Category: Uncategorised

[

Edit

: as predicted, this was a case of a misleading article in the Guardian. See i_am_toast‘s comment.]

Plans to make schoolchildren take part in citizenship ceremonies pledging allegiance to the Queen

Yes, it’s the Guardian selling papers by angering liberals, and somebody’s always willing to say idiotic things to get himself back in the news. But it still leaves me feeling sour – and yes, these things can matter.

Worse – I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten) that we make immigrants swear to “

be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law

”

sorry; I will stop posting so much about politics eventually. I just seem to have remembered in the past few weeks how beautiful the world is, and therefore also how fucked up chunks of it are

Turning an over-sized comment into a post

Pictures from a Russian flash mob earlier today.

From an old Panorama program on Russian crime boss Semyon Mogilevich…

INTERVIEWER:
Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?

MOGILEVICH:
The problem was that I didn't know any other islands.

Yes, I am posting a lot today. Yes, I am spending Friday night behind a computer. No, I don’t have anything better to do. Shuttup.

“

crimes in Britain have fallen from about 20m in 1995 to about 12m in 2006

”

(from this article on prisons)

ETA: the figures are apparently from here, and the writer obviously cherry-picked to prove his point. But the actual figures are even more interesting – crime rising slowly over the 80s, quickly through the early 90s, peaking in ’96 and dropping since. And no, I’m not quite naive enough to blame crime on the tories

[And apologies to those of you to whom this is all old hat; I feel humbled by my total non-wonkiness, in having not the faintest idea about that trend]

Wahoo! Viktor Bout has been arrested

[ETA: people may not know that The Yorkshire Ranter has been tracking Bout’s activities for years, and is

the

place for informed comment on him]

Getting your PhD into the national press is pretty impressive. But getting two articles devoted to it (one on the front page) before you even submit, must mean you’re on to something. Alternatively, perhaps you have a journalist friend who doesn’t mind writing the same article twice.


Cut for predictable grumbling about newspapers and Cambridge cliques