England have made a fine start under new boss Steve McClaren with a comfortable win over Greece by four goals to nil.
The Chelsea player John Terry made an auspicious start to his tenure as England captain by scoring the opening goal.
BBC News reports that the police investigating an alleged bomb plot targeting UK to US flights have been given extra time to question 23 of the suspects.
The time police can hold 23 of the 24 suspects expired on Wednesday and a district judge had to decide whether to grant detectives an extension.
Warrants given to the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch allow them to question 21 people until 23 August.
Another two of those held can be detained until 21 August.
The maximum period that someone suspected of terrorist activity can be held without charge is now 28 days following the extension in the 2006 Terrorism Act.
This is the extension that the Home Office said was vital to the security of the country and it’s ability to counter the threat posed by international terrorism. The extension that was actually a compromise between the former period of 14 days and the 90 day period that the Home Office and police wanted.
Curiously the 28 days detention without charge part of the 2006 Terrorism Act was not commenced when the rest of the act was in April but was actually only commenced as of July 25th 2006.
Odd that the extension to the detention without charge period that was so vital to our security that the powers weren’t given to the police until just a few weeks ago.
McClaren picks inspirational Terry as captain
Steve McClaren admits he chose John Terry as the next England captain because of the inspirational qualities he has shown in leading Chelsea to two Premiership titles. “I’m certain I’ve got the right man in John Terry,” McClaren said yesterday. “I’m convinced he will prove to be one of the best captains England has ever had.”
McClaren favoured Terry over Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard, who was also strongly linked with the candidacy. Though both are captains at their respective clubs, there had been a fierce internal debate among McClaren’s closest confidants over who should be handed the responsibility at international level. In McClaren’s opinion the qualities Terry has shown at Stamford Bridge, where he has worn the captain’s armband since the age of 22, marked him out as being the most capable candidate.
Couldn’t agree more, I’ve been wishing John Terry to be the England Captain for quite a long while now.
In an addendum to my previous post about the UK Threat Level it’s good to see Home Secretary John Reid keep his tendency for hyperbole under check. Quoting from this BBC News report.
Home Secretary John Reid said the government was “confident” the ring leaders were in custody but it was not complacent.
He said had the plot been successful, it would have meant “loss of life on an unprecedented scale”.
I think the precedents of massive loss of life in our history are pretty fucking massive even if we only take a single incident rather than the wars or genocides of the last century the precedent of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima killing instantly about 80 000 people easily outweighs any possible loss of life if this latest terrorist plot had been successful.
At some point today unbeknownst to me the UK entered into the highest level of threat that of critical.
Oh my! How in the world could I have missed such an important event as the changing of our current threat level to its highest possible state? Whatever shall I do now?
That’s the pertinent question what shall we as the public do now? No one knows because there is nothing for the public to do other than get scared.
The Threat Level System has according to the Home Office website been created to keep the public informed about the level of threat to the UK from terrorism. But it’s of no practical use it’s like shouting DANGER in a crowded city centre street, it can do nothing but cause confusion and fear as there is no specific advice associated with each different level of threat.
So what event has caused the threat level to be raised?
It was the arrest of 24 people by police who were suspected of a plot against UK flights to the US. The police believe they have disrupted this plot to blow up these transatlantic flights and are convinced they have detained the key players, but believe the network involved is large and global.
The plot apparently was to smuggle liquid explosives onto around ten transatlantic flights in water bottles or similarly innocuous containers. Airlines have now taken the precaution of preventing people taking anything other than the most essential pieces of hand luggage onto flights leaving the UK. The police have said that the plotters could have caused “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.
Yes they could have blown up many airliners and killed hundreds of people but for the fact that the people involved had been under surveillance for some time. We shall have to wait and see when more information is released about how far along there really were with their plot whether they were a credible threat to our security. I do not want to get caught up in the politician’s gambit of who can imagine the worst scenario possible.
Security chiefs said the group believed to be planning the attack had been under surveillance for some time.
US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the plot was “in some respects suggestive of al-Qaeda”.
“They had accumulated and assembled the capabilities that they needed and they were in the final stages of planning for execution,” he said.
It had only become apparent in the “last two weeks” that the target of the flights was the US, said Mr Chertoff.
Another problem I see with having a public Threat Level System is that surely it tips the terrorists off to the fact that they might be under surveillance. If the level increases correspondingly as the terrorist group gets closer to the commission of their act of terrorism is that not an indication that the UK Security Services are onto them.
Mouldy bread
Originally uploaded by electricinca.
Go away for the weekend and I return home to find this in my bread bin. Damn and I was planning on having beans on toast.
I read at the weekend in Empire magazine that the production of the movie adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s classic graphic novel Watchmen is back on.
The producers clearly have a lot of respect for the material but they simply cannot have an understanding of why it works so well if they believe they can turn it into a movie.
I think it is basically unfilmable as it is impossible to capture the essence of it in any other form that that for which is was written.
They will no doubt be able to get the basic story on celluloid but what makes the comic so great will almost certainly be lost.
I was trying to explain it to my brother and it is basically that there are certain pieces in various different media that in transferring from one medium to another would lose their essence.
Un Chien Andalou for example could not possibly work as a short story.
The words of Zack Snyder director of 300 who has also been lined up to direct Watchmen give me some comfort.
I want to make this movie, it’ll be awesome to make it but I need to be convinced that it will be worth making, that we have respect for the thing. I’m going to wait and see right now – I’m the biggest sceptic!
But don’t read too much into that – the hope is to start filming next year, once the screenplay has been cracked. “I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me think that we’re any closer to it,” added Snyder. “Everyone says ‘I respect the source material’ but I think what Hollywood misses and what we need to think about is what is the book about? What does it mean? It’s easy to get caught up in the mechanics of the script and the mechanics of the movie.
I believe that it might be possible to make a wonderful adaptation of Watchmen but I have no idea how that can be accomplished and have no faith that anyone will be able accomplish it.
It would I believe require complete deconstruction of it and then for it to be utterly rebuilt from the ground up with the narrative techniques that are unique to comics replaced with some film making techniques.
Watchmen is an analysis of what it is to be a superhero but also a deconstruction of what comic books about superheroes are. Perhaps a movie version could be a deconstruction of superhero movies in some way. I’m still not convinced that we are going to get anything like that, this will probably be yet another awful adaptation of a Moore comic but there is a one in a million chance that it might be a movie masterpiece.
Tom Tomorrow has produced a really excellent page of This Modern World today.
The rest of it can be read here.
I think I want to be like ZenArcher when I grow up, saying that I probably don’t have a choice the way I’m going I almost certainly will end up like him.
He sits half naked pontificating about stuff and he makes a lot of sense like when he talks about YouTube and users free speech.