I just voted for West Midlands creative networking blog Created In Birmingham as the Best UK Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards, and I'd urge you to do the same. No, I don't particularly care about the Brummie creative arts world (much as I love Napalm Death and Jasper Carrott...), but they're the entrant with … Continue reading Created in Birmingham
Category: The generic nonsense you love
For someone who isn't a professional webmonkey, I seem to be spending scary amounts of time both in my job and at home being forced to deal with ridiculous amounts of web-based nonsense. Ho hum. With more wood-touching than a tree fetishist in the Black Forest, it looks like I've got everything, both work-wise and … Continue reading Infinite fighting with websites, all the time
The Metropolitan Police and the CPS, yesterday: The Metropolitan Police have apologised to Colin Stagg, who was wrongly accused and jailed for the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common. Assistant Commissioner John Yates said "mistakes were made" and added: "It is clear that he is completely innocent." The Crown Prosecution Service has also written … Continue reading On learning from your mistakes
Mark Wadsworth highlights a new political survey called Take The Quiz. Along the lines of the utterly pointless Political Compass, but slightly more worthwhile [*], it takes (paraphrases of) manifesto commitments and other policy statements from the major UK-wide [**] political parties, and asks you to pick the one you most like / least dislike … Continue reading ‘None of the above’
Richard Herring has come up with an excellent solution to the problem of 'person in your way, what to do?', and backed it up with impeccable Science and Logic. In short - go left, and slate anyone who doesn't, and all will be mathematically fine. Now, if Mr Herring can also solve the issue of … Continue reading Always follow the Herring Convention
Andrew at Wongablog has the best take on this: it wasn't a 'prank call' in the "we'll call someone out of the blue and harass them" sense, there wasn't any deliberate intent to offend Andrew Sachs - and the man is a holocaust survivor who's most famous for a very funny and very offensive portrayal … Continue reading Obligatory Manuelgate post
So, we've been talking about the UK side of the banking crisis on Crooked Timber, and the discussion has taken a mildly anti-Scottish turn. Now, that's just wrong - although three of the UK's largest retail banks pre-crisis were technically Scottish companies (Lloyds TSB, HBOS and RBS), only RBS was genuinely run out of Scotland … Continue reading It’s not about the Scots, it’s about the institutional memory
"This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics." New sort-of Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, in The Theory Of Interstellar Trade, (via)
Mark W has an excellent idea for getting the bank bail-outs off the government's books: Gummint invests £50 billion in new bank shares. AIH, gummint spending is about £50 billion per month. Solution: for the next one month, all public sector salaries, welfare and pensions payments etc will be paid in bank shares! Truly, a … Continue reading Modest proposal
The excellent Rachel North is back. Hurrah! She's been in New York addressing the UN on terrorism. Hurrah! However, I had a bit of a double-take moment when I read her 'I'm back' post: "...went to Turkey for 2 weeks with J, read a lot, chilled a lot, went to the Turkish baths a lot, … Continue reading On misreading punctuation