Peter Risdon

Screenwriting software nowadays includes some very nice structures for collaboration online. So, there I was this morning, collaborating away in a scheduled work session with someone involved in a project I’m working on, when everything stopped functioning. I opened a web browser and saw a message from British Telecom.
My most recent BT broadband bill [...]

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By Zombie

Good post from Squander Two. Two related points from it:
I’m all for constraining democracy within awkward undemocratic boundaries, as, for instance, the USA’s system does. Imagine how much better British governance could be if the Deputy Prime Minister were always the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister were forced to work with [...]

According to The Telegraph:
In a submission to Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee, which is investigating the disclosure of climate data from the unit, the university said it ‘’strongly rejected” accusations that it had manipulated or selected figures to exaggerate global warming.
The university also denied suggestions that it had breached Freedom of Information rules by refusing [...]

The above photograph was taken in Venezuela yesterday. It shows a McDonnell Douglas MD11 coming in to land at Barcelona airport. The livery is that of Avient Air.
Avient is a controversial company. Based in Wiltshire and run by former British Army officer Andrew Smith, their activities in Africa were highlighted by Amnesty in 2003 here:
In [...]

I just received this email from Mr Paice, my MP (and generally one of the good guys):
Dear Mr Risdon,Thank you for writing to me about EDM 423 and libel law reform. I should explain that Early Day Motions are for backbench MPs and therefore as a Member of the Opposition Frontbench, I am usually unable [...]

Another email from the libel reform campaign:
Dear Friends,
We’re grabbing this chance while we have a quiet 10 minutes to giveyou a bit of advance notice of the biggest, most important, andhopefully the funniest, event in the libel campaign so far this year.
Later on today we are going to publicly announce ‘The Big LibelGig’ when some [...]

From Eric Raymond, in a post titled Who bears the cost of moral vanity:
I was born and educated into the class that produces “gentry liberals”, but I’ve come to loathe them. This is why. It’s always someone else who pays the cost of their posturing. Very often, it’s the people they claim to be helping: [...]

Mick Hartley is, as usual, spot on in his criticism of a recent Peter Singer piece. But what strikes me is that Singer, a Professor of Philosophy, has committed a simple logical error when he asks:
Why do people give generously to earthquake victims, but not to prevent the much larger number of deaths caused by [...]

A characteristic snark from Blood and Treasure:
Incidentally, I believe this is in line with current Tory policy on reasonable self defence.
“This” being a BBC report:
A Russian farmer has been convicted of planting landmines around his field to ward off trespassers.
Bovine partisanship aside, for of course Tories are no more likely to approve of this than [...]