Walsingham

I call bull****. Even I could do that in Photoshop. Tell that to the owl, man.

I've noticed a lot of hacks, even on my main daily - the Telegraph - breaking ranks and accusing this of being a leftist witch hunt. I've got no time for this view at all. Murdoch's a towering ****er, and he should be hunted with hounds. You don't set up a group with no restraint and give it massive incentives to break the law, then pretend you had no idea it would break the law.

Peace at any price, eh Morgo? Where have I heard that before? Nonetheless, you can't have it both ways. You can't deride the RAF for not getting enough bombing done, then object to the entire point of the bombing. Thinking joined up you are not.

The US has been extremely careful to avoid leading intervention in Libya. Partly because it would go against the remit Obama had to avoid new wars*. Partly because I think that after Afghanistan and Iraq they know that their European allies merely want free cake. The problem with NATO isn't that its need has passed. Russia is resurgent and aggressive in Eastern Europe. Something which I shouldn't have to tell an Austrian. The problem is that NATO has no clear strategic cohesion to make it an effective vehicle for action. And that in turn is because the various member states have wildly diverging energy security issues, and energy security seems to be the big issue for the next twenty years. *coughcough Nobel committee halfwits coughcough*

I believe I saw it lying around a friend's house. And being a teenage prick, into 'irony', I thought "Well, how bad can it be?"

The Sun has now been accused of - quite logically - having illegally acquired Gordon Brown's daughter's medical records ...so the good people of Britain could have her cystic fibrosis paraded before them like a common Frenchman. I rather think that the Great British Public bear a portion of the blame for our vapid insistence that we be allowed to pry into each other's ****ing private lives. It's mental. We have a robust and healthy debate on every counter-terror measure, yet we'll accept any violation whatsoever in the name of News International making a profit by titillating us. ~~~ Aside: Brown also accuses the Sunday Times of trying to get him fired as Chancellor of the Exchequer. If only they had succeeded. EDIT: Got it wrong. It was Brown's son.

"Night of the Crabs", by Guy N. Smith. I tend to absorb the writing style of whatever I'm reading. In this instance I lost the ability to write completely for two months. Everything about this book is bad, and wrong.

Nice. It's far too late, and I just had this image of a gigantic pork sausage traversing the Russian steppe like Shai Hulud. With a couple of fellahs in cheap suits on the back, yammering enthusiastically into their cellphones. Damn I should sleep. I don't know what they've done, but screw those pesky Russians. They dump uncleaned cattle manure near rivers that flow into the Baltic Sea. In fact they have whole "lakes" of cattle manure. It kills trees and plants from the vicinity and slowly manages to leak into the rivers and from there to the Baltic Sea causing the sea slowly to die. The goverment doesn't seem to care at all and apparently the pork "factory" owners can't afford to build facilities to clean the manure before dumping it or use it as biofuel. Though the Russians ain't the only ones messing up badly, Polish (though I think their pork farms are owned by American corporations) use the uncleaned manure on their crop fields and rains wash down huge amounts of nutrients (and other harmful things) into the rivers and from there to the ocean. Some law in Poland says they need to cover the manure with mould/dirt/soil after one day. But they don't... Smithfield Foods for example threathens to sue anyone who speaks against them. In small amounts nutriens, nitrogen and phospore aren't bad, but since the amounts are just so ******** high it's killing the ocean. There's already huge dead zones in the ocean and alga/seaweed is spreadin rapidly. And since the demand for pork meat isn't going to drop all of sudden and it's only going up, we are gonna see lots and lots of more of this "pork factories" around the rivers that flow into the Baltic Ocean.

Imprint on a window. Apparently left by a substance on the wings.

I didn't make it clear enough that I was attacking the email, mate. Apologies. I just think that in your personal drive to find allies who are opposed to the current government you've hitched yourself to religious conservatives who are really socialists by another name. Because they believe that an 'enlightened' elite should be engineering people 'better'. That either has to come from government or Saudi/Iranian/Bolshevik 'committees' dispensing almost arbitrary rulings. Probably from government in an era where everythig is so complex and inter-related. For example, how is a local committe going to understand or act on a database query technique designed for shoe-shops but exploited to anonymise internet porn? IMO in such a huge melee the only 'moral' solution is to adopt a tight circle of friends and working associates who adhere to a code. Society is more or less monkey level from here on in. And maybe that's not such a bad thing considering most people are pretty simple and monkeyish. But then I worry that this sounds far too much like the philosophy of the Chinese Triads.

