Category: Uncategorised

Mike points out a very positive-sounding statement by Phil Woolas:

the Government agreed to publish online, on a quarterly basis, information about ministerial meetings with outside interest groups. Information for the period 1 October to 31 December 2009 will be published by Departments as soon as the information is ready.

You can imagine this playing out in all kinds of ways. Some lobby groups will have yet more incentive to maximise their meeting count, regardless of whether they’re being listened to, just so they can show to donors how much ministerial conflict they have. Others will be even more desperately trying to figure out how to skirt around the law, arranging for their meetings to be social, unofficial or otherwise off the record. And whether the data is of any use at all will, naturally, depend on whether the political website crowd manage to get anywhere with it.

Relatedly, The Yorkshire Ranter links to the German government site, ‘a public version control system for legislation’.

Der Spiegel’s review of the decade is appropriately grim.

English-language German news site thelocal puts out a review of the events of 2009. Shorter version: a year of no significance.

Also, not entirely unrelatedly:

Germans have less faith in their political system than at any point in the post-war period, mainly due to what they see as a weak response to the financial crisis, a poll published Sunday showed.

The president of Pakistan tells Seymour Hersh why his army won’t do anything silly with nuclear weapons:

Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban. They’re British-trained. Why would they slip up on nuclear security?

Not

entirely

convincing, given that every military coup in Pakistan’s history has been led by a British-trained general. Worse still if you start to wonder precisely which tips they might have picked up:

…until they were retired in 1998, the RAF’s nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key. There was no other security on the bomb itself.

Meanwhile Bruce Sterling has started his annual state of the world interview, an open Q&A which he concocts a grotesque (but plausible) interpretation of the zeitgeist. Always brilliant, it’s especially entertaining this year because his contrarian instincts compel him to be optimistic while everybody else is full of gloom. So far, he’s completely failing.

The president of Pakistan tells Seymour Hersh why his army won’t do anything silly with nuclear weapons:

Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban. They’re British-trained. Why would they slip up on nuclear security?

Not

entirely

convincing, given that every military coup in Pakistan’s history has been led by a British-trained general. Worse still if you start to wonder precisely which tips they might have picked up:

…until they were retired in 1998, the RAF’s nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key. There was no other security on the bomb itself.

Meanwhile Bruce Sterling has started his annual state of the world interview, an open Q&A which he concocts a grotesque (but plausible) interpretation of the zeitgeist. Always brilliant, it’s especially entertaining this year because his contrarian instincts compel him to be optimistic while everybody else is full of gloom. So far, he’s completely failing.

Bruce Sterling’s State of the World is back for another year. I swear, this is the only piece of punditry that ever seems close to grokking what’s going on:

Sy Hersh’s Nov 09 article on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is not all that revelatory. But, given the last post here, it’s hardly reassuring to read of the Pakistani president defending nuclear security in these terms:

“Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban. They’re British-trained. Why would they slip up on nuclear security?”

“

until less than ten years ago, the locks on RAF nuclear bombs were opened with a bicycle lock key. ” [BBC

]

Admittedly, this looks like a case of auntie spinning their info as far as it’ll go. e.g. no bicycle lock itself, necessarily, just the same kind of key.

More optimism from Hari, this time idolizing JJ & co:

It works. Look at Britain. Three years ago, eight new coal power stations were being planned, and the third runway at Heathrow was all but inevitable. A few thousand heroic young people took direct action against them. Now all the new coal power stations have been cancelled, and the third runway is dead in the water. Here in the fifth largest economy in the world, they have stopped coal and airport expansion. Politicians felt the heat. That was done by a few thousand people. Imagine what tens or hundreds of thousands could do.

I’m piously encouraged by Johann Hari’s list of objects of emulation from 2009