The World Economic Forum Has Ended

It ended yesterday (30/1) so as far as Mubarak's concerned the Egyptians can finish their little tantrum now.

Unless you've been in a coma for the last week you can't help but notice that millions of Egyptians have been risking extreme violence by taking to the streets to call for the removal of their dictator, Hosni Mubarak. While tensions have been rising across the entire region for the last couple of months this Egyptian uprising has been driven by two main factors. Firstly there was the successful uprising in Tunisia or more specifically there have been Internet activists telling the Egyptians that because the Tunisians have done it they can do it too. Secondly there was the leaking of something called the Palestine Papers.

Much like the Wikileaks "Cablegate" this was the release of thousands of Palestinian diplomatic papers relating to the most recent round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). They reveal that the PA, led by Fatah, were prepared to all but surrender to the Israelis by giving them everything they wanted in terms of Jewish settlements, control of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian right to return without securing anything in return. They also implicate Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak and the, then, head of the Egyptian Intelligence Service, Omar Suleiman (now vice-President) in pressurising the PA to give Israel these favourable terms even if the Israelis decided that they wanted even more. So to say that the release of the Palestine Papers was explosive is a massive understatement because they destroyed the reputations of Mubarak and Fatah while seriously damaging the reputation of Israel and completely ending the current round of stalled middle east peace talks.

Initially the Palestine Papers were leaked to the Arabic news service, Al-Jazeera who realised that they were political dynamite so delayed publication until the authenticity of the documents could be verified and the political climate had cooled down. Then someone in Israel passed the Palestine Papers to Britain's Guardian newspaper who announced that they would publish them on January 24th. This forced Al-Jazeera's hand and the Palestine Paper's were published jointly on January 23rd - two days before Egypt's "Police Day" when the role that Mubarak's hated police force play in Egyptian society is officially celebrated. Suddenly January 25th turned into Egypt's first "day of rage" and the start of the uprising.

So hard as it may be to believe the driving force behind Egypt's current uprising is not the Muslim Brotherhood nor the USA but Israel and Mubarak himself. This rather strange move was made for two main reasons;

The Tunisian Uprising. Perhaps understandably Israel is incredibly paranoid about it's Arab neighbours being run by populist governments because in the past "populist" has too often meant "anti-Semitic." As a result they've supported and got their western allies to support some very unpleasant regimes across the region including Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia and even Saddam in Iraq until he started having ideas of his own. So when the Tunisians overthrew Ben Ali the Israelis started to worry that it would start a wave of uprising's that would overthrow dictators across the middle east. Or more specifically they began to worry that if Tunisia was able to replace Ben Ali with a secular democracy it would undermine the entire argument that Arab nations need to be ruled by dictators in order to guarantee Israel's security.
Therefore they set about eliminating any support the Tunisian uprising might have enjoyed from the rich, powerful and influential people who attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) by confusing it with a much more complicated example.

Quite apart from sharing a land border with Israel and controlling the Rafah crossing which is essential in maintaining the Israeli blockade of Gaza, Egypt is of massive strategic importance to most everybody in the World. Not only is it the most populous Arab nation with the world's 10th and Africa's largest army it is also home to the Suez Canal. Although only 120 miles (190km) long this tiny stretch of water is really what makes global trade possible. By linking the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea it allows Arabian oil and gas, Asian manufacturing and African minerals to flow into Europe and the Americas. If Egypt was to fall into chaos or see an Iran-style Islamic revolution that caused the Suez Canal to close the world as we know it would end. Therefore you will not find anyone at the WEF who would support any sort of major instability in Egypt. Tunisia on the other hand has some quite nice beaches.

Consolidate Mubarak's Power. Both domestically and internationally pressure has been growing on Hosni Mubarak to step down especially after November 2010's Parliamentary election which Mubarak's party won with something like 110% of the vote. Before the uprising Mubarak was scheduled to face a Presidential election in September 2011. What was expected to happen was that Hosni Mubarak would rig that election, jail any opposition candidates and install his son, Gamal Mubarak, as President. This would have created the perfect conditions for the people of Egypt to rise up, with or without foreign help, and replace the Mubaraks with an internationally recognised transitional government of national unity. By provoking the uprising early Mubarak has created the perfect reason to cancel this Presidential vote and forced his opponents to play their hands early putting themselves in the unenviable position of having to either keep this uprising going until then or face being broken, rounded up and murdered by Mubarak's vicious regime.

I'm sorry I didn't mention any of this earlier but I'm certainly not going to be the person to tell the Egyptians to stop. While I can't, in good conscience, support Egypt being taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood or another, more extreme, Islamist group I know that the world will be a much better place without Hosni Mubarak in it. In his 30 year dictatorship he's managed to turn the birthplace of the Pharaohs into the poorest nation in the Arab League where half the population are forced to survive on less then US$2 per day. In fact the only growth industry in the country is stirring up trouble in the middle east and then getting America to pay to sort it out.

