The state of Nebraska passed a law recently that allowed desperate parents to abandon their newborn babies at drop-off points in the state’s hospitals, the idea being that the parent wouldn’t face prosecution and the babies would be cared for.
All 50 American states have similar laws; since Texas kicked off the project in 1999, more [...]
So we must break from the short termism of the past – the economic instability that has characterised the British economy not just in recent years but for most of the century. That is why I want British economic success to be built on the solid rock of prudent and consistent economic management, not the [...]
£500,000,000,000 / 60,000,000 = £8,333.33
Once we have bailed the banks out and subbed them so they can meet their short term liabilities, they will be able to get back to their usual work of driving genuine wealth-creating businesses and hard-working people into bankruptcy because they are unable to meet their short term liabilities. These people are very possibly going [...]
A food crisis is highly likely in the UK, with price and availability becoming issues that swing the outcome of future elections, according to a report from the thinktank Chatham House. Grauniad
Following on from Gordon Brown’s sudden insight that we had “fuel security” problems, now someone has noticed that we also have a “food security” [...]
How will we cope in a world that can no longer rely on cheap and plentiful supplies of the one commodity – oil – that keeps it going? Guests: Matthew Simmons, CEO, Energy Investment bank Simmons & Co. Richard Heinberg, Senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute John Hemming MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary group [...]
Just been at www.scotland.gov.uk, “website of the Scottish Government”, and at www.wales.gov.uk, where there are in fact two web sites - “National Assembly for Wales website” www.assemblywales.org and, oddly, the Welsh Assembly Government website at new.wales.gov.uk (why ‘new’?).
Then I went to www.england.gov.uk. Nope, nothing doing. No Government for the English. How will we cope?
If you had purchased £1,000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95,
With HBOS, earlier this week your £1,000 of shares would have been worth £16.50,
£1,000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5,
If you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, [...]
The security services planned the arrest of the journalist with painstaking care. They bugged her contacts and assembled an elite squad to take her down. On 8 May 2007, eight detectives swarmed into her home and seized her address book, mobile, laptops and bank statements. In a simultaneous raid, a second team searched her newspaper [...]
Not my usual reading, but these two articles by Peter Osborne in the Daily Mail caught my attention:-
Apocalypse Now?: New world order could have devastating implications for Western nations …. “The British economy is in the same position as the Texan coast earlier this month as Hurricane Ike approached — apparently calm, with life going [...]
I think a rainbow has to count as amazing, but so too do thunder clouds and lightning. I used to live in Stuttgart, my flat was high up on one of the hills overlooking the city and I have a vivid memory of watching a dramatic thunder storm pass over the city, lightning striking down [...]
Maybe it is just me… Jax doesn’t think it is at all odd, anyway.
Crookes Radiometer Never have quite “got” this improbable little thing. Pretty though, I used to have one on my bedroom windowsill when I was at school, used to go mad in direct sunlight.
Newton’s Cradle No matter how often I see one of these, they still fascinate me.
They really, really don’t get it.
One of the crassest and most totally idiotic examples of mindless web design that I have ever seen.
http://www.co-op.ac.uk/
A man who chose “Lloyds is pants” as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to “no it’s not” BBC
I have just got back from watching the Tinsley Towers, the two large cooling towers by the side of the elevated section of the M1 in Sheffield, being demolished.
Tinsley Towers 3am
No Tinsley Towers 3:01am
The first time I have been to see a demolition. Quite extraordinary.
I was just looking through the Beans Flickr. I found a picture of a woman tied to a dog.
Caption Submissions in a comments box please
A couple of posts elsewhere have made me think of some things which I missed, when I had the chance - that is to say, places I didn’t visit, things I didn’t do, when I lived right next to them.
These include:
Living 4 miles from Sutton Hoo and never going to see it.
Living right next to [...]
Jax: “Small, I can’t look up the shop online, not all shops are online.”
Just wonder when the first parent had to explain that.