Gagging for it

/
ITN - Minister's bid to silence coroners
The Government has launched a legal battle to stop coroners blaming the Ministry of Defence for the deaths of soldiers. Defence Secretary Des Browne asked the High Court to ban coroners using language that is strongly critical of the ministry in their verdicts. The Defence Secretary Des Browne asked the High Court to ban coroners using strongly critical language of the ministry in their verdicts.

The application came in a test case relating to Territorial Army soldier Private Jason Smith, 32, who died of heatstroke in southern Iraq. Oxfordshire's assistant deputy coroner, Andrew Walker, recorded that Pte Smith's death was "caused by a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty that he had in adjusting to the climate". The Defence Secretary's legal team said the coroner should not have used the words "serious failure" as it could be seen as deciding civil liability for the death - a breach of the rules governing inquests. But lawyers acting for the late soldier's mother Catherine Smith, from Roxburghshire, Scotland, said the legal challenge was "misconceived".

Search Me!

/
At last, after a bit of tweaking, the search facility on this site seems to be back working properly.

I don't really know why it was playing up but after restricting the search engine to check just the specific page types and modules I want to be able to search it now seems to be working well.

The search on Squarespace sites is bloody awesome, when it's working correctly and with well over 4,000 pages and no category links the only way to find anything is through the search facility. I've set it to date order rather than relevancy for now. I'm not sure how 'relevancy' really works. There is an 'advanced' option so it should be possible to find pretty well anything if it's here.

Getting that onstream and working again has cheered me up this morning. Have a lovely weekend everyone :)


How we change!

/
Threats to Israel are threats to us, says Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed solidarity with Israel in the face of threats to the Jewish state on Saturday, the eve of a three-day visit to the country, and said Iran must halt its nuclear program. "The threats to which the Israeli state is exposed are also threats to us," Merkel said in her weekly podcast. She said she would underline on the trip that "the Iranian nuclear program cannot continue and Iran must finally play to international rules."
Israel, however, can continue to ignore international rules and maintain it's huge nuclear weapons arsenal with impunity. You know, shoosh, the weapons they never admit to having.


History is bunk

/
Iraq: teachers told to rewrite history
Britain's biggest teachers' union has accused the Ministry of Defence of breaking the law over a lesson plan drawn up to teach pupils about the Iraq war. The National Union of Teachers claims it breaches the 1996 Education Act, which aims to ensure all political issues are treated in a balanced way.

Teachers will threaten to boycott military involvement in schools at the union's annual conference next weekend, claiming the lesson plan is a "propaganda" exercise and makes no mention of any civilian casualties as a result of the war.

They believe the instructions, designed for use during classroom discussions in general studies or personal, social and health education (PSE) lessons, are arguably an attempt to rewrite the history of the Iraq invasion just as the world prepares to mark its fifth anniversary.