Craig Murray is the UK’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan. He’s an excellent exposer of evilness in ex-Soviet extremities, and was one of the main figures behind the campaign to stop Alisher Usmanov gaining control of Arsenal. In short, he’s a good man.

However, he’s not a man who should really be writing about financial statements. At the moment, he has a piece on his website that not only misunderstands the nature of auditing and falls for myths from my favourite accountant, Dr Prem Sikka, but is probably libellous to boot…

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The War Against Terror has reached a new high-point:

A British teenager who is accused of possessing material for terrorist purposes has appeared in court. The 17-year-old, who was arrested in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire on Monday, was given bail after a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. It is alleged he had a copy of the “Anarchists’ Cookbook”, containing instructions on how to make home-made explosives.

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Norman Geras has written a response to my post about Richard Dawkins. This is my reply to him.
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Britain’s top political commentators last week descended on Richard Dawkins with all the careful analysis of a flock of vultures.

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I’ve just invented a new word:

usmanov /’us mÉ™ nÉ’v/ verb to unsuccessfully attempt to stifle undesired content on the Internet by taking legal action against websites where the content appears, with the result that the undesired content becomes more widespread and better known. [named after Alisher Usmanov, a Russian/Uzbek billionaire who did this regarding allegations made against him by Craig Murray. First use 2007.]
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Most of the concern about the government’s proposed ID card scheme stems not from the cards themselves, but from the enormous pool of centralized information which would underlie them. Plenty of suspicious minds believe that this is actually the real purpose of the plan.

But if Gordon Brown wants access to a vast system of interlinked databases, containing the personal details of millions of people, wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier for him just to join Facebook?