
Jimmy Leach
There's always the Twitter option
AIDS: THE PANDEMIC OFFICIALLY IN DECLINE
The HIV pandemic which started 28 years ago is officially in decline, two of the world's leading health organisations said yesterday. Health Editor Jeremy Laurence reports.
PATRICK COCKBURN: BRITAIN'S IGNORANCE OF IRAQ IS ALREADY APPARENT
Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 senior British officials have gently hinted that what went wrong was the fault of the Americans and, if there is any blame left over, it belongs to Tony Blair. That's according to Patrick Cockburn who writes on the first day of the Chilcot enquiry. While here our sketchwriter describes the whole first day's event as boring, miasmic and faintly dishonest.
TORIES BELIEVE BROWN WILL GO TO THE COUNTRY IN MARCH
Senior conservatives believe that Gordon Brown may call a general election next March to head off the prospect of bad economic statistics scuppering his claim that he had guided Britain safely out of recession. By Andrew Grice, Political Editor.
I feel as though I don't talk all that much about what life is like on the unit itself - rather reflect on my own feelings about the Eating Disorder... I fear I may often sound like a robot repeating myself about my fears and thoughts, moments of anxiety, all of the big things, whereas in reality, daily life on an Eating Disorder unit is anything but big news. The highlight of a day could be as mundane as a 'trip' to John Lewis where I drink real coffee (it's all decaf here as caffeine can speed the metabolism making weight less accurate to calculate), surround ourselves by yummy mummies and aging couples who sadly have nothing to say to each other and just stare into their coffee cups wondering if there is anything left to say. I'm lucky - I'm far enough through the programme to be able to escape to the library or the cinema every so often to get away from the stress and drama of the unit. Others are not so lucky - those who have to be observed more often, some on bedrest and others bound to wheelchairs have very little to do other than knit or sleep the day away, especially when the weather is as it is now.
It seems there is a huge gap now between those with no access to time out and those of us those few steps further ahead, desperate to get out at any oppurtunity. We still have most of our meals on the unit but sit in an unsupervised dining room and no longer have to spend our hour after each meal in a horribly unwelcoming room being forced to listen to the howling of the ladies on Loose Women. For that I am unbelievably greatful.
But what comes with freedom is reponsibility. We are given a further degree of trust to be able to go out and be expected to eat snacks or meals on our own without being told, without the assistance of nurses and without the offer of support during and after the chocolate bar or sandwich. After six months + of treatment, you become used to being fed, having food cooked and prepared for you in what is often described here as being like a prescription. Food is energy, food is what we need to live: it's our 'medication'. So, as a person who suffers from any given illness having to take pills every day, day in day out, so we have to take food every day at certain times, as one would with medication. All is ok with support - it becomes mechanic, robotic - but in my case that is dependent on relying on feeling as though I am eating because 'they' are giving me food to eat.
Recently I have decided to take this time to challenge myself in a way that I have never really coped with before - eating out, alone. It sounds easy, but last week I found myself dissecting a sandwich, spitting most out into a serviette and leaving half my latte to go cold. I have skipped snacks, restricting again as I used to. Today I managed a pack of veggie sushi alone but it was half the amount that I should have had. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I am being honest with the staff and they are aware that I'm struggling with being able to take responsibilty for myself - but I'm also highly aware that the closer I become to being discharged, the more I have to force myself to go against everything this illness wants me to do. I have been victim to this for too long.
It's time to really pull my socks up, but it feels like I only have little ankle socks that can't be stretched any further (worst metaphor EVER? Perhaps so, give me a medal). I find myself unsure how to make the next move, other than to practise - what else can I do?
The most frustrating thing about this is that I am 23, I have been here before, I know that if I continue like this I will remain stuck and perhaps take backward steps in my recovery and I know what I have to do to make it work - simply to make myself do what normal people do, whether I feel I should or not. Just f**king do it.
