I heard the news today, oh boy..

[Brendan]

Conspiracy theories, are they? Are they really?

[Guest]

This one puts knife crime in London in perspective.

Passenger beheaded on Canada bus

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Well, that'll teach him to have his Walkman too loud.

[Huguenot]

Shock!

Agency set up to say quangos are crap says quangos are crap

[Marmora Man]

Shock!

Agency set up to say quangos are crap says quangos are crap

Sometimes the blindingly obvious needs pointing out - particularly to politicians. If the RDAs have really cost ?15bn to create 125,000 jobs, that's about ?120,000 per job - hardly efficient use of gov't money.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Excellent story. I was watching London Mayor's QT this morning where similar questions were being asked on how many millions are wasted on consultancies. Highly amusing to watch Boris in action - recommended viewing.

[Huguenot]

Possibly MM, but I reckon that's a bit simplistic. The RDA brief goes beyond job creation, and also covers job retention, business leadership and advice, environmental development, research and accountability.

Since government is an experiment without a control, we don't know what would have been achieved without this resource. However, there's plenty of evidence that SMEs find RDAs a key local resource. Most business people aren't hard and fast tub-thumpers, they're everyday guys who need all the help and support they can get.

There's massive variation in regional economics, and the RDAs are a mechanism to support and lobby on behalf of regional issues that local business people feel are not being addressed by a national government.

[SeanMacGabhann]

In other news... re: ID cards, security and whatnot

When secure isn't

Given also the state of chip and pin and card cloning mentioned in another thread, how anyone thinks giving any body electronic access to all your information is a good idea I don't know

[mockney piers]

Olympics blah yawn...and in other news a full on shooting war has broken out in the Caucuses.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/08/georgia.russia2

It has been threatening for the last 15 years mind.

[Ant]

Can't help wondering whether Russia deliberately chose today to send the tanks in, cos everyone else will be watching the Olympics, or whether it's just coincidence.

Hm.

[mockney piers]

In fairness it was the Georgians who decided to end Ossetia's defacto independence (no doubt with an eye to testing Russia's reaction, with the real goal being coastal Abkhazia) and the Russians who sent in tanks to 'keep the peace' and 'protect Russian citizens'. Neither of which seemed to matter too much to them when they shelled the bejeezus out of Grozny killing thousands of ethnic Russian citizens, but who ever said politicians aren't hypocrites eh?

[Ant]

All these tiny subrepublics. It's like the Balkans. They make my head ache. Too much to keep track of.

[mockney piers]

Indeed, South Ossetia is about the same size as Kent for goodness sake!!!

[Brendan]

So are the Falklands and look how much trouble they caused.

[mockney piers]

Touch? ;-)

[Ant]

Perhaps we should start our own ministate. The Independent People's Republic of North-West Kent, anyone?

[Brendan]

You mean that isn't where we live already?

[Ant]

But if we make it official we get tax-raising powers.

I'm gonna tax me some gay bars. And I'm also going to tax arguments about said gay bars. Kerching!

[CamberwellOz]

Poo attack!

[Brendan]

Sometimes you just have to love the Australians. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7567239.stm

[david_carnell]

The BBC have been running a series of magazine articles on their website that seeks to instill in the average man-on-the-street an understanding of numbers, percentages and statistics that are regularly used in the media. I only found number four in the series today but have now read all of them. They are universally excellent. Well written and informative. Some of the stuff I was aware of and other stuff came as a shock to the memory. I'd advise you all to check them out:

Lesson 1: Our survey says

Lesson 2: The myth of counting

Lesson 3: Percentages

Lesson 4: Averages

Next week is Causation. I'm actually looking forward to reading it.

[Ant]

I've been following that series - 57.2% of my average survey group agree that it's good stuff.

[Brendan]

63% of statistics are made up on the spot.

[hannahspanner]

A little less serious.

[Huguenot]

Mushroom Soup Terrorism