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The Betancourt interview looks interesting.

I will also be interested in Salam Pax and hope he is doing OK.

But I am stunned that there appears to be no follow up to timelythoughts contribution on the Mark Urban blog.

Perhaps there is stuff going on behind the scenes.

But timelythoughts seems to have highly pertinent, challenging and important information. It also seems likely the US intelligence community will shoot down the prevailing view over here about Litvinenko.

Hello Emily,
Could we please remember the odd man out in this dreadful situation re-Mr Mousa. As far as I could tell at the time, one decent squaddie told the awful truth about what the British military did to Mr Mousa and the other prisoners, believing, wrongly of course, that justice would be done.
In time-honoured way, the Establishment circled the wagons, and lied through their teeth to protect themselves. The guilty men walked, so that blame could not be passed up the chain of command; and the honest man took all the blame, the imprisonment, and, I believe, loss of his pension. The fact that the Military so-called investigations were a pack of lies, and a cover-up, and failed to answer the obvious question of what happened to Mr Mousa, has been acknowledged by today's announcement of the compensation package.
Clearly, he can't be spoken to for tonight's programme, but an interview (anonymous, if he wished) would make an illuminating piece in the near future.

Emily - Suggest you replace "Columbia" with "Colombia".

Possibly the nicest country in the world, and even more so now that Uribe's policies are bearing fruit.

Now they need a new president, such as Antanas Mokus, to follow up with a wide scale programme of agrarian and social reform.

I thought it was 26 not 27 candidates, not that it matters much. At least the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has spared us a by-election special, but maybe the count is tomorrow, or the next day - or never. Who cares?

The nation doesn't see this as test of the electors burning anger over 42 days but a rather sad sideshow with David Davis as the Archie Rice of politics. Davis will only win because he is the sitting MP. He has proved absolutely nothing.

Re #1.
The tosh which is being dished up to you about "Mr Litvinenko" IS the US intelligence community's view of this absurd invention.

P.S. There's no need to thank me for offering a ticket, and all-found for Glasto with my daughter's party, in response to your declared wish to attend, by the way. Oh that's right, you didn't.

#1 thegangofone "But I am stunned that there appears to be no follow up to timelythoughts contribution on the Mark Urban blog."

Yes, there appears to be a really good story there, Mr Urban. Hint. Hint.

I think we should be told ... always assuming you can work your way through the Jigsaw of Deception.

On the other hand, #5 grumpy-jon might be right.

Will we ever know, I wonder?

RE Road Tax:
As much as this gov't is loathed and I wouldnt **** if it was on fire; I cannot help wondering what the fuss is about? Surely road tax goes up pretty well every year for 'everyone' so if next year a few non existant zero raters get free tax and a whole bunch of us effectively get no rise; isn't that an improvement?
Isn't the purpose of Budgets to shift money from one sector and release it to another? There are nearly always winners and losers aren't there?
"Gordon!" What are you going to do with my Mk2 Passat 1.6TD estate car which just passed it's MOT. 60mpg and under 2% opacity in the test and will now live to be at least 20 years old. Please offer me the option of getting it CO2 rated and let me have cheap tax. Furthermore reduce my tax to zero when it becomes 25 like previously. If neccessary limit it to obviously environmentally friendly and useful cars like my own.

#6 mancroft
I don't think its tosh, but I completely accept that even the experts are going to struggle with a case that complex. I am not claiming any expertise.

The bottom line though is whether you think Berezovsky is trustworthy.

My point is that the certainty portrayed in the media may not be that well founded.

The US intelligence community is not to my knowledge THAT pally with Russia so I can't actually think of any motive for them to reject the view of their ally the UK if they didn't feel there were cogent reasons.

#7

The whole emphasis of alleged " green " government policy on VED over the past few years has been to encourage the purchase of new cars.

I remember 20 years ago a real environmentalist ( before it became Corporate Nazi trendy ) came on the then new CH4 and stated that the creation of a new car causes more pollution than it will generate in its lifespan. It would appear that today's eco-fascists chose to believe the current motor industry propaganda that cars only generate a small proportion of CO2 compared to what they produce during their life. I suspect that nothing has changed since the 1980s.

Imposing high taxes on relatively new cars must be counter productive for overall pollution caused. A smart VED system would take into account the published Mpg of all cars and make it free for any car over 40 Mpg after 15 years.

The smartest green tax of all would heavily tax finance on any product not capable of lasting ( with maintenance ) at least 15 years from new.

So it was another pack of lies from a government which was built on lies from the outset. Brown clearly said the majority of drivers would benefit, but refused to release the figures until after the proposal cleared the house. Now those figures prove that he was lying.
How on Earth does raising the tax on an already-bought-and-paid-for car reduce emissions? Answer - it doesn't, but if the owners of those cars go out a buy a new, lower emission car the carbon output from the manufacture of their new car will make matters worse, not better.
Brown is clearly either a)stupid; b)badly mis-informed or c)downright evil.