Krez... I feel like I'm punching a puppy here, but you need to hear this. $700 million is absolute peanuts in energy terms. It's not even that dust you get at the bottom of a packet of peanuts when you've eaten all the peanuts. 25 billion is not peanuts, but its just slightly above what the UK needs to invest in energy infrastructure just to stay at current demand levels, if we aren't going to have serious power shortages in a five years. Replacing systems like for like. I've a report to that effect on my desk at this precise minute. If - and I stress IF - we are going to wind up in a climate change crash due to current energy practice, then I politely suggest you brace for impact rather than proposing outlandish sky castles. Technology is not going to magically alter the entire global energy network and all subordinate technologies in under ten years. Which is the time frame - as I understand it - for change. And even if it did, just think about the phenomenal economic activity required to deliver that change. Activity carried out using old technologies and energy! You consistently list and report all these innovations and investment. But you can't kid a kidder. I used to work in venture capital, and I recognise a hot smoke screen when I hear one. The numbers, the size of the players you're quoting... I'm not saying you're doing it deliberately, but take a deep breath, slap yourself in the face, and ask yourself honestly if what you're saying makes real cold steel sense.

Sudan better hope it's China. We're the US' oldest serious ally and we get **** all.

I thought bio-ethanol had been dropped by the green movement because it promotes agribusinesses and land seizures from peasants and so forth?

Oil is so 20th Century. Didn't you hear? It's all renewables these days.

I think the funniest thing here is the argument that government should be as small as possible, yet a lack of religion in government is to blame for a lack of public morality. How is the ideal rump government supposed to enforce or promote said public morality? Perhaps it could permit citizens to use their militias to enforce virtue? Maybe by big information campaigns paid for with taxes they can't collect? What about when the impious is being promoted by private companies of a size and power the Founding Fathers literally couldn't imagine? If you shrink the government to below the size of the California porn industry, what happens then? Treating the Founding Fathers like apostles who turned up late to the party is understandable, and may serve to bolster faith in the constitution. A constitution which has some neat ideas which need better defence than they receive. But having faith in the Founding Fathers is patently absurd. It divides the constitutions defenders into the rationalists and faith-based camps, and tehreby takes away far more than it delivers. You're only hurting your own cause, mate. Desist.

Looking at all that green you can see why Khartoum didn't want to lose it. Albeit in a less-than-charming Joseph Fritzl way.

Indeed. Of course, I also liked the Wildcard books, and still do even now. They were proper 'dime store', IIRC. GRR Martin edited and wrote many Wildcard books.

It's a British film set in a European city with two Irish actors. Brit = European, fighting words. I think it's fair enough to describe it as European cinema. It's sure as **** not Hollywood. You get Hollywood films shot in the UK by Uk teams.

Hmm. Taste isn't that hot either, granted haven't had any high-brow booze. Fanciest I've had was Affligem and some beer from Quebec that uses unfiltered water or some nonsense. I'll stick to my Coke Coke is really bad for you though. My mum, bless her, swore by iced ginger tea made with root ginger. Lots of it. Plenty of lemon juice. At least it has a kick to make you wince.

As much as I suffer daily from powerpoint, the fact is it is good format for doing presentations, provided you use simple rules covering number of points per slide, using whole sentences, and not expecting clipart collages to cover up a lack of thinking.

Not sure about the accent, but I reckon I could handle the guns and steak. Seriously, though. What in the name of unholy funt does that woman have on Murdoch that she's worth hanging onto? It's not as if chippy sociopathic harridans are particularly rare in British industry. Maybe it's that she's ginger?

Here's hoping you manage to get your proverbial in gear and avoid going the same way as every other new nation.

I should like to point out that between you chaps, and the Daily Mash, my patriotism is eroding like a child's sandcastle as the sea comes in.

Well, since we're sharing subjective judgements I find GRRM's writing to be tight, controlled, and violent. I don't see why you'd find him bad at writing.

You mean the way sex just makes you sticky? The journey to the being thirsty and sleepy is kinda the point, old boy.