Pret a Manger today and saw with some incredulity that the news seems to be dominated by some particularly ugly ‘celebrities’ I have never even heard off insulting a very attractive Bollywood star who I have indeed heard of, in the dismal ‘Big Brother’ reality TV programme. Questions in the House? Comments by the Prime Minister and Chancellor? Some of the breathless reports act as if an exchange of nuclear weapons with India is in the offing. Organs of the state threatening to get involved because of ‘racism’? Clearly someone must have put something in the water. Is this really that important? Even on its own terms the whole thing is bizarre, though it does appear that to many ‘racial equality’ means only being allowed to be a jackass to members of your own race. That does not sound very equal to me. Surely the only ‘punishment’ required for the gorgeous Shilpa Shetty’s tormentors is to be revealed as ignorant trailer-park trash to the millions of people who inexplicably watch this programme. My incredulity factor peaked later tonight however when the top story on SkyNews was the ‘Big Bruvvah racism row’. Oh what drivel, particularly when there is a real ‘human interest’ story to report on, namely the astonishing action by some Royal Marines and Army Aviation in Afghanistan. How on earth could this not be the lead news story? January 17th, 2007 | 63 comments - (Comments are closed)
How cool is this? A MIG-21 available on eBay! Although it is not all that expensive, sadly I really do not have anywhere to put it.  January 12th, 2007 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is good that Perry has supplied us Samizdatistas with a category called How very odd! to describe our oddest postings, because how else would you describe the calculation that England are now, still, the second best test match cricket side in the world? On the other hand, England really are that bad at one day cricket. January 11th, 2007 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is fair to say not many Englishmen live in the more remote parts of Russia. Thus when someone gets an e-mail from an Englishman called Tim Newman, living in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, who is an oil business professional discussing the Royal Dutch Shell’s operations, and there is a Tim Newman working for Shell in that part of the world, it will be one and the same person, right? Nope. Take a look at this for a real life comedy of errors. January 10th, 2007 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
The PM has a new gimmick. We are invited to petition him via the interweb thingy. Now I think it interesting in itself that a Prime Minister should so wrap himself in the purple to invite petitions, as if he were sovereign and we the petty subjects whose wishes he might deign to consider. But the content of the petitions themselves is getting quite weird. Leading the pack is a petition to repeal the Hunting With Dogs Act 2004. But there is also one to “ignore the petition to repeal the hunting act 2004” and another (which no-one has signed) to “to ban the signing of petitions asking to repeal the hunting act 2004”. Some are gloriously vague (“change renting laws in UK”); some insanely specific, requiring arcane knowledge and an odd personality to understand, let alone support. (E.g. We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to require A-G energy-efficiency ratings to make explicit the A+ and A++ categories (and any future, higher categories), so that consumers are aware that energy efficiencies greater than ‘A’ can be achieved with products so rated.”) Some are both vague and specialised at the same time. Some founded on malapropism. There are numerous semi-duplications, where individuals who might agree with an earlier, simpler, better-supported proposal, have added their own refinements, not caring that it may be a distraction from the main cause. In short, all the faults of that fetish of radicals, participatory democracy, are on display. As are pretty much all the green-ink political obsessions. My favourite: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to replace the national anthem with ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet” – I urge you to support it. But there is something to give joy to everyone. November 21st, 2006 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
As regular readers here all know, the state is not your friend… but sometimes its petty tyrannies and inanities are bloody funny:
A quick check and sure enough, these people fail to mention their sausages are not in fact made from dragon meat (which I had assumed was ‘self-smoking’). Hell, I only bought them because I thought they contained the ultimate in ‘endangered species’. November 19th, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is Remembrance Sunday, and outside Westminster Abbey there is a Field of Remembrance. The field’s crop consists of young men, each commemorated by a wooden cross. I took photographs there last Thursday. The most effective pictures for evoking what it all looked like were those which hinted at the sheer number of wooden crosses, which in their numbers of course only hinted in their turn at the number of young men killed in war in recent decades.  Who, I wonder, is that particular young man, who was, like me, taking photos? Probably, also like me, just going for an effective shot, rather than remembering anyone in particular. He is (as I later did in the exact same spot) photographing the backs of the crosses nearest to him. The nameless dead. Other photographers focused tightly in on one particular name and one particular cross. The oddest photograph I took that day was of a car number plate, on what looked like an official, government, chauffeur-driven Rolls.  At any other time, and with no poppies on the front, that would be a good laugh. But with poppies everywhere, it seemed very peculiar. Here, alas, is another relevant BBC story. November 12th, 2006 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
South Korea finally surrenders to one of the finer features of modernity and legalises the miniskirt! 
Legal! November 4th, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
This anecdote from Ian Brown is just too much fun not to share: Killer wasp brings passport office to halt. Any wasp-trainers out there? Your country needs you. October 24th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
And the reason? Simple, the USA has banned Vegemite! I expect to see RAAF strikes on US targets by late this evening and Aussie SAS teams boarding US shipping and dumping cargoes of Skippy Peanut Butter into the sea. More seriously, it is just preposterous that the state interferes in the most picayune aspects of life. Next time I am in the US I intend to smuggle a jar in disguised as Marmite and smear it over the door handles of the first US federal government building to see. October 22nd, 2006 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
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