No 4 THE MYTH OF CIVILISED WARFARE

When a chieftain or king fought in his own battles, the whole 'bloodline' ethos made some sense; even to a bit of droit de seigneur. In later times when basic bloke was bought, life, limb and guts, for one King’s Shilling, he knew where he stood - right in it. Today, a Prime Minister, carrying the power of a powerless monarch, sends prime young men and women into places he would not go himself. The ethos under which they are required to fight is a mad mix of Health and Safety, civil law, Human rights, quaint monetary value put on injuries, and a tacit inability to decide if they are mercenaries or heroes.
At the annual Doha talks, over-elevated poseur politicians meet and routinely fail to save the world from the irritation of trade tariffs. Meanwhile, no one meets to save the global village from the village-idiocy of war.
Britain believes herself civilised. Britain trades arms and uses war as a means of expression. Something fundamental is not being addressed.

the ganeofone (#8) "The bottom line though is whether you think Berezovsky is trustworthy."

Hmmmm - Oligarchs (and friends)... trustworthy...hmmmm. Tough one.

the gangofone (#8) "The bottom line though is whether you think Berezovsky is trustworthy."

Hmmmm - Oligarchs (and friends)... trustworthy...hmmmm. Tough one.

One of the news items on this evenings web site is " New spy claim hits Russia-UK ties"! Christopher Bower - formerly of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.

You guys have got to talk about Litvinenko soon anyway.

Tcuh tcuh tcuh.

All I am saying is it may be timely to point out that there is more than one view out there. If we have it wrong - and I mean ultimately if Brown has it wrong, that's going to be a huge embarressment for the UK.

This isn't going to go away any time soon.

#10 blurtman

The answer is in fact d) Totally out of touch.

Very poor interview with Mike Jackson and Emily is not helped with straining to keep her hair out of her eyes it's a bit of a distraction when interviewing the serious guests like Mike ..

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

If you do revisit the Litvinenko story I hope you'll remember to include Israeli involvement. The principal players in this story are Israeli citizens and both they and their employees spend a great deal of time tripping backwards and forwards between the UK, Israel and the post-Soviet states stirring up unrest, sewing the seeds of dissent and financing the political careers of the men most likely to sell their countries assets at a knock down price.

Emily's interview with General Jackson was quite possibly the worst I have even seen. Emily seemed distracted and was obviously not concentrating when referring to incidents happening on Gen Jackson's watch. Good job the General was on form though. I wonder what he thought of his interview? "Where's that Paxman fella? This Emily is flicking her hair and asking me questions like its a MORI poll gadzooks!"
Serious interviews need presenters who have gravitas, sorry Em you don't cut it.

Re #18. nortongriffiths.
Perfectly put IMO. Or could that be amended to include, as well as Israeli citizens, "...those with a loyalty to Israel?"
I hope to add to what you've said as soon as the mods allow.

NARCISSISTIC PARANOIC CHUTZPAH?

If any other group were to behave in such an obviously self-serving, exploitative manner there would quite rightly be an immediate public outcry. Yet where THIS particular group's bare-faced self-serving audacity/gall/chutzpah is justly/accurately pointed out it's immediately attacked as defamatory persecution. I suggest that this may be pathological, i.e malignant narcissism/paranoia (very close to ASPD/psychopathy).



If one looks at the hotbed of psychoanalysis and psychiatry (much of which has little empirical validty/credibility), it should come as no surprise that it's New York City (see archives for some revealing statistics on NYC's surprising demographics and inevitable hegemony). Narcissistic Personality Disorder doesn't even make it into ICD-10 as it does DSM-IV-TR (where it's been on AXIS-II, in Cluster B since1980) though I bet we have some (just not as many). Like everything else, groups are not uniformally distributed demographically, they concentrate in areas globally.

If a non-pathological majority doesn't manage/contain pathological/destructive/expolitative behaviour, history sadly shows that it ends in tears. If some groups have a higher prevalence rate of particular personality disorders than others (and most of the research these days acknowledges that there's a high degree of heritability for personality just as there is for intelligence) it's inevitable that entire (especially endogamous) groups will (unfairly) be tarred with the same brush.

Sir General Mike Jackson is wrong so say that "stress techniques" were not "outlawed", but stopped as a matter of policy by Edward Heath's government. The European Court of Human Rights found in Ireland v UK in 1978 that such techniques, though not torture, were "inhumane and degrading treatment" in breach of Article 3 of Convention of Human Rights. Further Article 3 of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment". It was therefore clear that such "stress techniques" were outlawed.

10. Blurtman wrote:

"Brown is clearly either a)stupid; b)badly mis-informed or c)downright evil."

You are so narow minded.
He could EASILY be all three...