The obligatory ooh! holiday! post
While I’m sat here – yes, I did go to Malta at the weekend. And yes, it was paid for by Jagex (which could have some small connection to me being in a better mood with them today).
Yes, it was fun – mainly because I got to do lots of things that are nice to do once, but I would never have done if left to my own devices. That covers the five-star hotel, and the trip to the casino (euch! full of zombie-women at slot machines! don’t want to do that again!), and the general lads’ holiday aspect of it (most people spent most of their time getting drunk inside two blocks of the hotel). Malta itself is pretty much in that category of ‘things I liked, but wouldn’t want to do again’. Lots of nice old bits – but nothing that you’d want to spend more than a few days looking at.
hmmm…that came out a lot less enthusastic than I’d expected it to. It
was
great, just not any more great than you’d expect from when I said ‘free weekend in Malta’.
Protected: Jagex: not a nice employer after all
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Yay!
The bonkers 90-day detention without charge proposal has failed.
*does happy little dance*
Money in Iraq
The Iraq Analysis site site is accumulating an impressive amount of new content at the moment.
Among it is a fairly damning statement from the
IAMB
on contract management in Iraq:
The KPMG audit of the 23 sole sourced contracts revealed exceptions in a number of cases including
* (i) insufficient documentation to justify non-competitive contracting action,
* (ii) lack of support for the provision of services or receipts of goods, and
* (iii) discrepancies in the amount billed.
And then they recomment “_ that amounts disbursed to contractors that cannot be supported as fair be reimbursed expeditiously_”
So, one more point goes to those distrustful anti-american anti-corporate types.
On a similar topic, somebody from Corpwatch (the US one) has written this book about the economic end of the war. It might be horribly out-of-date by now (it was published November 2004), but then everything on Iraq seems out of date at the moment. I’m planning to read it anyway, if I can get hold of a copy.
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I’m pretty sure that’s not the sound a hard drive should be making.
If I vanish from the the internet shortly, you’ll know what to blame.
Galloway summary
This, despite being 6 months old, is a very useful summary of the allegations against George Galloway.
(via crooked timber, which also brings the story up-to-date)
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Wow. That weekend was
so much better
than the last one.
Details may or may not follow, depending on how much trivia I feel like inflicting on you all.