The Times today has important poll results on global heating.Excerpts:Only a quarter of people believe that climate change is the most serious problem that the world faces, according to a poll for The Times ...undertaken last weekend, ...only two in five people in Britain accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is largely man-made.83 per cent accept, from what they have heard, that the Earth’s climate is changing and that global warming is taking place, with 15 per c... Read Full Story

There's a new Twitterstorm brewing about ex-soldier Paul Clarke.According to this report in a local paper, he finds a sawn* off shotgun in a bin liner at the bottom of his garden. In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a [sawn]-off shotgun and two cartridges. "I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him. "At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the ta... Read Full Story

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed it is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse, including rape and torture, of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers. The lawyer representing the alleged victims, Phil Shiner, said there could be hundreds of uninvestigated claims of abuse.Occupation: Jobbing Squaddie It's what we're trained to do, it's just our job.If jumped up Hitlers want to get tooled outwith nukes and gas and germs that they can lobat us, we'll bring them down, no fuckin doubt.It wasn't ... Read Full Story

It is right and good that the Green Party should use the coming General Election to put forward and celebrate the many achievements of our elected representatives. Truly, we punch well above our weight when we manage to overcome the dysfunctional electoral system and fight our way into the corridors of ...er...influence.However, General Election 2010 demands far more than a quiet recitation at how good our representatives are at doing what they are paid to do. The political territory in 2010 ... Read Full Story

Astroturfing is paying people to comment on blogs &c. It is related to viral marketing, product placement, guerilla marketing and a host of other ways to influence social consciousness through paying people to evangelise.Fair play to Left Foot Forward, who did a bit of research on a typical piece of pro-Conservative commentary on their blog, and traced the iP address back to Anne Nunan, Director of IT at Conservative Central Office, 25 Victoria St and Vince Cooper of the same address. Th... Read Full Story

Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted last year's Credit Crunch, is predicting another such crisis in the future.His argument is summarised in an FTarticle here.In essence, he says that the Carry Trade, leveraged speculation on currency, is pumping up another asset bubble which will inevitably burst, only this time Governments will not have the resources to bail out the bankers, so we will all have to go back to wearing animal skins and hunting mastodons.In the unlikely event that ther... Read Full Story

I was going to fill in a Press Complaints Commission report, but then decided to try the Daily Mail first, before the tiger of the Press complaints commission goes and sits on their lap, purring and licking itself.Littlejohn asserts: "There is a welter of countervailing evidence that, far from warming up to boiling point, the Earth is actually getting cooler and the ice caps thicker".The statement about the ice caps getting thicker is false.I asked him to give a reference for this assertion, ... Read Full Story

Goldman Sachs’s Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All (Update1) - Bloomberg.com: "Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy.“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths," No we do not. Brian is touting the discredited "trickle down" theory, which is demonstrably u... Read Full Story

Brilliant article by Will Hutton in the Observer on Sunday, but I cannot find it today. You'll have to check your recycling basket. Page 8 Take home points: He is talking of a Tobin tax on financial transactions, such as dealing in derivatives . The tax will not just go to poorer countries, but also to insure and cushion against the next Credit Crunch. A tax of 0.01% on Sterling deals would raise £2bn a year. This is a big moment, because the Treasury has been against Tobin Taxes up to n... Read Full Story

Copied from :Rupert Read See the MediaGuardian: 'Sidewiki changes everything'. Now _we_ can start to take back the power from the PR people... ____________________________________________________ Read what Google has to say And when you're done, and have set this up on your computer (it will take you less than a minute - the privacy sacrifice is a relatively small price to pay, in my view), go visit Nestle' and see what we've done to Nestle's website...! See also the sidewiki Ruper Read... Read Full Story