So screams the headlines on the BBC website and elsewhere. What actually happened is HBOS made an obscene profit of £848 million as opposed to the fucking obscene amount last time of £2.96 billion. So whilst the rest of us are struggling to pay our mortgages and bills, HBOS which help create the “credit squeeze” is still raking it in – at our expense of course.

Severn Trent supplies the best tap water in Britain according to a panel of food and drink experts, one describing the water as “a mountain stream of freshness”. Still Severn Trent does supply a vast area, from Derbyshire in the North to Gloucestershire in the South and includes parts of mid-Wales. I can’t help thinking the water supplied to the panellists came from mid-Wales I couldn’t describe what comes out of my taps as a mountain stream of freshness. Still I’d rather drink tap water than pay for overpriced eco-unfriendly bottled water, which to me tastes no better than tap water.

Source: The BBC.

It has taken the government ten years, but better late than never, employers are to be banned from using tips and service charges to “top up” staff pay to meet the minimum wage, under changes to come in force next year. At last we can be sure tips will go to employees and not the pockets of unscrupulous employers.

Source: BBC.

I’ve always been fascinated by George Orwell, so I’m looking forward to the Orwell Diaries which is to publish in blog Orwell’s diaries starting on 9 August 1938 in Morocco and ending in 1942 three years into the Second World War exactly 70 years after they were written.

Hat Tip: BBC.

The Boston Phoenix’s interactive feature 50 States selects the newspapers best, band, solo artist and current act for every US state, the last selection being the best highlighting music you might well be unaware of.

Hat Tip: Very Short List.

My opinion on Nuclear Power oscillates between ambiguous and anti, reading Greenpeace’s Nuclear Reaction, tips me into the anti-camp. In Greenpeace’s words.

Nuclear Reaction, Greenpeace’s latest blog, records for history the meltdown of that most over-rated, over-subsidised and over-confident of industries, the nuclear industry.

The nuclear industry is always running late, is extremely high maintenance, constantly stealing from your wallet, and very likely to be ruining your life for years to come. If it was your boyfriend or girlfriend you’d have changed your name and fled to another country years ago.

So, want to hear about the nuclear reactor built in an earthquake zone? Or the one built with watery concrete? Or how taxpayers across the world will be financially (not to mention physically) liable in the event of a nuclear accident? What about how, if we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by just five percent with nuclear power, we need to be building a new reactor every week until 2030?
Want to meet the politicians, denialists and apologists with the 10,000-year radioactive legacies? See through their false promises and false hopes? Maybe find out how easy it is to build a “quick and dirty” reprocessing plant capable of turning black market nuclear waste into a bomb’s worth of plutonium every day?

Then join us. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wish we were making it up.

Hat Tip: Chicken Yogurt.

How bad can it get? After the Glasgow East result it appears a Tory Government in 2010, and it doesn’t get worse than that.

The Glasgow East result

John Mason, SNP – 11,277
Margaret Curran, Labour – 10,912
Davena Rankin, Conservative – 1,639
Ian Robertson, Lib Dem – 915
Frances Curran, Scottish Socialist Party – 555
Tricia McLeish, Solidarity – 512
Dr Eileen Duke, Scottish Greens – 232
Chris Creighton, Independent – 67
Hamish Howitt, Freedom 4 Choice – 65

Turnout 42.25%

Glasgow East was Labour’s 25th largest majority, if they can’t hold that, what can they hold? The outlook for Labour is being compared to 1931 when Labour was reduced to 52 seats; it was not until after the war in 1945 that Labour’s fortunes recovered. I feel very gloomy about the future and fear decades of Tory rule. Without Scotland returning a significant number of Labour MPs to Westminster it is difficult to see anything other than Tory rule, English shires will never return Labour MPs in enough numbers to give Labour a realistic chance of victory.

Source: BBC.

Business Secretary John Hutton said.

Nuclear power is an essential part of our future energy mix. And, alongside a 10-fold increase in renewables and investment in clean coal technology, it will help wean us off our dependency on oil and protect us against the politicisation of energy supplies.

Justin McKeating at Chicken Yogurt reckons that’s bollocks, he rightly points out that the UK isn’t self sufficient in uranium, which means we’ll have to import Uranium and although the top producers are Canada and Australia, they are closely followed by Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, increasingly Russia, Namibia, and Niger not pleasant nor stable countries to deal with and as everybody seems to want a nuclear power station you can be assured we’ll quickly be relying on some right bastards for our supplies.

A Norfolk head teacher has said there have been no exclusions from his school since he started rewarding pupils with chocolate for good behavior.

Now there is the expected criticism over contributing to obesity and dental problems, however you cannot deny its success.

Still, you have to wonder what the School Food Trust has in mind with its suggestion that it would be better to use healthy food as a reward. We could argue the reasons behind chocolate’s popularity, probably pointing a big finger at advertising but the reality is there is no way on earth pupils are going to consider healthy foods a reward.

Source: The BBC.

With all the news coverage in recent weeks the latest British Crime survey is a timely reminder that our risk of being a victim of crime has fallen from 24 to 22%, the lowest level recorded since the survey began in 1981.

Unfortunately, 65% of people said they thought rates had gone up nationally. But the same proportion again thought crime had fallen locally.

The overall picture from the survey was that crime was down 10% to 10.1 million crimes.

Still if the new is good, then let us find something bad, The Guardian for instance speculates crime rates expected to soar as economic difficulties deepen, is it any surprise that people think crime has gone up.

Source: BBC.