The Political Thread

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

A friend of mine lent me that a while ago. Great comic

[Mabs]

A friend of mine lent me that a while ago. Great comic

Agreed. It's interesting to see the war from both sides, with their accounts sometimes overlapping. Powerful comic.

[Frank]

Wall Street Journal's live feed from the protests in Hong Kong, where riot cops are currently making the place look a lot like prog 533:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/09/28/wsjs-video-stream-of-the-occupy-central-protests-in-hong-kong/

[Proudhuff]

Looks like the Milton Keynes ghetto is a goer:

Nuclear trucks that should have been scrapped more than a decade ago keep breaking down – and could cause a disaster on the roads.

A former senior safety official at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has warned that an accident could trigger a fire and a leak of radioactivity.

Official documents have revealed that lorries that were scheduled to be retired in 2003 are still being used to transport dangerous and highly sensitive nuclear cargoes. Shipments of plutonium and uranium have been made between Britain's nuclear bomb factories in Berkshire, and across England.

Plans to replace the trucks with new vehicles were dropped in favour of adapting existing warhead carriers, but there have been delays in implementing this solution.

According to an official MoD log of safety incidents, the 20-year-old "high security vehicles" have stayed in service and suffered a series of equipment defects since 2010. The warhead carriers meant to take over from them have also had problems, with a total of 70 nuclear convoy incidents recorded by the MoD between July 2007 and December 2012.

Fred Dawson, a radiation safety expert with the MoD for 31 years, pointed out that the incidents included fuel leaks, which were serious matters. "They have the potential to lead to a fire and the loss of the vehicle together with its cargo," he said.

"This all smacks of a penny-pinching make-do-and-mend culture within the MoD's nuclear programmes. It also demonstrates that the MoD is willing to put cost-saving before public safety."

[Professor Bear]

Someone's added a music track to an actual David Cameron speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YBumQHPAeU

[Frank]

Someone's added a music track to an actual David Cameron speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YBumQHPAeU

S'right - no editing whatsoever. Cameron changed his tie and grew more hair in-between lines just to really rub it in to Ed Miliband how much better he is at speaking without notes. He got through the whole rap without forgetting any of the lies he was supposed to tell.

[Professor Bear]

People were going on about Dave letting slip his true feelings in a speech, but I followed the link and was disappointed to find he wasn't openly admitting that he liked to murder people and get away with it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11133801/David-Camerons-FreudianSlip-Tories-resent-the-poor.html

Cameron changed his tie and grew more hair in-between lines just to really rub it in to Ed Miliband how much better he is at speaking without notes.

And he did it with a case of the hiccups, too.  The man is a trooper.

[Professor Bear]

Chris Grayling - a man officially less qualified to perform his ministerial duties than his unpaid interns - has been branded a naughty boy by the British courts, for conspiring with the insurance industry to stop terminally-ill people from getting legal aid: http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2014/10/02/the-lord-chancellor-is-dismantling-the-rule-of-law

[Grugz]

anyone else thinking the Argentinian response to the coincidental number plate on top gear is a tad two-faced as their president was threatening to invade the falklands again not that long ago.?

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

anyone else thinking the Argentinian response to the coincidental number plate on top gear is a tad two-faced as their president was threatening to invade the falklands again not that long ago.?

I'm no fan of Top Gear, but they clearly fell prey to a warmongering rent-a-mob. I am not really sure why we pretend Argentina isn't an enemy state.

[Steve Green]

The assertation that it is coincidental seems highly dubious considering their past form of denying intent (the slope thing in particular)

My hunch is that it was done intentionally, but someone on the crew actually pointed it out to generate a bit of controversy, but it got out of hand.

I hate mobs with a passion, but they go out of their way to provoke whichever country they're in.

[Grugz]

I meant to put coincidental in quotation marks but was distracted by a hyper 3 yr old. and the production crew does seem intent on getting them killed regularly (the decorate your cars one in usa was a favourite)

[Hawkmumbler]

I dunno, the entire Top Gear crew seem to share the South Park logic, that nothing sacred. I guess it's not so much the question as to weather it was intentional or not, more why the hell does anyone care.

[M.I.K.]

I dunno, the entire Top Gear crew seem to share the South Park logic, that nothing sacred. I guess it's not so much the question as to weather it was intentional or not, more why the hell does anyone care.

The South Park folk usually do it as a means of highlighting hypocrisy or making some greater point about modern society, whereas the Top Gear folk do it because they're a bunch of childish pricks.

[Hawkmumbler]

Thats the key difference. But still, why does anyone care?