The Public Whip has a detailed record of Mark Lazarowicz’s votes. To his credit, he voted against the declaration of war with Iraq, and supported a failed motion stating that “the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established, especially given the absence of specific United Nations authorisation“. That, however, is pretty much […]
What use is the gift of a pair of pandas when there are several hundred missiles pointing straight at you? Perhaps this goodwill gesture/PR grandstanding (delete according to level of cynicism) can be turned to Taiwan’s benefit. Surely China won’t fire on their own pandas… Background information: A chronology of recent events in Taiwan How […]
Coq au vin, pommes, legumes et vin Originally uploaded by framboise. My parents had coq au vin for dinner again; my dad gloats via email whenever they have something extra tasty. So I decided to cook that free range bird in our fridge in some red wine too. A quick search at epicurious yielded several […]
An Edinburgh spring is a very odd thing indeed. It can start as early as late February, when a warm spell fools some bulbs into surfacing, and some trees to blossom. These naïve plants are soon shown the error of their ways, and half-freeze to death under conditions of biting cold winds and lashing rain. […]
I’ve been putting off watching the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as it’s had mixed reviews. It started much better than I could have hoped, with only some bad dubbing/sound mixing bugging me (Ford and Zaphod’s voices were not entirely in synch). It was a shame they replaced the Total Perspective […]
From the Guardian: Hunt lobby in covert bid to oust Labour MPs. Is this a bit of American-style politics here to stay? Will “527“-like groups be plaguing our screens/airwaves/papers? I noticed a full-page ad by the GMB in the Independent last week. Under a photograph of a serious-looking Michael Howard was the following text: ACCUSING […]
Another lovely analogy from the Guardian, this time by Max Hastings while discussing the recent High Court ruling that swimmers may jolly well freeze in the icy waters of Hampstead Heath if they d*mn well want to! …(snip)… Health and Safety Executive (HSE), an organisation that inspires the same dread as once did the Spanish […]
Just catching up on life science news. This article from Nature caught my eye: Intelligent design. The most startling statistics are that: 43% of American teenagers believe that “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”; 38% believe that “God created human beings pretty […]
From BBC news: Rivals hold historic China talks. From the Guardian: Taiwanese opposition leader in Beijing talks. From Xinhua: CPC, KMT leaders shake hands in historic meeting. I’m mildly amused by how UK news outlets refer to Lien Chan as the opposition leader, and how Xinhua refers to him as Chairman of the Kuomintang（国民堂） first […]
Warning, long post ahead. I spent my lunch hour reading all the bumpf that’s been shoved through our letterbox while the cat fought for attention by shedding hair on the leaflets (she didn’t like the Tory leaflets, that’s for sure… Must remember to tell Tory-boy…). I thought I ought to list the key point the […]
akatsuki ra-ra-ra 