Category: Uncategorized
The Guardian reports that due to National Security issues a major SFO investigation of BAE Systems has been halted.
A major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems and its executives was stopped in its tracks yesterday when the prime minister claimed it would endanger Britain’s security if the inquiry was allowed to continue.
The remarkable intervention was announced by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who took the decision to end the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into alleged bribes paid by the company to Saudi officials, after consulting cabinet colleagues.
It would appear that the lobbying of the company and the Saudi government has finally payed off and the government has pulled the plug as it were on the inquiry. The Serious Fraud Office issued this statement.
The Attorney General had apparently consulted with the prime minister, the defence secretary, foreign secretary, and the intelligence services, and they jointly decided that “the wider public interest” “outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law”.
So BAE Systems can now in my opinion be considered above the law, but then that has seemed always to have been the way when it comes to British arms companies, at least under the previous Conservative government.
I suppose naively I had thought that this government would be different especially given that we’ve a prime minister who once taunted his predecessor as someone “knee deep in dishonour” over an arms deal and who promised that he would be “purer than pure” in office.
I feel like one of the animals looking in at the pigs and men at the end of Animal Farm.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Edit: Garry Smith of A Big Stick and a Small Carrot apparently feels exactly the same and beat me to the punch with the quote.
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Big Damn Heroes
The Firefly convention known as Flanvention was cancelled at the last minute by the organisers leaving fans some of whom having travelled hundreds of miles very upset and disappointed.
But the fans being such a tight and passionate group and the stars of Firefly being so damn brilliant a kind of ad hoc Flanvention was created in its place.
Firefly Flanvention Flattened; Fans Find Finkery at Fault
I’m not offended, and don’t call me mate – OMG!!!
Death_is_My_Gift’s photos and commentary on the ad hoc flanvention.
Daytone Beach News-Journal Online: Why we love the Firefly/Serenity crew
Whedonesque fans vacariously enjoying the ad hoc Flanvention.
The skinny on a phat night…my night with “the browncoats”…
A man named Jayne – music video Brilliant and hilarious.
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Acid Factory
Current favourite waste of time whilst at work is the Miniclip game Acid Factory. Like all great games nowadays it contains zombies. Sweet! Should keep me sated with zombie killing until I can afford an Xbox 360, Dead Rising and a HDTV to go with it.
 Acid Factory Help harry escape the horrors of his acid-flooded factory. |
| Play this free game now!! |
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Einstein’s belief in God.
A quote of Albert Einstein’s in reference to his religiousness, by way of Richard Dawkins in The Independent.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Personally I’m on the fence between outright Atheism and Agnosticism.
Alex Tew of Million Dollar Homepage fame is at it again with yet another million dollar idea and now one lucky visitor to his site will get to share the wealth this time.
Pixelotto offers visitors to the site the chance to win $1,000,000 – just by clicking ads on yet another 1000px by 1000px webpage.
I reckon the clever little bugger has struck gold again with this idea by giving visitors an incentive to click the ads now the outgoing traffic should be greatly increased in comparison with the Million Dollar Homepage.
The only downside I can see for advertisers is again getting lost in the chaos, I’m sure those that invest a great deal of money and purchase large chunks of virtual real estate will see that investment pay off as users are in my opinion more likely to click to win on the larger more obvious ads. Lastminute.com seem to share my view as they have beaten the rush and dropped a packet on ten thousand pixels in the centre near the top of the page.
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Activating my card.
I finally got around to activating my new credit card this morning that I had received a few weeks ago.
I put it off as I really do hate these phone calls and I’ve done it quite a few times in the past as I transfer balances around to new cards in order to take advantage of the 0% balance transfer rates.
It is a good security procedure but more and more the card companies are using it as an opportunity to flog their overpriced payment protection policies. So sure enough having sat there on hold for five minutes waiting until they could connect me to an operator I was then told it would take five minutes to activate my card.
Like hell does it!
It takes a fraction of a second to activate the card and then five minutes of sales pitch.
BBC News: Musical copyright terms ‘to stay’
See also ReleaseTheMusic.org
The Guardian reports: Police want power to crack down on offensive demo chants and slogans
Present curbs are too light, Met chief to tell Goldsmith
This seems like nothing more than a power grab and an appeal to the right wing members sections of Britain that are incensed by these uppity sandal-wearing Lefties and Muslim types voicing their displeasure about various things.
The country’s biggest force, the Metropolitan police, is to lobby the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, because officers believe that large sections of the population have become increasingly politicised, and there is a growing sense that the current restrictions on demonstrations are too light.
It seems to me that Tony Blair’s government has recently freaked out about something which has been going on for quite a few years and that is issue politics. The populace seem generally apathetic about the political parties but a number are passionate about singular political issues be it marching in opposition to the Hunting Bill or demonstrating against the Iraq war etc. Also there has been a rise in political views being expressed online as the number of fora has increased where such views can be aired.
I think that they have freaked out because virtually all these views being expressed are anti-government. You’d be hard pressed to find any Joe Public commenter expressing a pro-Iraq opinion for example.
Most worrying is the following bit of it.
The police want powers to tackle a “grey area” in the array of public order laws. At present, causing offence by itself is not a criminal offence.
Causing offence is not a criminal offence and it never bloody well should be.
He talks about respecting freedom of speech.
We also need to think more laterally around how we police public demonstrations where ‘offence’ could be caused, while still respecting the British position around freedom of speech.
But this sounds like just a piece of management speak that means nothing.
But then I’m part of the problem not the solution aren’t I.