April 28, 2005
Analysis of the March 7th advice
Very useful point-by-point analysis of the legal advice by Anthony Lestor QC. Kudos to the Guardian for commissioning it and then putting it on the web. No wonder they wanted to hush this up.
Posted by Mark at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blair + liar (2)
My father-in-law - a sometime Labour councillor - asked me the other day: what direct evidence is there that Tony Blair lied to take us to war in Iraq?
I referred him to the House of Commons debate where Blair claimed that Iraq represented a direct strategic threat to Britain, despite Geoff Hoon confirming and, according to Robin Cook, Tony Blair acknowledging that at that stage the government already knew that there was no such strategic threat. That is: the government knew that any weapons Saddam possessed which could deliver any kind of nuclear, biological or chemical payload were battlefield weapons, incapable of posing such a threat. In the absence of such a strategic threat, Britain's participation in the Iraq war was illegal, as Blair's legal advisors, we now learn, had warned him.
Now Blair gives another example of the bold lie. The legal advice about the legality of the war given publicly to the House of Commons was that it is was legal. Later Blair went further: the legal advice, he claimed, "hadn't changed". But the advice had changed, and changed in a most startling manner.
Howard is right to use the word "liar" of Blair.
Isn't it true that when a politician is found to have misled the House of Commons he is supposed to resign?
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April 26, 2005
Blair + liar gets bursty
Blog monitors like our own Market Sentinel and Blogpulse now let you follow ideas, phrases, "memes" as they are created and then ebb and flow. We do corporate ones, which I can't share with you ... Shame.
But here is a nice topical example showing "Blair + Liar" on Blogpulse:
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Traffic blackspots in London
A Transport for London survey of accident blackstops puts two of the top ten on the new congestion charge boundary ring road, at Elephant and Castle (no. 5) and Vauxhall Cross (no. 9) respectively.
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Axum obelisk returned - hope for the Benin bronzes?
Italy has returned the great basalt obelisk of Axum to Ethiopia. Crowds lined the street cheering its homecoming. 24 metres high and weighing 160 tonnes, the stela was pillaged by Mussolini after the Abyssinian war of 1936. Its return sets a precedent for other pillaged works of art - like the Benin bronzes at the British Museum.
The Benin bronzes were stolen after a British punitive expedition in 1897. They represent the best collection in the world. Although some bronzes have been sold to Nigeria, over 900 remain in London. Most are in storage, and the remainder are woefully poorly-displayed.
(The Menil collection does a far better job of both display and explanation.) The Benin bronzes ought to be attracting tourists to West Africa rather than sitting with scant explanation on a dusty trophy wall in Bloomsbury.
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April 25, 2005
Microbial fuel cell produces hydrogen
Scientists at Pennsylvania State University have designed a microbial fuel cell that generates hydrogen using a tenth of the electricity required for electrolysis.
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April 21, 2005
What happens when the oil runs out?
Oil consumption could peak next year and then gradually decline, suggests an expert. This would lead to higher prices for just about everything ...
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Killer dogs
That hot dog - the one you are just about to cover in mustard - it doesn't just smell weird. It may kill you.
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April 18, 2005
Welcome back Frank Gardner
How fantastic to see Frank Gardner back at work for the BBC. His reporting was a bright spot in a grim couple of years.
In a fascinating Hard Talk interview (linked indirectly above) Frank talks about being shot by militants in Riyadh. He talks about how he might have been spared because the assassins found a miniature Koran in his back pocket and because he said (embarrassingly, as he now admits) that he was a Muslim. The man looked at him as if he was "dogfood", Frank says. His minder vanished, inexplicably.
When he was shot, a crowd gathered around him and looked at him, without helping or even offering him water. He was puzzled by this, but attributed it to the Saudis' fear of the police.
Somehow he survived, semi-paralysed, and unable to walk without crutches. And after ten months of rehabilitation at the Royal National Orthopedic hospital, he is back in the newsroom.
On a personal note to an old friend: welcome back, Frank, you're a brave man.
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April 15, 2005
Chirac defends constitution
Jacques Chirac defends the European constitution as a way of protecting French farmers' €10bn a year plus subsidy, and opposing an "economic" conception of Europe (emblematized by the free market in services), with a "political" one, driven by protectionism.
The French view of Europe is thus neatly expressed:
- a way of subsiding French interests;
- a way of dressing up the French perspective on the world as the "European" perspective on the world.
Paradoxically, Europe is now more receptive than ever to the British approach, driven by deregulation, economic liberalism and the need to compete with the great traders of China, Japan and the USA. The French public know it, which is why they are sceptical of the Constitution.
Posted by Mark at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2005
Vauxhall Cross "bus station" gets a rave
The architectural critic Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian gushes about the Vauxhall Interchange. He loves it.
"Flamboyant ... bold ... photovoltaic ... trumpet blast ... striking ... streamlined ... gestural ...imaginative ..." blah, blah, blah. It's bullshit bingo.
You will look in vain for references to litter bins, a disabled interchange, integration with rail and tube. Because these things are absent. Of course that's beneath the notice of an architectural critic.
The article only touches the ground in its reference to the place being a "bus station" - a more accurate description that the word "interchange" which implies a coherence with tube, rail, road and bicycle which are missing from the completed scheme. Glancey says that the budget for this "1950s caravan" was £4m, which - as the total budget was £20m - suggests that relaying the tarmac around the rest of the junction cost £16m. Another way of putting this is that 80% of the project cost went into infrastructure primarily designed for cars.
A contact who is working on the Elephant and Castle scheme informed me that only 14% of the people going through the area every day use a private car. 86% are pedestrians, or use train, tube or bus. The implementation of the Vauxhall Cross scheme shows how little the calculations of Transport for London are affected by this arithmetic.
