Terror Probe, sounds painful.

An imitation Kalashnikov rifle and fireworks have been seized by police investigating alleged terrorism in connection with the G20 summit.

Three men aged 25, 19 and 16 and two women of 20, from the Plymouth area in Devon, were held after the 25 year old was seen allegedly spraying graffiti.

A number of imitation weapons were seized in searches of several premises. Assistant Chief Constable Paul Netherton said the weapons were “not major” and “probably not even lethal”. The arrests were an “isolated incident” and local people were not at risk. The arrested people have not been linked to any religious group.

Detectives are investigating the possibility those arrested were planning to mount protests in London against the G20 summit of world leaders.

All five people are being held under the Terrorism Act.

Why are they being held under the terrorism act? If they were going to protest at the G20 in London, why aren’t they being held for public order offences?

Don’t trust others? Report them…

We’ve been having a met(Metropolitian Police) Anti terrorism campaign in the UK for the past few weeks, here’s one of the adds:

There are a few others. Is it just me or is this fear mongering on a grand scale? There’s a lot of invasion of privacy going on at the moment, all in the name of crime prevention/anti terrorism, Dna databases, Registering your foreign travel details, stop and search, arrest for just taking pictures, CCTV cameras etc.

Anyway heres another take on the above add:

And another:

And another:

And finally:

And on another subject:

And finally for good measure:

More pictures can be found at the rather excellent BoingBoing site.

She’s not all there, take her away…

Unbelievable.

The full story here.

Parents have complained that a children’s TV presenter with one hand is prompting awkward questions from young children. So how should you explain this kind of disability to a child?

No-one comes up with wrong-footing questions quite like a young child. And young, curious minds don’t hesitate to point out differences in people they see around them.

A minority of parents expressed concern that Ms Burnell’s appearance was “scaring” children. One father said he feared it would give his daughter nightmares and a mother said her two-year-old girl could not watch because she thought the presenter had been hurt. Ms Burnell, 29, says she doesn’t take this personally but these kind of comments highlight the prejudice that disabled people face.

What is this place, China? Where they keep their disabled people out of sight? Isn’t it about time some of these parents unwrapped the cotton wool they keep their little darlings in and explained to them why this presenter only has one hand?

It is picked up later in the story, but this does paragraph sums it up for me:

The problem lies with the parents, not the children, says Sir Bert Massie from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I think what’s happening is a number of adults do have prejudices, do have very negative views about disabled people, and instead of admitting the views are their own, they’re projecting them on to their children and saying the children are doing this. And of course they don’t give their names [on message boards], so it’s all anonymous.

To criticise someone who has a physical disability, I think these people need to get over their own disability. A mental disability.

The Mary Whitehouse Experience.

A man who uses his home near Bristol as a studio for adult films has been confronted by neighbours protesting outside his property.

“James Edwards, 42, operates a legal pornographic film studio from his four-bedroom home in Bradley Stoke. People who live in the same cul-de-sac demonstrated outside Mr Edwards’ house with placards claiming his business is affecting the prices of their property.”

“Police said they only have evidence of legal activity and can take no action.”

I did think that setting up that kind of business in a residential are would be a bit unusual, it must happen elsewhere, however when I saw this quote, I realised who’s side I was on:

“If you’ve got pornography here now, you’re going to have prostitution next, you’re going to have drugs. In a residential area?”

You mean that prostitution and drug dealing doesn’t happen in other residential areas? It’s quite a leap to suggest that because someone has a legitimate business albeit a little more unusual than the norm, means that the neighbourhood is going to go to hell.

Moral Outrage, don’t you just love it?

Chao’s. Apparently.

London has been hit by it’s biggest snowfall since 1991.  Of course the whole transport network fell flat on its face as a result. Usually I’d be the first to criticise those who run the privatised transport system in this country for probably thinking that we would never get hit by snow like this, so why should we spend money on snow clearance equipment we may not need?

But I won’t. The heaviest snowfall fell in the Thames valley which has the largest population concentration in this country and as such a transport network to match.

The media made a song and dance about, interviewing the usual disgruntled travellers trying to get to work and businessmen complaining about how much money has been lost in the economy as a result.

As I said before, we haven’t had snow like this for eighteen years, If snow like this was a regular occurrence and everything ground to a halt, then yes there would be cause to complain.

Get over it. The snow will be gone in a few days and it will be business as usual.

Writing to reach you…

The UK government has said it accepts a report’s recommendation that the Royal Mail should be part-privatised.

The study by Richard Hooper says new minority owners can offer the “confidence, experience and capital” needed to carry out vital changes.

Describing the current Royal Mail as “untenable”, the report adds that the universal service is under threat without modernisation.

Dutch firm TNT said it would be interested in a stake in Royal Mail.

Why is it that the solution to the problems of a state owned business is to privatize it? Reading the report into the Royal mail’s problems one thing is abundantly clear: Lack of modernisation in comparison to Germany’s Deutsch Post for instance.

But why the lack of modernisation? Because of decades of little investment by successive Governments.

The German government allowed Deutsch Post to plough back postal income into efficiency investments over the years. They used their monopoly income to improve service – but also buy dozens of private companies to become the biggest logistics operator in the world.

This simply hasn’t happened in the UK.

The trouble is, even with this “part privatisation” the Government is continuing to go down the road of the previous conservative Government; not wanting to invest and modernise itself, sell it off to the private sector.

But how long before it is wholly privatised, the best bits cherry picked, more jobs lost, unprofitable postal routes either restricted or closed, and price increases?

And you would have thought that they would have looked at the previous privatisation of former state owned services, they have been nothing short of disastrous for the UK customer and very profitable for the shareholder.

In short: Keep it wholly nationalised, make the investment, modernise and reap the rewards that it will return to the UK taxpayer, and not the dividend the shareholder alone will pick up instead.

Why is this Government not prepared to invest in this business at a time when it has thrown billions of tax payers money at private organisations such as the banks?