News dump

Apparently we're all Time's person of the year !

However, let's not get too carried away by the euphoria. Others were also up for the 'distinction'. According to Times' managing editor, Richard Stengel in a WAPO interview , it was a close race between North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Pope Benedict XVI, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Stengel said that if it came down to one individual, it probably would have been Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "It just felt to me a little off selecting him,".

How d'ya feel now ?


Not really news, i guess, but more of a confirmation of intentions from Carl Levin, John Murtha, Patrick Leahy and John D Rockerfeller : they've announced that they're going to open investigations into the behaviour of the administration. Most notably to " ... conduct "real oversight" of the FBI and the Justice Department and to delve into "the abuse of billions of taxpayers' dollars sent as development aid to Iraq ... the committee will also hold retrospective hearings ... to determine whether administration officials manipulated intelligence before the war and whether the post-invasion provisional government abused its contracting powers and wasted huge sums of money".

I'm gonna start investing heavily in popcorn makers ;@)


A double whammy for Bliar this week : the first time in history that a sitting British Pres Prime minister has been interviewed by the cops in a criminial investigation- the cash for honors affair.

Reknowned for being truthiness incarnated at the best of times, Monseigneur Bliar has brushed the whole thing off saying that everyting is above board - the peers in question were rewarded for helping the Labour party.

Not so, cried the privileged ones : he's been telling porkies "Millionaire Labour Party donors have contradicted Tony Blair's evidence to the police in the cash-for-honours affair - saying that they were nominated for their public service to the nation, and not for services to Labour, as claimed by the Prime Minister. "

Pleeease make him say it all again under oath.....


Apparently he's not the only one who is above the law. Whole countries (no, not you there, the smirky one at the back of the class) and companies are too. Even more so if the country in question is governed by mean looking, swarthy types, awash in black gold and the companies implicated work on defense contracts.

Rest easy people : the cash for arms investigation implicating BAE and everyones favorite nation (noooooooo, it's most definitely not about YOU) has now been dropped. The reason being that it's 'not in the interests of national security' ... i really must use that catch-all phrase at work one day.

More this week on the serial killer , the police are widening their investigations to mainland europe and have called for help from Interpol... although, to read the article i'm hard pressed to make a connection as to why a murderer using his bare hands would possibly make the police think he's Johnny Foreigner "they do fings diff'rently over there Sarge, don't they"... how long before the tabloïd press starts insinuating that it's a frenchy wot did it.