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September 2010
Ryanair To Let Passengers Fly Planes? (Humour, satire)
News that in a cost cutting move budget airline Ryanair were considering abolishing the role of co - pilot and training cabin vrew to fly planes was greeted with disbelief. We wondered why, the travel industry has been hit hard by the recession and ruthless efficiency is necessary for survival. A Boggart Blog investigation revealed however that there may plans to go even further and let passengers fly planes.

Blair's Journey
(political comment).
Tony Blair's memoir of his political career, A Journey, is a must read for fans of another politician whose ambition and lust for power far outstrips his ability and experience. Solipsistic and self regarding, Tony Blair takes us through how he saved the Labour party and led it to power, how he charmed the traditionally conservative middle classes, how he spoke to the traditional Labour voters and earned their loyalty and support for his Thatcherite policies and how he saved British businness from economic catastrophe. Strangely he does not mention how he untimately betrayed all those groups.

Uptight - The Blood Donor Experience
(humour, satire)
Once upon a time giving blood was easy, the atmosphere relaxed and people were encouraged to feel as is they were doing something good and worthwhile. Now, acording to fatsally's latest experience, a visit to the blood bank to offer a life saving armful is like The Prisoner meets Orwell's Big Brother. Bureaucracy has taken over and nobody is allowed to fel relaxed. Rules are rules.

August 2010

2010-09-01
Hello Saillor
(humour, satire)

The chattering classes are up in arms about the news that Britain and France are to pool their resources and share aircraft carriers.
The Mail today carries an excellent ...

Court Victory For Anti - MMR Campaigners.(social comment)
It is the medical scandal that refuses to go away. Since its introduction controversy has surrounded the MMR vaccine because in a small number - and we must stress, a small number - of cases children develop serious and permanent side effects after reveiving the vaccine. Now at last, after following a tactic used successfully in the USA and keeping the word autism out of their case, lawyers working for the family of Robert Fletcher have won the first award of compensation for 'brain damage' reslting from the MMR vaccine.

Property Prices To Fall Again?(politics, society))
Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.

Food Will Cost The Earth(politics, society)
A bid by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton to buy Potash Corp of Canada draws attention to food price inflation, rising commodity prices in world markets and an impending global food supply crisis. It is not just potash, essential in food production, but other finite resources like oil that corporate giants are bidding to gain control of that should concern us. It's The Smell Of Alpha Males That Attracts Women(humour, satire)
Women Can't Resist The Smell Of Alpha Males according to new research reported in today's Daily Mail science section. (If you think DSaily Mail and science should never appear in the same sentence just read on, this is good stuff.)
Alpha males have a smell all of their own, one that triggers certain hormonal reactions in women, the research paper reports ...

Last Of The Summer Whine
The zombie of British television will finally be decapitated and laid to rest this weekend, thirty years after the show was pronounced dead by everybody under ninety. The final episode of this ‘national institution’ will be shown sometime over the weekend but I don’t know when ...

... Conflicting Views On The Economic Recovery Little Nicky Machiavelli writes: Nobody seems to know what is going on in the global economy. Take these two articles on the state of the recovery ...
read full post Conflicting Views On Economic Recovery

Cameron in Babygate Puzzle
The birth of a healthy child is always a happy event but the birth of a child to the wife of a serving national leader is bound to attract close scrutiny. So do certain contradictions in reporting of circumstances surrounding the birth of David and Samantha Cameron's daughter mean the conspiracy theorists will soon be at work?

Do We Need GM Salmon
US authorities today began the process to approve the first GM animal for human consumption.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a 60-day period of consultation and public meetings over whether to permit a GM strain of salmon to be eaten by humans, even though it has been called a "frankenfish" by critics. The approval process could take less than a year, and if it gets the green light the fish could be on the market in 18 months.
Environmentalists and scientists see the decision as marking a threshold. If it is approved it is likely to open the door to a large range of ...

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COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDED READING AROUND THE WEB

Will America Ever have Another Black President? During the 2008 political campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama called for a national discussion on race. Later, Attorney General Eric Holder called us a nation of cowards for not having such discussions: He said that that “certain subjects are off-limits and that to explore them risks at best embarrassment and at worst the questioning of one’s character.” So let’s try to honor these doubtless well-intended requests.
It’s entirely possible that President Obama has poisoned the well for at least a generation. It has nothing to do with the fact that he is black; it is because he is ...

America's Monetary Policy The White House is floating a new stimulus, though the Fed chief seemed to rule it out. But does he have any other tools?
Everyone was pretty glum about US GDP growth between March and June, when it was thought to be 2.4%. But due to the wonders of statistical revision, it now turns out that it was only 1.6%. Of course, those out of work do not care what the statistics say because they know exactly what the economy feels like to them now. All the same, these numbers are no doubt confirming people's fears that the dreaded second dip (of on-going depression) is on the way...

