Gorgeous George and Bradford West

Fair play to George Galloway, he managed quite the upset with his win at the Bradford West by-election. I do find it interesting that he no longer wishes to represent a London constituency. What's wrong, George, did your stint as Bethnal Green MP prove unfortunately revealing to the local populace?

Inspector Gadget, with whom I do not always agree but whose opinion should be considered, has an interesting position that GG's election should warn people away from elected police commissioners. I'm not sure that I agree with his conclusions, but put forward his argument for consideration:

Before the last general election, I raised the issue of extremist PCCs personally with an influential Conservative politician. He informed me that it didn’t really matter because the PCC has no real power over operational policing. I wondered what the point of them is if this is true. The fact remains that they can 'hold the police accountable' and 'dismiss a Chief Constable'.

I'm reminded of the maxim in the financial markets that "if the market can move freely, it can move stupidly". That's not necessarily an argument against having either a market or an elected PCC, but the point deserves thought.

The Principality of Sealand

ArsTechnica publishes fascinating summary of an attempt to make and run a data haven in the smallest area to lay claim to nation status - the Principality of Sealand, just off the coast of the UK.

The article puts its finger on the nub of the difficulties with "independent" micro-nations:

Even if Sealand were "officially" its own country, independence isn't worth much without allies. Any nation with warplanes — no, make that any nation with an inflatable boat and an outboard motor — could blow the place up. The only thing stopping it would be the United Kingdom's displeasure at explosions in its territorial waters. Any protection offered by Sealand's larger neighbor, however, would presumably come with enough strings attached to raise the question of why the servers should be on Sealand rather than onshore.

For fans of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon it's instructive to see how hard it is in practice to implement a data haven and deal with the inconvenient logistics, security and political considerations imposed by nearby nations who have a strong interest in preventing the haven from operating.

Government: shooting itself in the foot

The Government is worried about fuel shortages with the planned tanker driver strikes, so what does it do? It It tells motorists to plan for fuel shortages:

The Government is considering stockpiling fuel, with emergency services having a priority on supplies. No 10 said motorists and companies should also be planning for the pumps to run dry.

Motorists respond as anyone could have foreseen:

Motorists started to panic-buy fuel yesterday as Government officials warned them to prepare for a rolling national strike by militant tanker drivers.

(facepalm)

The canonical Daily Mail food article

The story of Sara Agintas and her weight gain is truly wonderous to behold.

• Unemployed layabout: check
• Parent of many children by several fathers: check
• Overweight: check, check, check
• Drinking to excess: check ("it's fine to drink 50 units per week while pregnant, I just dilute it with ice")
• Housed at taxpayer expense: check
• Bonus marks for falling through the stairs of her house and requiring the council to reinforce them
• Spending huge amounts of benefit money on food: check
• Teenaged mom: check (first pregnant at 17)
• Demands large amounts of taxpayer money for medical treatment: check

'I can’t afford a personal trainer or weight-loss surgery – I need help from the taxpayer. I know it's my fault I'm fat, but my pregnancy cravings meant I couldn’t stop eating,' she told Closer.
Read the full interview in this week's Closer magazine on sale now

News article trailing a magazine feature: check.

There's no direct link to rising house prices, to be fair, so I think it's still just possible for another Daily Mail article to top this; however, it will be hard to beat.

Looking at the photo in the article, I can't help but feel sorry for that sofa.

Segregation, shmegragation

It's starting to look a little dark for Jon Corzine as the investigation into the collapse of MF Global implicates him directly in sending money from segregated client accounts into brokerage accounts.

For those readers wondering "is this a big deal?" I can answer:

Yes. It's a big deal. It's a multiple-years-in-the-slammer deal.

It seems as if reality is finally catching up with Corzine.

Somebody should Sioux

Dana Lone Hill, who may or not be a Sioux by blood is complaining in Comment is Free about the University of North Dakota's football team being called the 'Fighting Sioux'.

Apparently some of the local Sioux tribes don't mind, but this doesn't cut it as far as Dana is concerned:

The University of North Dakota has been fighting via lawsuits and legislative action to keep its nickname even though only one of the two Sioux tribes in North Dakota have granted approval, and there are nine other Sioux governments throughout North and South Dakota.

Well, 50% of the tribes isn't bad going. I'm not sure about the distinction between tribes and governments, but find it telling that Dana doesn't seem to elucidate.

This isn't one of the stories where I'd expect the CiF commenters to be unsympathetic, but they surprised me this time: oozaveared gave a counter-example:

University of Notre Dame are the Fighting Irish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_Fighting_Irish
They don't think people take that to be that they are warlike savages. How come you do?

Perhaps Dana thinks the Irish should have a referendum on allowing Notre Dame to use the name and the leprechaun caricature?

I did enjoy Florence5's comment:

Precisely! Maybe the University of North Dakota should rename their team to the English Chavs With Poor Dental Hygeine, you know, playing on the negative stereotypes people have of the English? What? I hear you howl? That's not fair, not all English are like that, in fact, it's a very unfair stereotype etc etc. See?

Actually I'd be all in favour, though the cheerleaders would have to tweak their rally cries: "2! 4! 6! 8! Are we bovvered?"

While not wanting to judge by appearances, Dana's photo for CiF doesn't exactly give the impression of someone wanting to see both sides of the story. She has a book coming out, apparently. I expect it will be quite the rattling read.

Blog of the day: Minimum Knife Pricing

Over at Mr. Wadsworth's, a wonderful spoof on minimum knife pricing:

Ministers say the proposal would not affect responsible restaurants or diners. But they predict that it could significantly change the behaviour of those who cause the most problems for hospitals and the police, by making it more expensive to stab somebody.

Go read the whole thing.

GS on a muppet hunt

Sure enough, following Greg Smith's very public resignation last week, it seems that Goldman Sachs is trying to contain the damage by hunting for emails that mention 'muppet'.

Well, I suppose their IT and Compliance teams don't have anything better to do...

In fact, it's probably not a bad idea; better that they have found, disciplined and perhaps fired the people concerned before a Congressional / Senate / AG investigation does it for them. If they're quick, they might be able to fit it into the current round of redundancies.

Bullet-proof vests only get you so far

It seems that the French RAID have managed to prevent a long and tedious trial and confinement of the demented Mohammed Merah. Possibly the best result all around, except perhaps for M'sieur Merah. Props to the RAID sniper who managed the shot at what must have been at best a fleeting target, given that Merah was climbing out of the window.

If any of Merah's compatriots are thinking about organising something similar, might I recommend some form of large and sturdy hat. It probably won't stop a high-velocity jacketed round, but might keep most of the bits more or less together for later return to the skull post-mortem.

[I didn't realise until now that the French National Police had their own special forces units (RAID within Paris, GIPN outside) in addition to the Gendamerie's better-known GIGN. Live and learn. Or not, in the case of Merah.]

The USPS wants to send more junk mail

The US Postal Service, possibly most famous for the character of Newman in Seinfeld, is imploring businesses to use them to send more junk mail because they just don't send enough as it is.

Uh-huh.

I've seen what a typical American mailbox looks like. Sorting out actual mail from the various flyers, "news/offers" pamphlets, catalogs and miscellaneous tree-destroying crap requires dexterity and the patience of Job. I particularly liked the way they'd wrap real mail in the offers mini-newspapers so that you had to work through the whole thing before throwing it away, lest your cable or power bill end up in the recycling bin.

If this appeal bears fruit, I confidently expect US citizens to start leaving mousetraps, poisonous spiders and Claymore mines in their mailboxes. If the USPS wants to address its ballooning deficit, it needs to do something about its pension promises. Alienating its customers is not going to help, whatever it might think.