Simon Jenkins has a suitably stentorian article on the Diana Inquest in today’s Guardian, which has set off a chain comment reaction. The posts deserve reading in full, and can be divided between those who (a) think the whole thing is a waste of money, and that the death of Dodi Fayed and Diana was an accident (b) those who believe that it was truly the fiendish plot as outlined by Mr Fayed Sr. in the witness box, and (c) those who’ll believe anything.

The winning entry so far…

In the years before Diana’s death:
* Kristol, Kagan et al were winding up research prior to publication of PNAC documents which were to serve as Bush & Blair’s blueprints for Middle East adventures.
* PNAC thinktankers were hard at work in the mid 1990s dotting the ‘i’s on working plans for ‘American hegemony’ and ‘full-spectrum dominance’ - round about the time Diana took up with her Muslim lover.
* ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences:Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century’ - detailing the massive capability of US military - was about to roll off the presses.
* Somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon a plan to invade Afghanistan was unfolding and ended up in the Oval Office in-tray before 9/11/2001.
* Samuel Huntington’s divisive ‘Clash of Civilisations and The Remaking of World Order’ was heading for print.
* Meanwhile Diana was planning to speak out more firmly on British arms industry sales of landmines after her controversial visit to Angola.
* Now who in their right mind would want a shining People’s Princess hugging war refugees and criticising the arms industry?
* How on earth would it have helped anyone to have Diana - ravishing in Muslim dress a la Jemima Goldsmith - along with Dodi and their adorable children - splashed across Hello magazine, cocking a snoot at ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and celebrating Muslim-Christian love?
* Just as ‘full-spectrum dominance’ was about to be rolled out in a Muslim direction, who would stomach photos of Di hugging and humanizing little kids in Gaza?
* Luckily, just then, God reached down and took Diana for his own. God always knows best, it would seem.

UK navy to end goat experiments

All sorts of people have been all over bits of this for a few days, but it is Longrider’s post that made me stop short. He quotes George Bull, head of tax accountancy at Baker Tilly:

With British citizens regularly exhorted to undertake as many of their dealings as possible with government via the internet, it’s completely unacceptable that a state-operated system catering for the entire population can’t cope with an estimated 150,000-200,000 filings in one day.

Granted, each filing is a complex transaction - let’s call it 50 page requests per transaction. That’s a total of 10 million page requests. Let’s be generous and call it 250 page hits per filing. That would make 50 million pages  on its single busiest day of the year.

HMRC has over 100,000 employees.

Now consider BetFair.

BetFair handles 3 billion page requests per week or around 500 million page requests per day on average. It has peak loads that can rise to an order of magnitude above that.

BetFair has around 1,000 employees.

It’s not that this stuff can’t be done, it’s just that the state is spectacularly bad at doing it.

Admit it: you had been wondering where he had got to.

Wherever he was, he’s back…

I was out doing some last minute Christmas shopping and found this. I know retro books are “the” thing this festive season, but it had my nostalgic knees knocking for the glory days of the late 70’s. Back to the Trigan Empire.

I have since found this site, and then this, which appears to be run (and written) by a Dutchman; no matter - fetch hither Lord Janno, and summon the wise old Peric.

A couple of months ago, when the EU  Constitution  Reform Lisbon Treaty was in the News and there was much hoo-ha on this shambles of an administration’s denial of its manifesto commitment to offer a referendum, I said this:

Let’s take [Richard Laming’s] argument at face value: voting “no” to the Constitution Reform Treaty means that we would be forced to leave the EU and re-negotiate our trade terms as a non-member. No ifs, no buts. You can’t be part of the EU unless you agree to the Treaty.

If that’s true, why is going to be debated by Parliament? Why, indeed, is it going to go through a ratification process of any sort in any member country? If the electorate cannot reject this treaty, how can Parliament? If Parliament cannot reject it, what is it going to be talking about?

No-one seemed to want to give me an answer to that. It appears that this was the correct question to pose. Here, via the excellent EUReferendum, is Austin Mitchell:

We shall be discussing a constitution, which is called a treaty - the constitution that dares not speak its name - for 20 days, but we cannot make a single change to it. We cannot put in a full stop or a comma, and we cannot do anything about abhorrent apostrophes. [my emphasis] I am already looking at holiday brochures and wondering whether the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association is having any decent trips that I can go on to get away from that discussion. The most futile exercise that we have had in this House will be fascinating.

Nosemonkey tells us all the time that this document is too complex and that we pay our parliamentarians to make these tough decisions for us. He tells us that it is too subtle and that the referendum, delivering only a blunt “yes” or “no”, has not the shades of grey afforded by parliamentary ratification. I have always thought that was rubbish and whilst it’s nice to have this confirmed by an MP in the House, it is also profoundly dispiriting.

In Ben Goldacre’s excellent column on this, comes a spectacular comment:

However, they’re usually not so good at telling whether what they are being presented with is the real live biometric of the person who’s trying to get in, or something else more like a fruit pastille.

Snerk.

Observed last night in the House of Lords: Lord Davidson of Glen Clova QC (Lab), HM Advocate General, and Sir Neil MacCormick QC (SNP) deep in conversation.

Is this the first sighting of a London-Edinburgh “back channel” not seen since the final years of the regime of Elizabeth I, as the decks were cleared to prepare for the accession of James VI and I?

Or just friendly banter..?

After scientific analysis of their singular institutions (available on request): 

7 - Germany

6 - Italy

5 - Japan

4 - France

3 - China

2 - USA

1 - UK

Russia.

The Third Rome has destroyed many of its great institutions over the last century, but makes it into the top ten for a number of reasons:

Orthodoxy - Christianity as it was meant to be, adapted for the chilly North.

Those cool soldiers with blue and white striped vests reassure us that, despite a recent wobble, Russian military institutions are still among the finest.

Various carefully nurtured classical cultural organisations, plus a superb education for the elite, means that Russia is still top table in music, ballet, literature and science. Plus, of course, the great game of chess.