Oh, the irony #527

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Posted on Ms Dorries's Blog
The news of the young girl’s death spread like wildfire via the medium of the internet and mobile phones. Each teenager’s thoughts were transferred into instant messages via the web, read, judged and responded to within seconds. Those who didn’t even know the young girl that well and weren’t in her friendship group, as my daughter wasn’t, comforted each other. Surely, this instant appraisal and response to spontaneous thought, works to create an artificial environment of communication.


You don't say

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Emails 'are the office timewaster'
Emails have gone from being a useful office tool to a curse that takes up huge amounts of work time, it was claimed yesterday. The average employee now spends an estimated 90 minutes to two hours a day wading through hundreds of messages, much of which is spam and junk mail.
Worldwide email traffic has hit 196 billion messages a day, according to the research firm the Radicati Group. It is predicted to reach 374 billion per day by 2011.
And yet I still notice people 'boasting' about just how many emails they have in their inbox. Still, if you make something effortless it's use is bound to increase. A single mouse click and your missive flies off to thousands of unsuspecting victims at a stroke. Progress? Bah!

Give that man a cigar!

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Reason Magazine - Cigar Bar


In 2003 President George W. Bush ordered the Department of Homeland Security to tighten enforcement of the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Now the Government Accountability Office  says the effort going into policing Cuban cigars might be reducing the security of the homeland. A report finds that Miami International Airport personnel are so occupied by seizing “small amounts of Cuban tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical products” that they have little time left to look for “terrorists, criminals, and inadmissible aliens.”

While only 3 percent of non-Cuban international arrivals are subjected to secondary inspections at the airport, 20 percent of Cuban arrivals wait in line to be searched again. The eight daily flights from Cuba demand most Homeland Security resources at the airport, one of the busiest in the nation.


I'll ponder on that while I'm puffing on my Romeo y Julieta Belicosos (available at Oddbins, two minutes walk away) later this evening.


All white on the (News)night**

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I haven't got much to say about this or the BBC 'White' season in general. I know some bloggers are dismissive - and for good reasons, to be fair - but even if it is just a load of cock it does lead to debate of some sort and I happen to think that's not a bad thing.

John Gaunt (Ooooh, get ya crucifix out) actually spoke pretty well for most of the time and in particular when he challenged Wark to justify having the 'knuckle dragging' Nick Griffin on the show. I'll give him credit for speaking out.

Make sure you take note of the undisguised smirks on the faces of the supercilious New-Labour groupie, Kirsty Wark and that gruesome, patronising Hodge woman - especially when Bob Crow first speaks. Oooh, I say, a working class accent, how amusing. Arseholes!



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**nods to Justin