Gisela Stuart (Lab)"....For continuing to work hard for her constituents even though the odds are against her winning again.."
Chris Mullin (Lab) "....for sharing his knowledge of how politics really works through great fiction and autobiography and for only having a black and white telly."
David Howarth (LibDem) "...he has been a principled and honest MP, who has always stood up for the rights of not just his constituents but everyone in Britain....."
Lynne Featherstone (LibDem) "..for being one of the 'saints' in the expenses scandal, for her intolerance of bureaucratic buck-passing and for her real empathy for the socially deprived in Haringey."
Douglas Carswell (Con) "..,one of the few MP's to consistently call for reform of parliament and criticise the concept of 'safe seats' - and all this well before the current expenses scandal."
To add your nomination or to cast your vote, visit the yoosk website or tweet your nomination at #bestMP. Nominations close on the 27th November.
- Governments should pay attention to what international inspectors say (a recommendation made already by the Butler commission);
- A government may calculate its engaging in armed intervention but it is hard to foresee how things may develop. (Cf. today Iran);
- Governments should take the UN Charter legal restrictions on the use of force seriously. While the UK did not seek to claim that preventive war was permissible, its justification for joining the armed intervention was thin and unpersuasive. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, did advise that the UK could rest its case on it, in a secret memo (later leaked) he noted that it might not have been accepted by an international tribunal.
But the Inquiry website has not published the paper, or much else. How sensitive can it be? Regime change went ahead.
The website does have a page containing "evidence" from the Foreign Office and the MoD on UNSCRs 1900-2001 and the no-fly-zones respectively. Both are recent constructs for the Inquiry, dated November 2009. In the absence of actual contemporaneous evidence, this adds to the feeling that the only version of events that will be published on the Inquiry website is the official one.
tinyurl.com/yaedmpn
Dolly rockers
Vampire Weekend’s latest video for their new single, “Cousins” is a perfect match for their exuberant style. Best explicit use of a dolly in recent memory
Oprah shout outs
The Oprah Winfrey Show has been on air since 1986 and Oprah has been bellowing the names of her celebrity guests ever since, as this mildly unflattering YouTube compilation/celebration demonstrates
tinyurl.com/ye8ncvj
Mobile music
Music streaming service Spotify has announced it is now available on the Symbian mobile phone operating system, meaning that you can now use Spotify on Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung phones
tinyurl.com/yl2ytou
Last night's biopic on Gracie Fields pulled in a record 1.4m for the channel (including me), for an insightful piece that starred Jane Horrocks and showed the discrimination the mill lass suffered for the 'crime' of having married an Italian at the outset of World War Two, even though she'd been out to the front to sing for 'our boys'. Tom Hollander - Thick of It fans might remember him as the minister in In the Loop, the film version of the satirical show - was excellent as Italian film producer Monty Banks (aka Mario Bianchi).
The 3.3% share that BBC Four managed last night was its best-ever. The audience of 1.4m matched the channels previous best, for The Curse of Steptoe in March 2008.
We also learned, in a neatly scheduled documentary that followed, that "Our Gracie" wasn't really a mill lass, more of a child prodigy from musical theatre. In many ways, as an ordinary girl with a great set of lungs, she filled the same space in society as some of today's X Factor divas, though her supporters and relatives, shown in interviews last night, saw her as much more than that. Musical hall veteran Roy Hudd even compared her to Frank Sinatra.
BBC Four's earlier piece on Enid Blyton pulled in 1.2m, very good for a digital channel. Next up is the channel's treatment of Margot Fonteyn.
This is quality stuff. So hands off Mark Thompson and hands off Tories!
I wrote yesterday about how the Inquiry has so far failed to publish any of the many documents that it has been given. Hutton published nearly all relevant documents. I wondered whether this was part of a plan to avoid witnesses preparing their answers. It would have been a bit pointless as the government witnesses will know about the documents already.
