Extraordinary rendition update
The trail goes dead in Poland?

Scottish Blogging Roundup

ChipPin’ away at fraud
Up to 40 minutes after any Chip & PIN card transaction, the retailer may access your confidential details. Including your PIN number. Read this now.

There is something about the word “uniform” which is simply filled with negative connotations. The answer is quite clearly that uniform means everything is the same. There is no independent thought, no creativity, just bland conformity. So why is it that the concept of uniform is giving me so much trouble on a bright Saturday morning, with the joyful haze of that Tuesday-Wednesday All Nighter for the US midterms still gripping my consciousness? Well, there’s only one way to find out… Read More

Gotta have faith?
AC Grayling on misunderstanding atheism

Taxing or trading?
Finding the best way to control carbon

The trial of those accused, and now convicted, of the racially-motivated murder of Kriss Donald in Glasgow revealed details of such sickening brutality that I’m reluctant to discuss it in any detail.  Suffice to say that such exceptionally bestial crimes by their very nature do not reveal a ‘pattern’ of anything, no matter how much racists might wish otherwise.

But I’m led to comment because I’m not happy about some of the responses to this appalling case. Read More

Even though I presume that you, dear reader, laudably don’t buy The Times, nonetheless you may glance at headlines whilst passing a news-stand.

Yesterday’s main story was headlined ‘THE GREEN DIVIDE: Times poll shows the gulf between words and action on the environment’.

It shows nothing of the sort. The table that, ahem, proves it uses reasoning that could be easily unravelled by a brain damaged gerbil reading the newspaper in the dark. Read More

Ministry of Truth:

“In such circumstance, when a government refuses to enter into open public debate on legislation it is seeking to pass, the only wise, sensible and prudent response is not to permit them that legislation.”

Sandra Bell is a name I keep hearing. She’s seemingly an independent commentator, a security rent-a-quote, who so far this week has been mostly puffing the NuLab line for a prime-time audience. I guess this isn’t exactly news, given she formerly worked for QinetiQ, a company very much part of Blair’s corporate state. A company whose thoughts on ID cards, for example, are predictable and well documented.
Read More