The great thing about shamelessness is that in an amnesiac culture, it works.

[Tony] Benn I have run into only once, early in his career, when by a misunderstanding he arrived on my doorstep expected but not heralded by any name. The door was one of those with a glass panel affording a preview of the caller. At the first sight of the present arrival the thought flashed into my mind, 'Who is this English cunt?' The distinguishing adjective is important. There are Scottish cunts, there are even Welsh cunts, and God knows there are American cunts, but the one in question could have come from nowhere else but this green and pleasant land. Something about the set of the lips.

Other guests arrived at the same time and my silent question went unanswered for the moment. I offered drinks. Someone asked for a gin and tonic. I turned to the cunt. 'Same for you?' He reacted much as if I had said, 'Glass of baby's blood? It 's extra good today,' and somehow in that moment I knew him, recognised him from television. He settled for bitter lemon, 'with plenty of ice, ' he added firmly. (I once heard him say unequivocally, also on television, that his sole interest in life was and had always been politics, which to my mind should debar anybody from standing for Parliament. Even Ted Heath has his yacht and his choirs).

Iraq’s security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless.

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.[...]

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.” [...]

Aqeel al-Turaihi, the inspector general for the Ministry of the Interior, reported that the ministry bought 800 of the devices from a company called ATSC (UK) Ltd. for $32 million in 2008, and an unspecified larger quantity for $53 million. Mr. Turaihi said Iraqi officials paid up to $60,000 apiece, when the wands could be purchased for as little as $18,500. He said he had begun an investigation into the no-bid contracts with ATSC. Jim McCormick, the head of ATSC, based in London, did not return calls for comment. [...]

Last year, the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization seeking to debunk claims of the paranormal, publicly offered ATSC $1 million if it could pass a scientific test proving that the device could detect explosives. Mr. Randi said no one from the company had taken up the offer.

ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.

We will also introduce a new law, in the form of a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill, to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament.

This is not about Westminster striking down individual items of EU legislation.

It is about an assurance that the final word on our laws is here in Britain.

"Some public comments on the decision of the Court of Justice, affirming the jurisdiction of the courts of member states to override national legislation if necessary to enable interim relief to be granted in protection of rights under Community law, have suggested that this was a novel and dangerous invasion by a Community institution of the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament.

But such comments are based on a misconception. If the supremacy within the European Community of Community law over the national law of member states was not always inherent in the EEC Treaty it was certainly well established in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice long before the United Kingdom joined the Community. Thus whatever limitation of its sovereignty Parliament accepted when it enacted the European Communities Act 1972 was entirely voluntary. Under the terms of the 1972 Act it has always been clear that it was the duty of a United Kingdom court, when delivering final judgment, to override any rule of national law found to be in conflict with any directly enforceable rule of Community law. [...]

Thus there is nothing in any way novel in according supremacy to rules of Community law in those areas to which they apply"

- Lord Bridge of Harwich, R v Secretary of State for Transport ex parte Factortame Ltd [1991] 1 AC 603, 658

http://mreugenides.mofuse.mobi/

No surprise, this:

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators?

This paper (PDF) seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line.

The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

A wide-scale revolt by spouses of MPs may force the watering down of proposals to ban parliamentarians from employing family members.

One possible solution is to ban new MPs from employing family members but to permit existing employment arrangements to continue – the same policy as adopted by the European Parliament after this year’s elections in June.

A controversial Tory MP at the centre of the expenses scandal has put a second daughter on the public payroll. Nadine Dorries has handed just-graduated Jennifer an estimated £28,000-a-year taxpayer-funded job in her Commons office – weeks after complaining that the girl couldn’t find work.

MPs will be banned from employing family members under reforms following the expenses scandal. But Dorries, forced to apologise after revelations about her expenses, took on 22-year-old Jennifer before the new rules came in.

Eldest daughter Philippa, 24, has also previously worked for the Mid-Bedfordshire MP.

In July, Dorries – nicknamed Mad Nad even by fellow Tories – stood up in the Commons to bleat that Jennifer had completed her degree but faced being jobless.

The mother-of-three said: “My daughter graduated today, but she is facing a grim future. Although she will not find employment, the interest on her student loan and those of all her fellow graduates will be racking up while they try to find work. We have known for the past year that she would graduate and probably not find employment.”

But then the 52-year-old installed Bournemouth University graduate Jennifer as full-time maternity cover for her House of Commons PA.

Mr Wilshire... was forced to resign after paying more than £100,000 in expenses to his own company... The Tory MP used his office expenses to write to all his constituents defending his claims and attacking The Daily Telegraph.

Voters in his Spelthorne constituency were surprised to receive a two-page letter, written on Commons notepaper and sent using taxpayer-funded pre-paid envelopes, in which he said that he was “devastated” at having to stand down. [...]

Mr Wilshire wrote: “The witch hunt against MPs in general will undermine democracy. It will weaken parliament - handing yet more power to governments. Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers.”

* “Prolonged skin contact may defat and dry skin leading to possible irritation and dermatitis. Eye contact may cause smarting and irritation.”
* “If contact of any material with the eye occurs, irrigate the area affected thoroughly with cold water.”
* "Skin contact: wash affected area thoroughly with cold water.”
* “If confined to the mouth, do not swallow; wash out the mouth with water… If swallowed, drink plenty of water and medical advice.”
* “Protective equipment is not normally necessary. Gloves should be worn where repeated or prolonged contact can occur. Avoid contact with eyes. Safety glasses should be worn”.

People are finally getting pandemic flu vaccine, and serious amounts of the stuff will be rolling off production lines in coming weeks. The handful of countries that will get some are launching one of the most ambitious mass vaccination programmes since Salk defeated polio.

And I hereby predict that all pseudo-scientific hell is about to break loose.

Why? People get ill all the time for various reasons. Some even die - it happens. Inevitably there will be some people who do this just after being vaccinated. This is especially likely as among the first people to get the vaccine will be some who are already in a delicate condition, and at greater risk of having a severe or lethal case of this flu: diabetics, asthmatics, the very young, the pregnant.

The anti-vaccine brigade will jump on those cases and flog them for all they are worth as "proof" that vaccines are lethal/poisonous/a plot by some government or industry to achieve world domination. Count on it. And the rampant misinformation that is already, tragically, deterring even people who should know better from getting this vaccine will get worse.

It's quite scary to realise that I have now been pumping out this horseshit for exactly four years today. In that time just about everything has got worse, including the quality control on this blog. My fury at the idiocy and malevolence around us has barely abated, though, and the rage continues to enmisten my eyes.

Anyway, thanks are due to you, the long-suffering reader, for sticking around this long, even if only in the Micawberish hope that something would turn up. Let's hope that in another four years the Tories have solved all the country's problems and the rage is finally spent. Something tells me not to hold my breath...

Obama's boys-only basketball games are an example of the unconscious discrimination that works against women

When Barack Obama held an office basketball game and invited only male employees to participate, it sparked anger, simply because it looked so familiar.

It's tempting to view Hoopgate as essentially silly

Police say guilt was written all over their faces.

Police received a call Friday night that two men with hooded sweatshirts and painted faces had tried to break into a man's home in Carroll, Iowa.

When police stopped a vehicle matching the caller's description blocks away, they were stunned by the men's disguises.

There were no ski masks or stockings pulled over their heads; instead, Matthew Allan McNelly, 23, and Joey Lee Miller, 20, streaked their faces with permanent black marker.

Carroll Police Chief Cayler told CNN the strange disguises made it easier for his officers.

"We're very skilled investigators and the black faces gave them right away"