Eideard

Sarah Palin believed that the Queen rather than the prime minister was responsible for the decision to keep British forces in Iraq, according to research done for a new film chronicling her brief political rise.

The former Alaska governor reportedly made the comment during the 2008 presidential campaign as aides to John McCain, the Republican candidate, scrambled to bring his surprise-pick running mate up to speed on foreign affairs.

Her confusion emerged during a coaching session with Steve Schmidt, a top McCain adviser, who asked Mrs Palin what she would do if Britain began to waver in its commitment to the Iraq war.

In one of the many rambling responses that steadily eroded her credibility during the campaign, Mrs Palin reportedly replied that she would “continue to have an open dialogue” with the Queen…

The incident was revealed during research for Game Change, an HBO ‘docu-drama’ based on a book about the 2008 campaign by two leading American journalists.

While the film is a dramatisation – with the Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore playing Mrs Palin – its producers conducted dozens of research interviews and Mr Schmidt confirmed its accuracy in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

The incident can be added to a long list of policy gaffes made by Mrs Palin during her three months as the Republican vice-presidential candidate…

Game Change describes panicked cramming sessions during the campaign, with aides beginning their history tutorial with the Spanish Civil War and carrying through to post-9/11 era.

Mrs Palin was initially enthusiastic, making notes on hundreds of coloured flash cards, but became increasingly sullen and was described by tutors as going into a “catatonic stupor“.

Perhaps a catatonic stupor might be less embarrassing to the Republican Party than the confidently 19th Century noises brayed by the current herd of presidential candidates?

Challenger 2 tank trying to scare a photographer

The revelation that the Ministry of Defence spent more than £1 billion on a tank and personnel carrier programme that failed to deliver a single vehicle is the latest in a string of controversies to engulf the department.

Last month it emerged that defence cuts meant British waters were left undefended by a warship on emergency standby, because resources have become so stretched…

Just in case the UK is invaded by the Faroe Islands – or the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

It was revealed last month that cost-cutting consultants employed by the MoD in order to uncover to budget savings were being paid £3,950 each a day…Alix Partners had pulled in a total of £5.5 million, with 12 members of staff having qualified for additional “success fees” twice on top of the daily payment rate.

The Government said it needed to employee an outside firm in order to find savings because the MoD did not have the right expertise to carry out the work…

According to the report, decisions taken by the Strategic Defence and Security Review led to further cost overruns of £500 million in the defence budget.

Delaying the batch of seven Astute boats will cost millions extra, leaving the Navy without enough boats to defend Britain, maintain the security of the Falkland Islands or protect then Vanguard class submarines which carry the Trident nuclear deterrent as well as carrying out other secret tasks.

Which will appear in the budget requests come springtime – when everyone wants to get outdoors, again, anyway.

Poisonally, as hard as they try, I doubt anyone can come close to the wastefulness standard set by the Pentagon.

Don’t blame Father Christmas if he doesn’t allow your child to sit on his knee at a school event — teachers may have banned him from coming into contact with youngsters.

While those playing Father Christmas are no longer required to pass a Criminal Records Bureau check, many schools have decided to “err on the side of caution” and impose rules on grotto behaviour. Parents who have offered to don the red suit have been told they must not allow youngsters to sit on their laps and cannot be left alone with them.

Because CRB checks are required only for volunteers who have regular contact with children, Father Christmases are exempt. However, government guidance states: “Under no circumstances must a volunteer who has not obtained a CRB disclosure … be left unsupervised with children.”

Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said this meant many of its members had decided it was better if Father Christmases avoided all physical contact with children…

A spokesman for the Department for Education said children could still sit on Father Christmas’s knee as long as parents were consulted and were “completely comfortable” with the situation. “Santas in schools should be treated in the same way that other visitors to the school are managed. Our guidance recommends that for such visitors a member of staff is present,” added the spokesman.

Idiots. It’s more than conceivable, you know, that a modicum of care and oversight can be maintained without turning holiday festivities into rituals requiring approval by censors and bluenoses.

