mockney piers

What browser do you use?

Yes Prime Minister should be made compulsory viewing at schools. It's soooo insightful, and as you say, very little has changed, well, barring the influence of the civil service. Today the Humphrey character would be a spiky-haired fuckstick from Andersen Consulting.

yeah the instructions were great and reproduced in full on that link. I had the single CD blister pack, but I didn't previously know they produced a 12 mini CDs blister packs version!!

This one was absolute genius, some of the best CD packaging of all time Here's the low down on the full geniusness of it all.

The cuddly Canadian: Basia Bulat - In the Night her myspace if you liked http://www.myspace.com/basiamyspace

Oh, and talking of do-do, you'll be happy to know that I have very little to report by way of a post curry analysis...so to speak. ::o

A British court has ruled the forced depopulation illegal and granted the Chagos rights to compensation (?400 each given to Mauritius to house them). Our very own high court of justice has declared it illegal, the government appealed last year and lost but so far...nada. So much for our ethical foreign policy. John Pilger's article and documentary http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1027.htm

Quite Brendan, I'm sure the (ex)inhabitants of Diego Garcia have quite a bit to say about our love of our island subjects when international strategy comes into play. No coincidence of course that there's oil and gas under them there Falkland Islands. I sympathise with the Falkland Islanders, but it's always the civilians who suffer in the games of the powers.

Weirdly I felt like I'd been on a night out on the razz this morning, possibly side-effects from the ill-advised ingestion of one of them thar pepping chillies; so I can only apologise that I didn't join you for an after curry brew, but am relieved that I refrained. Come february I'm sure my arm can be twisted into a swift Cuba Libre post ruby. You're Hibbs then are you, sadly I had a trainspotting (film/book, not trains and stuff) green footy-shirt-and-scarf clad sctotsman in mind; couldn't have been more wrong really! Lovely to meet you guys and hope we didn't have you running for the hills, be lovely to see you both at more events.

Is that the one at the foot of one tree hill? What on earth is that place? Is there a fuel storage or a reservoir or something underneath?

very good point Keef, so did I.

The Falklands. - FFS, we stole it off Argentina in the first place, I know possession is nine/tenths but it wasn't Gibralter, it's not something we got by treaty, we stole it pure and simple and they want it back. They still want it back even if they're aware that the Junta acted stupidly. The First Gulf War - Justifiable if entirely predictable and avoidable. Blair's initial wars were also justified - I'll grant you Sierra Leone, a low key intervention, classic gunboat diplomacy in fact. I can't grant you Kosovo though; by that token the US would have been allowed a massive bombing campaign of our infrastructure in order to stop our policy in Northern Ireland. The huge exodus was caused by a huge fear of a Serbian backlash to the Nato campaign. Plus I don't see much call for intervention in places where there really are terrible goings on, in Sudan, in Zimbabwe, Burma, Colombia...I could go on. Nato was on the brink of disappearing up its own arsehole, especially with France and Germany pushing for an EU army as mid-long term replacement of NATO, and Kosovo served as an expedient way to justify and maintain the alliance. The US doesn't want to lose its influence in Europe and the UK punches above its weight in NATO; interesting that it was Clinton and Blair that really pushed it.

I don't want to enjoy a prime minister, I want them to do a good job. Blair was totally obsessed with what people thought of him, what his legacy would be, how he could change things..change change change. Politicians can't accept 'if it ain't broke...' because people like to see somebody doing something, changing things. Plenty of stuff needs fixing in this country, but most of it is nitty gritty, dull and difficult without immediate returns. So take the easy way out, chuck money at problems via a bunch of overpriced management consultants, think that the competition and choice ethics will somehow magically improve things and then walk away when it all turns to sh!t, go 'sort out' the middle east...tw@t. But yeah, he is rather dishy :D

ha ha :-$

As for his early successes regards Flooding and Foot & Mouth, there was a very interesting article in Private Eye about how DEFRA had intended to strengthen much needed flood defences along many of our rivers, following investigations into previous floods. Plus a certain research establishment had reported on its desperately crumbling sewers and vulnerability to a flood. This work was also scheduled for fixing. Then Brown at the treasury slashed Defra's budgets spelling an end to both projects, indirectly exacerbating the floods that then wrecked the lab that was making Foot and Mouth vaccines that spread to the countryside...causing the crisis. So all he was doing was damage limitations on things he caused in the first place. Ho hum. Brown so far has only made surface show of distancing himself from the Neocons, but on key issues, ie ruling out attack on Iran, extending our Nuclear deterrent when we're signed up to getting rid of it and supposed to be encouraging others to do likewise? Nada. *sigh* and ID cards...

Ooh, I got an 1890s soda syphon for christmas. I don't think it works though.

Andrew Marr summed it nicely up at the end of his recent programme on contemporary British politics, and I quote from memory "For all Blairs impact on the political stage, his achievements were transient. Though he served as long as Thatcher and whatever our personal feelings to them are, we are all Thatchers children but we will never be Blair's children. I couldn't have put it better myself. Blair has only one legacy and that's Iraq. Seriously, tell me what Eden did....waiting....Suez perchance?

Yeah I did as it goes. I quite enjoyed it though it followed the formula for this sort of programme a little too tightly. Charlie Brooker summed it up perfectly But pretty enjoyable nevertheless. One of them is on flickr as it goes

LOL

So forget about the institutionalised sleaze, the pointless league tables, the hypocrital self-righteousness, the unmitigated failure to achieve anything, the subjugation of our foreign policy to a bunch of fascists in washington, the warmongering, the riding roughshod over national opinion, the erosion of personal liberties...he had a nice smile. I'd say, rather sadly, that Brown has indeed lived up to expectations (I'm not a fan, can you tell); but for all that, and his discomfort in front of the cameras, he's comported himself with more dignity and the spin machine, if not gone, is much quieter. Plus he has more personal integrity in his sweaty jowls than Blair could muster in a lifetime. God if this is the level of national debate no wonder we're stuck between the wannabe blair and his his vacuous party and a gutless labour party always out for themselves first and foremost. Sheesh.

That sounds great, I may do that and I'm not even ill!

Ruffshod..ish? 'Dreary White Stuff Outfit'

err..we are.

Good use of negative space here, taken by Bob Cox with a little compact showing you don't need flashy equipment for a shot that works.

My god, just when you think you're inured to all the misery the world has to offer, the world shows it can still shock you to the core. Will this be part of the Olympic opening ceremony? I think not! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/07/wchina107.xml