Monthly Archives: September 2009

Criminal Record Check

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Anyone who wants to work with children, including those who regularly transport children to sports matches, will soon have to be vetted for a criminal record. BBC.

Listen to this Radio 4 interview it’s a typical example of what you hear on the Today Program – this like many others is a waste of five minutes of my life – I was interested in what John O’Brien the civil servant who will run the Criminal Record Check scheme has to say. Instead we got John Humphrys pressing points that no-one but a pedagogue could be interested in – like this check means the government believes we are all guilty or the fact it’s of whether it’s the state or an independent body – no they’re the state too – deciding who’s can work with children.

Look – the fact is that paedophiles will do anything to gain contact and trust with children – that’s a fact – now whether these checks will work is a moot point and a question that wasn’t answered in this interview.

When is the BBC going to stop these pointless interviews and sack Humphrys and his ilk?

The Penurious Four

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The Phoenix four - John Towers, Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Tower

The Phoenix four - John Towers, Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Tower

A report into the collapse of carmaker MG Rover will say that five executives took £42m in pay and pensions from the troubled firm.

Independent inspectors said the men behind the takeover and the executive they appointed enriched themselves as Rover headed for insolvency. BBC.

So the scum that ran the company burnt through a £427 million loan from BMW and over 6,500 jobs meanwhile they paid themselves an immoderate £42 million. Still it’s nice to know they haven’t broken any laws

The four executives in control of MG Rover, the so-called Phoenix Four, have always denied any wrongdoing.

According to the report by Gervase MacGregor of accountants BDO Stoy Hayward and Guy Newey QC, MG Rover chairman John Towers, ex-vice chairman Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Edwards received around £9m.

Their chief executive, Kevin Howe, is said to have taken £5.7m. BBC.

The workers shafted yet again by shameless bosses – nothing has changed.

Not So Long Ago We Castrated Gays

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Alan Turing

Alan Turing


Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the Second World War codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay.

Describing Turing’s treatment as “horrifying” and “utterly unfair”, Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. “We’re sorry, you deserved so much better,” Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.

Turing is most famous for his work in helping create the “bombe” that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines. He was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after admitting a sexual relationship with a man.

He was given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment”. His criminal record meant he was unable to continue his work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) because his security privileges were withdrawn. Two years later he killed himself, aged 41. Caroline Davies, The Guardian.

I’m not a fan of retrospective apologies by the Prime Minister – however if he is to issue them then in this case he shouldn’t limit himself to Turing but all convicted under the misapprehension that being homosexual was a mental illness. What on earth is chemical castration? No wonder Turing committed suicide,

Posted in Sex

Pigeon Faster Than Broadband

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A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles – in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. BBC.

If you haven’t twigged the test was carried out in South Africa – still as a colleague said it’s somehow a nice idea that the next time a customer complains he’s not received his files we send a pigeon instead.

Rob Peter to Pay Paul

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The temporary VAT cut should be ended immediately to pay for up to 800,000 young people to do work internships, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg says.

The government has reduced the VAT rate from 17.5% to 15% until the end of the year as part of its “fiscal stimulus”.

But Mr Clegg argues the money would be better used providing three-month internships for those aged 16 to 24 who are not in work, education or training. BBC.

Why is it that politicians of all persuasions want to reverse the VAT reduction? I guess it’s because they’ve no idea what it’s like to be poor – whilst to them a 2.5% reduction in VAT is nothing to those surviving on or below minimum wage it’s altogether another matter. VAT is an insidious regressive tax that should be abolished altogether and replaced by an equitable progressive tax.

Translate Words with Your Nintendo DSi

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Dictionary 6 in 1 with Camera Function is no ordinary dictionary; it transforms your Nintendo DSi into a unique language tool. Enter a word by hand, or simply snap a photo of it, to receive an instant translation. Nintendo.

Just take a photo of a word – sounds brilliant – still I wonder how well it works – we’ve only got a DS which hasn’t a camera so I can’t try it out – I’ve looked for some reviews but nothing doing yet.

Emilio Morenatti

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Emilio Morenatti won the 66th POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award – whilst his photos are visually stunning they’re all tinged with sadness.

A Pakistani child looks on as women covered with burqas from the tribal region of Bajur and Mohmand agency wait to be registered at the Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Jan. 30, 2009. More than 200,000 people have fled the fighting in Bajur and Mohmand agency to camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan

A Pakistani child looks on as women covered with burqas from the tribal region of Bajur and Mohmand agency wait to be registered at the Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Jan. 30, 2009. More than 200,000 people have fled the fighting in Bajur and Mohmand agency to camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Afghan Niurkhan, 11, stands next to his tent in Afshar refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan. Niurkhan who lost his parents two months ago during fighting between coalition forces and Taliban militants fled his village in Helmand province to seek shelter in the refugee camp in southern Kabul.

Afghan Niurkhan, 11, stands next to his tent in Afshar refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan. Niurkhan who lost his parents two months ago during fighting between coalition forces and Taliban militants fled his village in Helmand province to seek shelter in the refugee camp in southern Kabul.

An Afghan man carries a bundle of balloons as he walks along a street on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, June 27, 2008

An Afghan man carries a bundle of balloons as he walks along a street on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, June 27, 2008

See more at the Denver Post.

Hat Tip: Very Short List.

The Weird, Wonderful and Revolting

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Looking for something different for you next holiday?

The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloguing all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them. Atlas Obscura.

Still I don’t expect anyone in their right minds rushing to Downtown Hotel, Dawson City, Yukon, Canada to try their Sourtoe Cocktail.

Established in 1973, the Sourtoe Cocktail has become a Dawson City tradition. The original rules were that the toe must be placed in a beer glass full of champagne, and that the toe must touch the drinker’s lips during the consumption of the alcohol before he or she can claim to be a true Sourtoer. The rules have changed in the past twenty-seven years. The Sourtoe can be had with any drink now (even ones that aren’t alcoholic), but one rule remains the same. The drinker’s lips must touch the toe. “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow– But the lips have gotta touch the toe.”

The Sourtoes are actual human toes that have been dehydrated and preserved in salt. Swallowing one is not suggested. Sourtoe Cocktail Club.

There’s no mention of sourtoe in Dawson City’s Wikipedia entry – to be honest it’s probably and elaborate hoax and I’ve no intention of travelling to Dawson to check.

But then again you never know – here’s a YouTube Video

Fake or real? You’ll have to visit.

Hat Tip: Very Short List