Woman jumps into the arms of firefighters during London riots

Britain is considering disrupting online social networking such as Blackberry Messenger and Twitter during civil unrest, Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday, a move widely condemned as repressive when used by other countries…

Police and politicians have said online social networks, in particular Research in Motion’s popular Blackberry Messager (BBM), were used by rioters and looters to coordinate during four days of disorder across England this week.

“We are working with police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality,” Cameron told parliament during an emergency session prompted by the riots.

Many of the rioters favored Canadian firm RIM’s BBM over Twitter and other social media because its messages are encrypted and private…

Online social media was also widely used by members of the British public in recent days to help others avoid troublespots and to coordinate a clean up after the rioting had ended.

Open social media isn’t the problem. If the police and government were competent, messaging in non-encrypted networks would be another information source. Accurate or otherwise.

Problems with encrypted transmission are a horse of another color. Then, you also have to add Skype to the mix of considerations – since it is encrypted communications.

HM Revenue and Customs was due to send out millions of reminder letters to those who owed monies to be paid by July 31. But several hundred thousand people have still not received the reminders after HMRC officials failed to order enough paper on which to print the letters.

Officials apologised for the error and insisted that no one would be left out of pocket as those who did not receive reminders would be given an extra 30 days to pay without incurring interest charges…

An HMRC spokesman said: “Due to exceptionally high demand this year we are experiencing delays in sending paper self assessment tax statements to customers.

“This in no way prevents the accurate payment of tax and no one will be out of pocket as a result…”

“We very much regret any inconvenience and will send paper statements to everyone who should have one as soon as possible.”

I admit it. I love how polite Brits can be when they know the cock-up is their own fault.

Gave me the most polite apology – after bubbles stopped popping out of his nose.

Britain is withdrawing its troops Sunday from Iraq, ending a role that began with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, British defense officials said…

“We now look forward to a strong, long-term defense relationship with Iraq,” Fox told the House of Commons when he announced Wednesday that British troops would leave the country.

The announcement effectively ended Britain’s role in Iraq, a role that was widely unpopular in the United Kingdom. About 179 British troops were killed during operations in Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Britain when the war began, protesting the deployment of British troops to join then-President George Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing.” At the height of the war, more than 46,000 British troops were deployed primarily in and around the southern port city of Basra.

In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered an inquiry into the UK’s participation in the war.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair testified during the inquiry that Iraq needed to be confronted over its ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction… Supreme liar and flunky.

Britain ended its combat operations in Iraq in 2009 but maintained a small contingent, primarily members of the Royal Navy, to train Iraqi sailors and marines at the southern Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr…

Britain will leave behind a small contingent to protect its personnel at its embassy in Baghdad…

The legacy of the Brits in Iraq will always be colored by their colonial history.

Why should anyone remember us with more fondness than, say, a Ukrainian remembers the Germans?

A woman who was a repeated victim of sex trafficking and suffered severe sexual degradation is to be paid substantial damages by the Home Office after it returned her to Moldova, where she faced grave dangers.

The “groundbreaking” settlement was reached on the eve of a high court hearing of her claim against the Home Office for failing to take steps to protect her and for sending her back to Moldova despite substantial grounds to believe she was at risk from her traffickers.

The woman, who cannot be named because she and her family are still at risk of retribution by her traffickers, was kidnapped at the age of 14 and then continually trafficked and re-trafficked for forced prostitution in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Israel and Britain until she was 21…

She was arrested by police and immigration officers in a brothel in London in 2003, but instead of rescuing her they charged her with possessing false documents, which had been provided by her traffickers.

She was imprisoned for three months before being sent back to Moldova through a fast-track immigration process. Her trafficker was neither investigated nor arrested but was allowed to visit her in Holloway prison and Oakington detention centre, where he posed as her boyfriend, in order to intimidate her.

Her solicitor, Harriet Wistrich, said the woman was found by her trafficker when she got back to Moldova and was savagely ill-treated before being trafficked back into prostitution for a further two years.

