Salopblog

Salopblog is a daily rant ...

on life in general and politics, humour, travel, food & drink, arts, quirky news plus other views from Salop, capital of The Marches.  Sadly this blog has transferred to
Git News

This blog has been transferred

Due to a porn strike this blog has now transferred to:

Gitnews.com

gitnews

I have registered these .com and .co.uk domains

Will post when they are operational

Interesting quote from PoliticalBetting.com

"Cameron is every bit the match for Blair when it come to working out what to say to chime with the public mood. The difference is that Cameron has a passionate interest in politics - something that Blair never had."

Scoop…

or not

Alan Johnson seizes initiative over Labour leadership

Alan Johnson launches a daring attempt to lead Labour’s renewal today, urging Gordon Brown to offer voters a referendum on electoral reform.

Mr Johnson, regarded by the bookmakers as a strong favourite to succeed Mr Brown, calls on the Prime Minister to seize the political initiative after the expenses scandal.

“The current public mood of anger and disquiet . . . demands a response,” the Health Secretary writes in The Times today. In an article setting out his modernising credentials, he adds: “We need to overhaul the engine, not just clean the upholstery.”

Although allies insisted yesterday that his intervention was not intended to challenge Mr Brown, it will inevitably strengthen suspicions that a contest over the Prime Minister’s replacement is under way.

 

Time for a change

I have been thinking of transferring salopblog to Wordpress – it is cheaper and more powerful.  I thought I would register salopblog.com and get the new site up and running before closing down - but found that it had been taken in January this year.  salopblog.com (only go there if you need to) is a porn site of the worst kind and I feel that I now have to change the name of the site completely to get away from this stuff.  So I am asking all my readers to find a new name for this blog.  Stuff like dailyrant has long gone, dowseblog is available for .co.uk and .com.  But I want something much more distinctive – suggestions please.  I have cdowse.com as well as cdowse.co.uk but they are not buzzy either.  On Google this new site come up third – that does it – I have to change soon.

For example:
blusterblog
shrewsblog
fishstreetblog
sy1blog
cdrant
colsrant
bellstoneblog

Voting intentions…

Telegraph expenses coverage

Publishing by the Torygraph of the information on MP’s expenses is now past the half way mark, and readers will eventually be able to search for the details of their MP on the Telegraph website which will, they say, become a valuable resource for anyone voting at the next election.

Scrappage – it wasn’t meant to be like this…

but the result was inevitable.  On its website, Honda is advertising a discount of about £2,400 on its cheapest Civic model alongside the separate offer of a £2,000 discount for those who trade in their old cars for scrap.

From this week’s Melton Times if you missed it

Amazing

During a debate about Europe at the Foreign Press Association - which was discreetly taped by the hosts – Nigel Farage (UKIP Leader) was asked by former Labour Europe minister Denis MacShane what he had received in non-salary expenses and allowances since becoming an MEP in 1999.

"It is a vast sum," Farage said. "I don't know what the total amount is but - oh lor - it must be pushing £2 million." Taken aback, MacShane then joked: "Is it too late to become an MEP?"

Coleman Preparing Case for the Supreme Court

Even I am getting bored with this procrastination – I would have thought that by 23/05/09 (7 months since election) I would have closed down the US election thread but it apparently still has legs – this from Electoral-vote.com

The Minnesota Supreme Court now has briefs from both Norm Coleman (R) and Al Franken (D). The lawyers will present their cases before the court on June 1. Then the court will render a verdict, probably within a week or two. In fact, it is hard to imagine that the justices will learn anything on June 1 that they don't already know. In case he loses, Norm Coleman is ready to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is very unlikely Franken will lose outright. Courts really, really, really, don't like to overturn elections. His worst-case scenario is that the Minnesota high court sends the case back to the lower court for a do-over using different rules. Coleman's argument is fundamentally that different rules applied to different counties and that's not fair. Of course, different counties have different voting equipment, which may not be fair either, but that's how it is.

Interesting

Let's have some Republican senators try waterboarding

By Michael Tomasky

Back down to our usual level: John Chait at TNR made a nice catch here in relaying the story of how Eric "Mancow" Muller, an obnoxious right-wing radio gas bag, decided to get himself waterboarded to prove he could take it and it wasn't torture. So what ensued? Only this:

"The average person can take this for 14 seconds," Marine Sergeant Clay South answered, adding, "He's going to wiggle, he's going to scream, he's going to wish he never did this."
With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.
Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.
"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke,"Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

High Court rules in favour of eBay selling fakes

The High Court ruling in favour of eBay in a case brought by L'Oreal could reduce barriers to trade and make branded goods more easily available to consumers.  This is because as well as deciding whether eBay was liable for counterfeit goods sold on its site, the case also considered the right of brands to restrict the auction site from selling some of their legitimate goods.

The issue is important for consumers because luxury goods companies have traditionally tried to restrict how and where their products are sold in an attempt to protect the exclusivity of their brands and help avoid counterfeiting.

This is a very sad post – you may remember I went to Bletchley Park with my Dad for a remembrance by the BCS for the great work done in WW2 by code-breakers

Aid for Bletchley Park rejected

Calls to give Bletchley Park more aid have been rejected by the government.  A petition in the House of Lords asked for more central funds to be given to the code-cracking site to repair its dilapidated buildings.

The government said Bletchley was getting financial aid and rejected a request to associate it with the Imperial War Museum.

Bletchley Park chief Simon Greenish, said he was "disappointed" by the reaction to the plea for aid.

Shropshire Lib Dems – Tackling Issues

Ghurkha's

Simon Jenkins raises some thoughtful insights on the Ghurkha affair.

I enjoyed this short Guardian leader

Earlier this week, as the clamour over MPs' expenses grew, a slight, balding backbencher went on Newsnight. The Telegraph's attack dogs had been on to him too, Chris Mullin disclosed, sniffing around his claim of the licence fee for a black-and-white TV. He admitted to being "guilty as charged – I've owned it for 33 years and never changed it". Jeremy Paxman does not usually hear such confessions from MPs, but Mr Mullin is an unusually candid and likable politician. In his diaries, A View from the Foothills, he stakes a good claim to be the Alan Clark of the Blair era – minus the sex but heavy on the self-deprecation (never one of Clark's qualities). Like the Tory, Mr Mullin never rose far in government (topping out as "under-secretary for folding deckchairs") but saw enough to make him a valuable acerbic guide – so that John Prescott's department goes down as the "court of Boris Yeltsin". Such insight might be expected from a former journalist who fought for the release of the Birmingham Six – but Mr Mullin also makes a distinguished backbencher. Formerly an independent chair of the home affairs committee, he also often votes on the right side in Commons debates (against the Iraq war, for instance). This Labourite saw the expenses row coming years off, and has long thought that parliament should have shorter recesses. At a time when the political class is so discredited, it is worth recalling those like Mr Mullin who do some good. What a shame that he steps down at the next election.

This is brill

Who claimed what - mapped!

A virtual map has been created by a Shropshire technology firm allowing people to see the extent of MPs’ expenses claims. 

• To see the map click here

The company was inspired to map the data from the House of Commons as the expenses scandal rumbles on in order to add a new dimension to the debacle.

The map allows users to quickly see how much their MP has claimed in expenses and what the regional variations are between MPs.”

View from over the pond

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