28March
Vicky Ford picks up on a remarkable scam from the car insurers. She's been allocated a new postcode, and declaring this fact suddenly bumped up her premium by £50 per year.
Iain Dale reports on the latest split within the serried ranks of the UIP. In 2004, a campaign fronted by former television chat-show orange Robert Kilroy-Silk and former Dynasty
bitch Joan Collins ensured that the UIP secured 11 of the UK's 78 members of the European parliament. Mr. Kilroy-Shaft left the party within the year, going on to found the oh-so-successful Veritas Party: Leader Robert Kilroy-Silk, which lost the 2005 election dismally. Another of UIP's MEPs, Ashley Mote, was thrown out of the party after fiddling housing benefit. Now Roger Knapman, Tom Wise, and Mike Nattrass have effectively left the party, following a row with new leader Nigel Farage. The UIP have also been removed from the London Assembly, after both their AMs defected to Veritas P:LRKS, then promptly formed an Independent Eurosceptic Grouping.
The Canadian Liberal party is calling for the resignation of cabinet member Stockwell Day. The opposition says that Mr. Day bribed another MP to resign his seat, precipitating a by-election won by the ancien CRAP leader. Mr. Day says that this is a load of crap, and so are the allegations.
Naomi Klein on the jury in the trial of Conrad Black. Many appeared to regard North America's ultra-rich the way Russians see their oligarchs - even if the way they amassed their fortunes was legal, it shouldn't have been.
Heather Mills will not be pleased: it looks like there will be no St. Lawrence seal hunt this year. Global warming, and the consequent reduction in pack ice, is forcing the DFO's hands.
To the surprise of almost no-one, David Plunkett has accepted a job for an identity theft company. This is a clear conflict of interest with his extraordinarily long tenure as British interior minister. If he had any sense of honour at all ... but we know he doesn't.
And talk of the devil...
It is astonishing to find that the Home Office proposals for updating the operation of CCTV in protecting the public are portrayed as some sort of snooper's charter or surveillance society. This is ironic at a time when the Jamaican police are having to take extraordinary steps to upgrade the out-of-date and inadequate footage that might well assist in finding the killer of Bob Woolmer. Having really first-class CCTV evidence isn't about an intrusion into privacy but about using technology sensibly and wisely. After all, Robert Mugabe's Central Intelligence Organisation and brutal police operations have no trouble at all in relation to surveillance, and they use none of the modern techniques that are disparaged in your report. - David Plunkett, Zog
Het Grauniad reports on the benefits of walking. We encourage this sort of thing.
When the government rejected its own warnings. Sounds like an episode of Roobarb
, that last one, but the wobbly green dog would never have launched an air-raid on the birds of mass twittering.
There were riots on the Paris métro on Tuesday night, when a train was delayed. The 6.13 service on the Nordique line - dubbed the Miseré by frustrated commuters - ran almost 40 seconds behind schedule. It was like the world was coming to an end. People were throwing stale croissants and jeering, then the police stormed the barriers without paying. They should take away their cartes huitre, said one frustrated commuter.
As seen on usenet:
What is the force of electric interaction between a copper ball of radius R carrying net charge +Q, and a point charge +3Q located at distance 2R from the center of the ball?
Please, help me people. My girlfriend will dump me, unless I score at least B on this assignment... she's got all A's.
The consensus opinion: She is obviously smarter than he is, will quickly realise that her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend is a cheat, and he should dump her now. We understand that the speccy girl in Avril Lasagne's most recent video clip will soon be available.
Sport England's chairman has expressed his displeasure at plans to rob all sports to pay for one crass spectacle. The arts are also unhappy, especially as grants are not awarded on cultural merit, but on government-approved diversity targets.