See previous articles on this topic: here , here and here .
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April 12, 2005
Andrea Dworkin was married!!!!
That is the shocking revelation of her obituary . How could this woman who described consensual sex as an act of aggression and marriage as prostitution, actually be married? Was she smoking crack when she wrote all that stuff? Was she secretly straight? This is shocking, SHOCKING.
The answer to the paradox is not hard to find. Reading down the page one reads that her husband, John Stoltenberg, was gay and founded the group: "Men against pornography".
Posted by Mark at 4:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Tory Manifesto
An excellent analysis of the Tory party's manifesto in the Financial Times this morning.
The manifesto fails to make the case for the widespread changes that the Tories should be arguing for. In fact - now you come to mention it - the Tories aren't arguing for any widespread changes. They aren't really offering anything much different. Instead they are trying to win on Labour's own ground, claiming that they will offer better public services, but spend only slightly less and thereby tamper with taxation levels at the margins.
When you add to this the grumpy and somewhat unenlightened idea that the nation's ills are down to foreigners and unruly kids, you have an undercooked pudding of policies, none of which add up to a coherent philosophy of government. Beta minus.
Posted by Mark at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 8, 2005
Blair, TV and the blogs
The Prime Minister doing that "normal bloke" thing
The Prime Minister is everywhere for the cameras during this election, but nowhere for the electors . Blair has learnt from his pal Bush that you can successfully avoid hostile journalists by not giving press conferences and by stage managing your appearances for a compliant picture-hungry TV news media. Witness his recent trip to Asda in Roehampton. Lots of handshakes - but no questions allowed.
If there is hope, it lies in the blogs.
- How come "education, education, education" means that 1 in 6 year olds can't read?
- How come that the commitment to the NHS means the worst cancer survival rates in Europe , and the dirtiest hospitals.
- How come that an "ethical foreign policy" means taking Britain into an illegal war with Iraq at the behest of the US?
- How come that a "commitment to the environment" means that our CO2 emissions are rising ?
- How come that an "integrated transport policy" means that public transport is in greater mess than ever , and ever more roads are choked by an even greater number of cars?
- How come that Labour's job creation "miracle" is down to creating half a million public sector jobs, whilst the private sector pays for this in taxes, predicted to rise from 37.1% to 40.5% of GDP.
("Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin pointed out that that of the 88,000 new posts created in 'education', only 4,000 were teaching jobs. Management Issues )
The New Labour government was all about presentation, and nothing about delivery . A cynical friend suggested to me that the new 10 year BBC license fee was all about getting the corporation onside in the run-up to the election. The truth is that the government needs all the compliant media it can get. Only in the blogs is real dissent being expressed.
Posted by Mark at 3:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Rover and out
The government wisely made its intervention in the Rover situation dependent on a commercial deal. Now it looks as if none has been possible . The Chinese are pulling the plug, figuring that they can pick up the most useful valuable assets more cheaply from a bankruptcy and that the expertise of the incumbent management is worthless. Hard not to disagree with that assessment. The European car-making industry is still over-capacity, so there is not much chance of a sale to a rival. It's over for Rover.
What was the British car industry in the form of British Leyland has now vanished. BMW owns Mini, Ford owns LandRover and Jaguar and the rump - euphemistically called the "volume" car business of MG Rover - has just given up the ghost.
It wasn't just nationalisation that killed British Leyland - although it didn't help. (These were some of the worst British administrations in history - in comparison Renault thrived under state control). It was a toxic mixture of under-investment, under-capitalisation, timid management, meddling politicians, and stroppy unions. The nature of the under-capitalisation becomes clear when you look at what has happened to the Mini under BMW. They produce a better-featured, trendier update and suddenly they can't make the things fast enough.
Posted by Mark at 3:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 5, 2005
Disposable email
The next time the guy asks for an email, give him one from Pookmail . Your account only lasts 24 hours. Very clever. Thanks to Robot Wisdom for this tip.
Posted by Mark at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 4, 2005
Neil Young - get well soon
Rockstar (I saw him referred to as a "country" star) Neil Young is sick after an operation to remove an aneurysm in his brain. He is a great man. Get well soon, Neil.
Posted by Mark at 9:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Rover - should the government write a cheque?
The Phoenix consortium who took over MG Rover four years ago have done well out of their ownership of the company. But they have invested little in it and given it no strategic direction. And now the word is that the company will not survive if the government does not provide a £100m "soft" bridging loan from taxpayers' funds.
There is little point in such a loan being provided. It would merely preserve the fiction that there is sufficient value in the orderbook for the current management to preserve 25% ownership in the "joint venture". The order book is, on the contrary, thin. Rover has a medium-sized carmarker's cost base and a small carmaker's market size. The management - led by John Towers - have bled £40m from the company in five years and only secured £67m of Chinese investment from SAIC by giving up valuable IP rights.
What the Chinese are really after is the government under-writing Rover's pension liabilities (put at £68m at the beginning of the year) and the £423m loan from BMW which would become repayable if the company was insolvent. This the government not do. They should learn from the DeLorean affair, and not use taxpayers funds to try to make water flow uphill, as Patricia Hewitt seems minded to do . People are not buying Rover's current roster of slightly out of date cars, and nothing done in Whitehall is going to change that.
Posted by Mark at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 1, 2005
"I hate these people"
With one bound, Prince Charles has regained public esteem by slagging off the press. "I hate these people," he muttered during a photocall. And of the BBC's oily Nicholas Witchell he remarked: "I can't bear that man. He is so awful, he really is ..."
Since the British public shares the Prince's low opinion of hacks, he has done himself a lot of favours. A bit of sincerity with the public goes down a treat. What he really needs to do now is to start a blog and dish it out a bit.
Posted by Mark at 4:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack