Strangely Perfect

Heysel and Beyond Being justifiably upset by the events at the Heysel Stadium many years ago, the recent comments on a video I made about it … … on the 25th anniversary of the awful event made me recall some TV reporting of what was reputedly  to be a Juventus “fan” brandishing a gun on [...]

Healthcare Woes Lying sick in bed this morning listening to a Radio 5 phone-in about the “state” of our Accident & Emergency (A&E) healthcare system here in the UK, I was struck by the failure of the radio show’s producers to engender the expected flurry of tales of woe and poor service. Happy and Immaculate [...]

Students die in India as bus plunges into river The above headline is awful enough for the people involved, but in reality, it’s subject, a road crash, is common enough in my own country, the UK. What is really bad is how the BBC is reporting this.  They should know better but essentially, they’ve reported [...]

Much merriment is being made about the Spanish  presidency website being hacked and Mr Zapatero’s image being replaced by that of Mr Bean.  See Mr Bean replaces Spanish PM on EU presidency site However, the images also seem very similar to those of France’s President Sarkozy.  Are they all, in some way, related?

CIA Guilty of Torture and Kidnap – Damages of 1.5 Million Euros Amazing news today.  An Italian court has bravely taken on the leader of the Western World and convicted 22 CIA agents of kidnap and torture. (see CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap). The man on the left with the wacky beard and hat, [...]

This week, I’ve become aware of three excellent initiatives that are focussing people’s energies, creativity, and cash(!) into positive solutions to the global energy crisis.  It just shows what can be done – and these projects are not difficult or hard to creative creatures like ourselves. Big Mirrors in the Desert This is a $400billion [...]

RBS and Lloyds’ Banks Carve-Up Call me stupid if you like, but there’s something particularly disturbing about the ethics of the planned carve-up of the big two banks rescued last year by our taxes.  (see RBS and Lloyds in major shake-up for details) Normal Practice During Business Mergers If two companies merge or one buys [...]

In a weird co-incidence that I missed at the time, I’ve just found that the plans for the Auschwitz death camp were put on  display during my Austrian visit earlier this year.   This visit very soon prompted my outburst on the pontificating nutty bishop, Richard Williamson (see The Face of Evil from 20 Feb [...]

Remove Referrals Information from This Website because of Malware Like many blogs, this website has displayed the last few hits (referrals) that it’s received as a kind of ‘live’ activity recorder and a small service back to the referring website.  However, I’ve had to pull this from my front page because over the last few [...]

I saw the Tory leader, David Cameron’s speech yesterday and then later watched all the knowledgeable punditry give their opinions on such shows as “Question Time”, “Newsnight” and elsewhere. After it all, I was suddenly reminded about Obama’s meeting with Cameron in December last year (2008), when, after noticing Cameron’s desire to denigrate everything European [...]

How Bad was Thatcher’s Recession compared to the Current Economic Slump? Q. Well, how would you find out, exactly? A. Surprisingly easily.  This graph here compares historical economic slumps with the current one, on a month by month basis.  It’s taken from the “National Institute of Economic and Social Research” (NIESR) website here.  Notionally, it’s [...]

You’ve Got to Laugh Following the biggest financial meltdown in history over the last 2 years, the optimists are vociferously making themselves known and talking the economies of the world, up. However, the United Kingdom is not doing as well as Germany (and France), apparently.  The reason for this is that Germany’s profits have mainly [...]

Continuing on From…  What Killed Flight AF 447 Since the search for the ‘black boxes’ of Flight 447 was abandoned a few days ago (20th Aug 2009 – see news item),  only 3 days later, Nature’s On-line version has published reports of the jet things I was going on about in my first article about [...]

Introduction Professor Noel Sharkey from Sheffield, better known as one of the judges on the BBCTV show “Robot Wars” knows a thing or two about robots and artificial intelligence.  He’s made a plea for more debate about the use of robot planes in warfare. (see link) He’s said, “An international debate is needed on the [...]