But anyway, the witnesses have seen the very documents on which they will be questioned but the public won’t.
Whose side is the Inquiry on?
Follow the Inquiry at Iraq Inquiry Digest.

Tim McGarry at the Slugger Awards
Tonight in Belfast, we’re running the second in what I hope will become the annual ‘Slugger Awards‘.
These awards – previewed here on the Amnesty blog – are something of a departure for political weblogs. It would be fair to say that politicians are – for the most part – less than thrilled by the way that blogs have transformed politics.
The Slugger Awards are something of an attempt to redress the balance. Slugger is unusually visible in Northern Ireland’s politics. It has over 34,000 unique visitors per month and Stratagem/ComRes polling shows that 96% of NI Assembly Members read it.
Originally published at Local Democracy. Please leave any comments there.
What if you were walking home one day and everything stopped, as if on pause? The cars ground to a halt where they were in the road, people stopped walking mid-stride, mid-nose-scratch; birds froze in the sky and the planets and sub-atomic particles stopped orbiting? What if all change ceased suddenly and stayed that way for an entire day or a whole year throughout the universe?
Is it possible?
We know time exists, say scientists, because changes happen. But what if they didn’t? If it were possible for a period to exist where nothing changed anywhere, then it could equally be possible that between this paragraph and the next a ‘freeze’ could happen all over the universe that could last a million years, or that a million years have passed between this paragraph and the one before but you just weren’t aware of it.
( Read more... )
As one who has a small amount of legal knowledge on this particular topic, I often shudder to the degree of spilling my morning tea, when reading things in the media about the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Perhaps the tabloid press can be forgiven for making up such trumpery, but when more respected news publications confuse the facts, this is of grave concern. Though, still one might forgive the publics false conception on the ECHR with such 'codswallop' floating around in the septic tank of the British media. However, it is less easy to be so gracious to David Cameron's Conservative party who often speak about the ECHR with as much legal accuracy as you might expect from a mentally retarded baboon.
Now the question is; is this due to them actually not understanding the ECHR and the judgments coming from Strasbourg or is are they deliberately twisting it to fit their inherent allergy to all things European?
First, I will note that I come to no conclusion on the above question. Yet, I will highlight what I mean by listing a few (not exclusive by any means) myths on the ECHR. I will also note that our current government are not immune from this contagious disease and have been recently more encouraged to make regrettable comments about the ECHR, often when cases go against them.
General Media Myths
It didn't get even to court
Often we will see headlines such as 'Human Right to have Porn in Prison'. Completely untrue, like 90% of all attempted cases it was thrown out at a very early stage. Just because one madmen brings a case doesn't mean that it was decided in his favour or even that it got to court. But you wouldn't get that from reading about it certain parts of the press.
They didn't say that!
To take a recent example. You might have read that you can no longer have a crucifix in a classroom. UNTRUE!! (Sorry, my anger got the better of me). Briefly: Italy signed up to the idea of religious pluralism as protected in ECHR. It was law that every classroom had to have a crucifix. Italy argued that a crucifix is not religious it is a national symbol. Court said yes it is religious and that it can not be law to have it in every classroom. Note: it is not law to have one in every classroom in Ireland or in the UK so we are completely unaffected. If you are in a Catholic school by all means have a crucifix.
It's not the EU!
Please note: The ECHR is not any thing to do with the EU. The ECHR predates the EC and has nearly twice as many members, including Turkey and Russia. It is a part of the Council of Europe.
Some Conservative induced myths
You can't have photos of Criminals.
Yes you can. Simple. Art 8 would prevent you putting up a poster of someone willy-nilly but if you can show that you are doing it in order to protect against crime it is unlikely that Strasbourg would care.