In 2007 she was arrested again in Britain and held at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, but was eventually referred to the Poppy project, which identified her as a victim of sex trafficking and provided her with the necessary support to make an asylum claim…

Wistrich said the undisclosed “substantial damages” followed the “groundbreaking” attempt to sue the Home Office for its failure to protect her. She said she hoped immigration authorities would learn from the experience so that other trafficked women would be treated as victims instead of criminals and rescued rather than handed back to their traffickers to be raped and ill-treated.

I don’t believe there is any genetic predilection that forces bureaucrats to behave like an absolute iron-headed ass. Going “by the book” resulting in predictable abusive treatment like this should be halted at the source.

Late last year, Nissan unveiled its “Approaching Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians” (VSP), a technical name for the noise-adding system found on the automaker’s Leaf electric vehicle. Introduction of a pedestrian warning system on near-silent vehicles like the Leaf has been the subject of much debate, but with the U.S. House and Senate passing a measure that requires hybrids and plug-in vehicles to emit an audible sound to warn pedestrians, these noise-making setups will soon become standard on all electric-drive autos sold in the U.S.

However, over in the UK, the Nissan Leaf’s pedestrian warning system has reportedly been deemed illegal, forcing the automaker to either remove or disable it.

A Nissan spokeswoman told The Northern Echo that…an intermittent beeping noise is fitted as standard to commercial vehicles such as buses and lorries, but UK law states that the sound must be capable of being disabled between 11:00 pm and 6:00 am. The audible system on the Leaf did not allow for that to be done, so the beeping sound is being removed entirely before the cars can be driven on roads in the UK.

How many things are wrong with this silly-ass situation?

And consider our friends at Nissan who can’t figure out how to put in an inline switch which turns the stupid noisemaker on or off at the driver’s whim. I suppose that is yet another rule from Congress. To stop us independent drivers from exercising our own minds and choosing between horns and beepers.

Another reckless speed-demon!

The Government has introduced a new generation of average speed camera that can track motorists across entire networks of roads. The first versions went live on a stretch of the A13 carriageway that heads from southeast Essex into East London on January 31.

Existing average speed cameras only monitor a car’s speed between fixed points on the road, but the new models are capable of consistently tracking a vehicle.

The latest system has 84 cameras and 37 average speed monitoring points – it can even keep an eye on drivers entering and exiting a stretch of road…

Chief Executive of RoadPilot, James Flynn OBE, said: “If this system proves successful, it could be extended or rolled out to other locations, all of which can be linked together.

“Taken to the extreme, the entire UK road network could, in theory, be linked up under one average speed monitoring system – meaning Big Brother could always be watching you!”

Cripes. I don’t dislike red light cameras. They have a proven track record for diminishing accidents. But, the cost of roadway monitoring vs. any resultant safety effect tells me – the reason for installing these critters is topping up regional and council budgets.

Despicable.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Thousands of people have marched in what is intended to be the last Bloody Sunday march in Londonderry.

The marchers started from the Creggan area walking behind a banner carried by the families which read “vindicated”.

They completed the route begun in 1972 – the march usually stops at Free Derry Corner, but instead went all the way to the Guildhall. Organisers said they believe the annual event should come to an end following the publication of the Saville Report.

A statement said the protest was no longer necessary after the inquiry exonerated those who died in the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings.

It was signed by the majority of the victims’ families.

Some relatives of the victims have called the proposal premature. They broke off from the parade at William Street and finished their march at Free Derry corner.

Earlier, hundreds gathered at the monument for the wreath-laying on the first Bloody Sunday anniversary since the publication of the Saville Report…

Fourteen people lost their lives on 30 January 1972 when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights march in Derry’s Bogside area…

Tony Doherty, whose father Paddy was…killed on Bloody Sunday, said he supported the ending of the march.

He added: “The vast majority of the families felt that what we had brought about, what we had achieved on 15 June, with the Saville Report as an exoneration, with the words of David Cameron, with apology and accepting political responsibility for the atrocity of Bloody Sunday, that it was now time for us all to consider moving on.”

Perhaps it’s time for some of the newspapers that supported the lies of various British governments over the years to declare remorse for their complicity. The way in which society as a whole learns of political events depends so much on the ideology of the owners of the media.

Collaboration is still a crime.