We Must Learn Morality From Each Other Not God
The latest outbreak of hostilities between atheists and believers rehearses the same old confusion about what God stands for

US Jobs Market Still Reeling
Markets eagerly awaiting the latest US non-farm payroll data today amid fears of a double dip recession in the world's largest economy. Fresh evidence of the stuttering nature of America's recovery from its deepest postwar recession will be provided by the labour department in Washington today when it reveals the latest figures for job creation in the world's biggest economy.
Stephen Hawking Can't Use Physics To Answer Why We're Here Eric Priest, The Gurdian
Stephen Hawking makes the claim that it is not necessary to invoke God as the creator of the universe and the assertion that physics alone made it. Obama Heading Down TheSame Road As Carter
This week’s historic Gallup poll will have sent a shiver through the White House at the end of a summer of discontent, and is yet another key indicator that President Obama is likely to end up a lame duck president following the mid-term elections in November. The latest Gallup poll shows the Republicans in pole… He may be correct in his first statement, but to rule out a possibly important role for God is in my view unjustified. It is certainly possible that God sets up and maintains or underpins the laws of physics and allows them to work, so that being able to explain the big bang in terms of physics is not inconsistent with there being a role for God. As a scientist, you are continually questioning, rarely coming up with a definitive answer. The limitations of your own knowledge and expertise together with the beauty and mystery of life and the universe often fill you with a sense of profound humility. Thus, unequivocal assertions are not part of a genuine scientific quest. Blair's Job Was Done By 1997 Says Simon Jenkins in an article claiming Blair's agenda was to kill Labour thinking and enshrine Thatcherite free market economics and social policy: Who said books are dead? Did he blog or tweet, video or iPad? No, Tony Blair wanted to get a message across, so he wrote a book. He smeared the black stuff on trees, stitched it together and made people go out to buy it. Good for him. Blair's mildly engaging stream of auto-eroticism shows him memoirising much as he ruled. He uses the first person singular a million times. He stages everything. He fixes on a theme and controls the narrative. The intention is to smother an Iraq apologia in endless quotables on Gordon Brown and his emotional idiocy and general hopelessness. It is cruel, but has worked a dream. Dumb Science Story Of The Week: Old People Forget Things
This week's bombshell from the world of science comes in a study of the behaviour of old people. One of the things the study looked as was the way old people repeat the same stories over and over. The scientists concluded this is because as people get older they become more inclined to forget things.

64% of Women Would Release A Sex Tape To Get Ahead
According to a survey of Generation Y users of the dating website Can Do Better, 64 percent of women would release a sex tape if it would help advance their careers.
The survey found that 45 percent of women also answered that they would sleep with their professor to pass a

Ageing Star Wallows In Steam Bath Not a celebrity sex scandal but an astronomy story as the Herschel telescope reveals a cosmic mystery that challenges existing ideas about the Universe

Hawking Says God Not Needed The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded. The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed. Crisis Boosts London's Dominance In Currency Trading
London, the world's leading centre for foreign exchange, increased its dominance of currency trading during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression The average daily turnover in the City this year was $1.85 trillion (£1.2 trillion) - or 37pc of global turnover, according to a three-year report into currency dealing by the Bank of International Settlements.
Around $4 trillion changed hands around the world every day in April, up from $3.3 trillion in April 2007. ..

Brown Was Maddening Says Blair

Main talking point in today's news is the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs of his time as Prime Minister. Everybody in politics has been eager to find out what Blair would say about his successor Gordon Brown and their relationship during the ten years Brown served as DChancellor while Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

William Hague Denies Relationship with a man

Is There A Need For HD Audio
We wrote some time ago on the marketing of HD TV as the latest 'must have.' and on the great internet scam which involves development in internet technologies putting pressure on users to constantly upgrade hardware and software.

Darwin's Secret Experiment Acenscion Island is a lush tropical paradise 1000 miles from Africa and 2000 from South America. According to the laws of nature it should be barren and so it would be had the orginator of evolutionary science Charles Darwin not begun a great experiment there, one that is still running almost 200 years later...

The Frogs Are Starting To Simmer In The Land Of The Free
Savez Vous Que Vous Parlez Tres Mal Francais
Philip Salter at the Adam Smith Institute laments the lack of French taught in schools, and attributes this to schools preferring that children take easier subjects that will reflect well in the league tables.
There may be an element of truth in this, in that French or German at ‘O’ level is on a par with mathematics – there is either a right or a wrong answer. ‘Religious Studies’ on the other hand, require that you ...

A Solution To Company Pensions Crisis
The latest dismal news about company pensions should not obscure the simple fact that if you want to be sure something is done properly you should do it yourself. Saving for retirement is no exception to this rule. If you rely on your employer or pension scheme managers to do the job for you, the…

Obama Caves To UN Over Arizona Immigration Law
There can be few sights more humiliating for the American people than that of a US president kowtowing to a foreign leader or to supranational institutions. Continental Europeans are used to this sort of thing after decades of dominance by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, and have grudgingly accepted over time the gradual and undemocratic erosion…

The BBC Pretended To Be Balanced On Climate Change
I have just been listening to Uncertain Climate, the first in BBC “Environment Analyst” Roger Harrabin’s two-part Radio 4 investigation into the politics of climate change. The announcer introduced it as a programme “on an unusual aspect of global warming that you won’t have heard in the news headlines”. This was touching, but would only… 31 August
Labour Leadership Soap Opera as Millibands Battle Each Other
As a major union hints that it may withdraw financial support for the party if either David Milliband or Ed Balls is elected as leader Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has criticised the "daily episodes" of the "soap opera" surrounding fellow contenders Ed and David Miliband.

House Owners In Negative Equity For Another Four Years
Homeowners who bought their houses at the top of the prtoperty boom could face face four more years of negative equity, a housing group said.
The National Housing Federation (NHF) said the average buyer in England paid £216,800 for a home in 2007. Those people may now have to wait until 2014 before prices recover enough to make their homes worth more than they paid the federation added.

Afghan Bomb Attack Kills Four US Soldiers A roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed four US soldiers, Nato sources revealed yesterday.AFP quoted spokesman James Judge as saying that a home-made bomb, one of the main weapons of the Taliban, was used in the attack.The attack comes a day after seven US soldiers were killed in two bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.These deaths add to the rising trend of casualties for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). June and July were the worst months for foreign troop deaths since the

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