A Bill of Rights would be just as good
What criteria do you have to pass to have Human Rights? You have to be human. Anybody on European Soil who is Human has rights protected by the ECHR. British Rights-are not, and can not be Human Rights. If you wouldn't loss any rights if we pulled out of the ECHR and enacted a British Bill of Rights, then why do it. Could we not simply do what most countries do and have a complementary Bill of Rights running along side the ECHR?
Lunchbox. Foil wrapped sandwich. Thermos. Tupperware. Homemade pasta salad.
The images that popped up into your mind while reading those words did not exactly ooze glamour now, did they? You probably associated those words with soggy food, living on a budget and a lonely office nerd awkwardly packing up his embarrassing lunch from a plastic box while screwing off the lid on his pathetic thermos.
Good.
Because that is exactly what the readymade-food companies’ want you to associate homemade packed lunches with. They want you to feel embarrassed and cheap when it’s time for lunch at the library or the office and everyone goes to buy something from the cafeteria except the cheap skank – yes, you.
The fast- and readymade-food corporations have applied this social taboo of bringing your own packed lunch with the full support from consumer society and what do we get? A society which sees consumption as a natural cause of living - and let’s not forget the thousands of companies who are making big bucks on your embarrassment, oh yes, they’re riding on this wave too! The CEO’s of these companies are probably laughing their asses of in their Malibu beach houses (which your money built btw) while you’re chewing on a store-bought turkey wrap made of old couches and lard.
We have this idea (especially the younger generations) that if we bring our own food to public places, we immediately transform into a corny and socially retarded dinosaur who owns lunchboxes and cats and a gramophone that stopped working 16 years ago.
Nahh, we’re the ‘consume and consume-generation’ and we want to be hip! We want to buy colorfully wrapped sandwiches accompanied by nice take away lattes (non-fat milk, extra foam and caramel syrup) which we can dump into the nearest bin before we run off to our lectures. No dishes, no fuss, no responsibility. Ahhh life is good when you’re young and care free.
Never mind that a homemade packed lunch would probably cost you a fraction of the take-away meal and contain less trans-fat, e-numbers and preservatives. The point is that it is way cooler to buy a mass consumed hamburger and a [fake]strawberry flavored-drink because I don’t want people to think that I have a weird mom that made me rye bread sandwiches as a child and always made me wear dream catchers around my neck.
Now if you excuse me people, I am going to enjoy my packed broccoli and sourdough sandwich and if anyone in the library even gives me a weird look - I’ll go all South Central Latina loca on that sorry mofo’s ass.
CHEERS MY DEARS - X X X
For those in a coma since Harry Potter dawned on the world’s consciousness, Quidditch is a wizard sport played on broomsticks.
In JK Rowling’s version teams play in mid-air scoring goals with a magic ball called the Quaffle. The game has no fixed length and its close is signalled by the catching of a small gold ball with wings called the Snitch.
America’s version appears less exciting and slightly embarrassing as students run around with small replica brooms between their legs and attempt to score goals. It’s a bit like rugby, except the players are quite small and weedy.
One of the key instigators of Harvard’s Quidditch team is reported to have been Alana Biden, niece of America’s vice president Joe Biden. Despite Harvard’s cash-strapped status the team secured a $600 grant towards equipment –presumably muggle versions of brooms, Quaffles and Snitches.
More than 200 US universities are known to play the sport and it is proving popular with students.
“Quidditch is the coolest sport ever. It is the top sport in America. We are so excited to be here!” remarked one Harvard player during a tournament against, another Ivy League heavy weight, Yale on Friday. Her excitement did not seem dampened by the Harvard's loss to Yale in their debut match.
Watch the teams in action here.
Image courtesy of Getty
Here's Mel Thompson for Belief Week!
Enjoy.
Now to the maghreb where on 15th May last year a group of peaceful students decided to stand up to another regime. Amnesty are publicizing this case.
Finally, what happened to the comments (very few of which were complimentary to Insp Truscott and P.C Plod) on the Birmingham Six post? It has reappeared denuded of any criticism. I would just like to say..........
