POOL SPRAY, new word of the day....

King of the Witless Buffoons

Looks like Sir Chubalard is not going to get centre stage at the auld White House as hoped.

Downing Street officials discovered last night that Prime Minister would not, as had been widely reported, hold a joint press conference with President Obama after their talks at the White House today.

Instead, the White House press office announced what it called a "pool spray" - a few shouted questions from selected agency reporters as the two men sat down for talks and photographers clicked away.

*****

For those of you who have been following the big Pirate Bay Trial may find it more than a bit ironic that Fredrik Neij, one of the PirateBay admins currently on trial in Stockholm, admitted that he rebooted one of the serves right there in the courtroom during closing arguments.

In some sense you might construe this as the biggest ethical trial in recent memory...

Commentary from the Aftonbladet can be found here

”Den som håller i en rock medan någon annan misshandlar en person är delaktig i brottet”, sa åklagare Hans Roswall i sin slutplädering i Pirate Bay-målet i måndags.
Piraterna har medverkat till geschäftliknande kopiering, och för det bör de straffas.
Försvaret menar att verksamheten, tekniskt sett, är lovlig. Att medverkansansvaret måste se annorlunda ut på internet, som bygger på länkar och hänvisningssystem. Ansvaret mellan de åtalade måste individualiseras.
Det kan låta komplicerat, men det duger med ringa kunskaper i upphovsrätt för att förstå vad rättegången egentligen handlar om: etik.

Not a bad movie for a rainy Saturday afternoon:



movie trailer should be self-explanatory but briefly, it's about a town dealing with grief, a university dealing with adversity and a football team needing well, players and coaches.

*****

COOL TOOL

Panoramic photography knocks out 360 cities, one for every degree, I suppose. Well interesting.

happy march!

Hey, anyone interested in some cathartic reading?

Assuming it is out of the question to hang, draw and quarter Sir Fred Goodwin, pluck out his intestines while they are still warm and wriggling, stuff them into his greedy mouth and then display his severed head on a spike at the Tower of London, could we settle for shooting him instead? Yes, I know, I'm going soft.

The sacrificial goat?

The funny thing is the naivité of anyone believing greed recedes once it is in the blood. These bankers are like junkies, albeit more of a threat to society. They are used to calling the shots, they are used to raking in obscene sums of cash and they are not willing to go off the smack even when faced with the abject failure of their system, their philosophy and their greed.

Step down quietly, gracefully, without pockets so stuffed with cash they can barely walk away? Fuggetaboutit.

On the other hand, the public pillaging of Goodwin could just be a smoke screen to cover up the government's own criminal incompetence

And quickly hidden, too, by the Goodwin pension kerfuffle was the testimony of Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Agency, to the Treasury Select Committee last week. He said of Gordon Brown's watch at the Treasury: "All the pressure on the FSA was not to say: why aren't you looking at these business models, but why are you being so heavy and intrusive? Can't you make regulation a bit more light touch? We were supervising people like HBOS within a particular philosophy of the way you do regulation which I think, in retrospect, was wrong."

His views, which no one in Government has had the brass neck to contest, vindicate Paul Moore, the HBOS whistleblower, and support the thesis that history will probably conclude that the trail of easy credit and light-touch regulation responsible for the present crisis leads to Gordon Brown's front door.

And as the Independent and the Guardian take sides, the Times splits it right down the middle in Is the government being tough enough, or is it using them as a diversion?

It does appear in any event that the Banker Pigs got the opportunities they did through via the government, who either turned a blind eye to the concept of regulation or actively encouraged turning regulation into a running joke in order to continue to take credit for economic growth based on an ever-increasingly fragile house of cards.

And do you think Sir Fred is really quaking in his boots about the government taking his pension from him? In addition to their traditional incompetence, they are virtually powerless, at a legal stand still. And guess who negotiated this pension agreement with Sir Fred to begin with? Hmmm, you bet. Same idiots.

So yeah, Sir Fred should do the decent thing and cough up the pension but now that he's been mainlining cash into his veins all these years, he ent giving up the junk.

Irrespective of whose fault it is ultimately, pity the government isn't listen to Fat John Prescott who says that RBS should unilaterally withhold Goodwin’s pension - “and let him sue us”.

*****

Ok, to hell with economics - cheap travel, that's where it's at.

Here are four rail trips which won't bust you completely.

*****

Consecutive weekends have resulted in consecutive rubbish movies taken in. Don't ask why, maybe because they're free, I dunno.

Last night was Australia which was not only predictable, stupid and boring but crikey! it went on and on and on. After like, 30 minutes I was wondering is this over yet and found out there were another TWO HOURS to go! Anyway, this trailer does no justice to how ridiculous this movie is, believe it or not, merely scratches the surface:



And the weekend before, was Clint Eastwood's latest offering, the incredibly gawdawful Grand Torino. You can't really be sure it isn't a parody all along of a pensioner trying to reclaiming his "tough guy" reputation by spewing forth a bunch of racist prattle whilst simultaneously and gradually revealing his hip, sincere and touching heart. A joke. A joke all the way through, HIGH COMEDY, folks, until the bitter end when he compounds the horrific experiece by SINGING. And let there be no doubt, tortured frogs, if they were to be captured on audio tape, would sound like bloody Ceclia Bartoli by comparison.

Nonetheless, if you're intrigued, you can find the trailer here.