...fight!

/
Copenhagen climate conference: ocean acidification could leave one billion hungry
More than one billion people could suffer food shortages because of ocean acidification unless climate change is tackled, Hilary Benn has warned.
Prepare for the tidal wave of 'ocean acidification' bores. But surely the ocean is going to be covered in a film of oil isn't it? That was the fashionable scare story a few years ago. Which is it then? Oil or acidification? There's only one way to find out...

Just shoot the scumbags

/
Family man who fought off armed thugs after they took his family hostage is jailed

I've said it many times. If you are going to tackle a nasty armed intruder you've got to go the whole hog- and then bury the body somewhere. You do NOT hit him over the head and then call the police. Armed, masked men breaking into my house with the intention of robbing - or worse - and you think I'm going to worry about using "reasonable force" or try and work out, Belgrano style, whether they are actually running away and are no longer a threat? The intruder had FIFTY previous convictions. FIFTY! And that is just the number of convictions, not the total number of crimes committed which may have run into the hundreds. Why was this low-life even out on the streets?

Now, because these scumbags decided to break into a house, tie up the occupants and try and rob them, a decent, hard working, law-abiding citizen has been sent to prison for two and a half years because, according to the judge,  what he did might lead to a situation where the -  "rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.' 

Is that the 'civilised' society where violent, armed, masked men with criminal records as long as your arm invade your home and try to rob you. Civilised? Stuff it!

Hey! Commission a report

/
Theft inquiry launched as NHS seen as 'easy target'
The NHS has launched an investigation into thefts, amid reports criminals see the service as an "easy target". Among the items snatched have been ambulance satellite navigation systems, patients' belongings and hospital equipment and laptops.
An easy target? Tell me something I don't know. In fact, tell me something I didn't know 35 years ago.
The NHS Security Management Service believes the health service is vulnerable because large parts of its estate have to be open to the public. It wants to see if extra measures need to be put in place to improve security.
Mmmm, let me think about that, for a nanosecond... YES, you idiots, of course they do! Jeez.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

/
Psychiatry's civil war
When doctors disagree with each other, they usually couch their
criticisms in careful, measured language. In the past few months,
however, open conflict has broken out among the upper echelons of US
psychiatry. The focus of discord is a volume called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM,
which psychiatrists turn to when diagnosing the distressed individuals
who turn up at their offices seeking help. Regularly referred to as the
profession's bible, the DSM is in the midst of a major rewrite, and feelings are running high...

The wording used in the DSM has a significance that goes far beyond questions of semantics. The diagnoses it enshrines affect what treatments people receive, and whether health insurers will fund them. They can also exacerbate social stigmas and may even be used to deem an individual such a grave danger to society that they are locked up.
Some of the most acrimonious arguments stem from worries about the pharmaceutical industry's influence over psychiatry. This has led to the spotlight being turned on the financial ties of those in charge of revising the manual, and has made any diagnostic changes that could expand the use of drugs especially controversial...

The accumulated evil of the whole

/
War crime case against Tony Blair is now rock-solid
Tony Blair's extraordinary admission on Sunday to the BBC's Fern Britton - that he would have gone to war to topple Saddam Hussein regardless of the issue of Iraq's alleged WMDs - is sure to give fresh impetus to moves to prosecute our former prime minister for war crimes.

The case against Blair, strong enough before this latest comment, now appears rock solid. Going to war to change another country's regime is prohibited by international law, while the Nuremburg judgment of 1946 laid down that "to initiate a war of aggression", as Blair and Bush clearly did against Iraq, "is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". Blair's admission, that he "would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam]" regardless of the WMD issue, is also an acknowledgement that he lied to the House of Commons on February 25, 2003, when he told MPs: "I detest his [Saddam's] regime. But even now he [Saddam] can save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully. I do not want war... But disarmament peacefully can only happen with Saddam's active co-operation."

The view that Blair is a war criminal is now mainstream: when comedian Sandi Toksvig, host of Radio Four's News Quiz, called him one on air, the BBC...did not receive a single complaint.
Let's not forget the bookkeeper. Brown was up to his wonky eyeball in this too.

Tongues are loosening

/
Intoxicated by power, Blair tricked us into war
The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister’s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas...

Ominously for the former Prime Minister, his growing distance from power appears to be loosening some well-placed Whitehall tongues. It seems that the contempt felt by some mandarins for his fancier footwork around the weapons of mass destruction is finally showing in a belated settling of scores. Discretion is fading like toothache and the feast of revenge is as tempting as it is cold.

I love AA Gill. End of story.

/
AA Gill reviews Aqua Nueva
The menu is a promise of fiddliness and front-teeth chewing. I started with an egg yolk in jelly; it was like a big wine gum of pus, only not that nice. It was cheek-puffingly foul. Roast foie gras with a mango confit, herb salad, melon and black-tea sauce was edible, but not pleasurable. The Iberico ham was good — it’s always good. It’s not always £18 a plate. Spanish ham sets a palatine bar that exposes the flat-footed pygmy grub of Iberia. These combined dishes had a weird taste of torture and fashion diets. It’s a style of rigidly unrelaxed, thoughtless modernism that has grabbed Spanish food by the cojones. The best thing we could do is not eat any of it for a couple of years, until they get over themselves. And it’s expensive, very expensive. You don’t need to know exactly how expensive, ’cos you’re not going. You can’t park. And the lavatories are gender-confusing.

David Milliband is a cunt

/
Binyam Mohamed case: David Miliband steps up bid to hide proof of torture
Efforts will be stepped up tomorrow to suppress evidence of British involvement in the unlawful treatment of a UK resident, Binyam Mohamed, who says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco, and Afghanistan before being secretly rendered to Guantánamo Bay. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, is appealing against six high court judgments ruling that CIA information on Mohamed's treatment, and what MI5 and MI6 knew about it, must be disclosed.