This is a Joke Right.

You may remember the country called Haiti which suffered a devastating earthquake in January 2010 but was unable to do anything about it because of Presidential elections scheduled for November 2010. That election failed to produce a conclusive result so the reconstruction effort had to be further delayed until a run-off vote could be held in January 2011. This election was then further delayed until the Organisation of American States (OAS) could complete a report into the fairness and accuracy of the November 2010 vote. That report has now been published;
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/OAS-Haiti-2011-1.pdf
and although I only received it this morning it doesn't take long to realise that it's not worth the paper it's printed on.

The first problem is that it didn't look at any of the actual votes cast. Instead it only concentrated on the reports of results from the counting stations known as Process-Verbaux's (PV's). Of these a full 9.3% were missing meaning that they'd either been stolen by street gangs who went around smashing up polling stations and intimidating voters or had been destroyed by election officials who didn't like the result. The report authors simply ignored these missing results and didn't bother to investigate what had happened to them even though there was clear anecdotal evidence that these street gangs were linked to two of the Presidential candidates; Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly.

Of the PV's that they did have access to the report authors discovered that 1% showed voter participation of over 100% which is clear evidence of fraud by ballot stuffing. They also determined that 2% of the PV's showed voter participation of over 75% which although not evidence of fraud in itself is suspicious when the national average voter turnout was on 22.8%.

After a small sample study the OAS decided to flag any PV that showed over 50% voter participation and any one candidate receiving more then 150 votes as suspicious. This was a very strange criteria to use because 50% participation is more then double the national average of 22.8% and you would expect to see higher rates of voter participation in densely populated areas close to the capital and in less populated, rural areas that were unaffected by the earthquake. Likewise at a polling station where 1000 votes were cast you would expect that at least one candidate would receive more then 150 votes but at a polling station where only 200 votes were cast it would look very suspicious. So the report authors seem to be saying that they were prepared to permit a certain level of fraud in certain areas.

After these 454 quarantined PV's were re-assessed the report authors decided to exclude 234 and allow 220 of them with little explanation of why some were acceptable and others were not. For the 234 areas that had their results thrown out the report authors conducted a statistical analysis of 311 of the PV's that hadn't been flagged as suspicious and used it to formulate a guess of what the results might have been. These made up results were then imposed on the 234 areas.

The most worrying finding of the report is that by far the highest proportion of irregular PV's - those which were either missing or showed evidence of ballot stuffing - occurred in the Aribonite and Nord districts. Haiti's cholera epidemic began in the Aribonite district and both it and the Nord district have seen the highest incidence of rioting and disorder fuelled by RNDP rumours that the outbreak was started by their INITE rival. Therefore these districts should be considered target areas for the Manigat campaign where votes for Jude Celestin are least likely to be tolerated. Mirlande Manigat and the RNDP refused to co-operate with the OAS in their compiling of the report.

Based on the report and it's omissions it seems to me that the authors would have had no other option then to conclude that due to the chaotic nature of the November 2010 vote and the time constraints placed on them they are unable to comment on the accuracy of the vote. Instead they've decided to conclude that Jude Celestin should be replaced by Michel Martelly in the run-off vote by a margin of just 0.3%. So it seems that the OAS are telling the Haitians that they can only choose between the two candidates that are the best at corruption, something which does not bode well for the nation's future.

If the failings of this report can be summed up in a single paragraph it comes on page 16 where it's stated that "There were 19 candidates contesting for the presidency, demonstrating an active and robust support for elections as the instrument to determine executive governance." This is incorrect. The fact that there were 19 candidates only demonstrates that in the minds of most Haitians the term "President" still translates as "the guy who gets to steal the money."

Here Comes the Censor.

Back like a bad penny the phone hacking scandal has flared up again in the UK. If you've not been following this saga that has been dragging on for the best part of six years it involves the practice of dialling into someones telephone voice messaging service and listening to their messages by entering the PIN number. Throughout the 1990's this was a completely lawful act and was done by everybody, especially people who'd got drunk and left ill-advised messages to ex-girlfriends. Then in 2001 the practice was made illegal and if anything became more widespread. It is now done by all journalists, the police, private investigators, local councils, private security firms and even certain housing trusts. However the scandal only focuses on the actions of certain journalists at one specific newspaper, The News of the World.

Along with The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times The News of the World is part of News International which, in turn is part of News Corp - Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate which also own FOX in the United States. In Britain News International is currently trying to get British government permission for it's planned takeover of satellite broadcaster BSkyB which provides a variety of channels including Sky Sports, Sky News, Sky Arts, Sky Movies etc. That government permission is proving more then a little bit difficult to get with the Liberal Democrat (LibDem) party especially trying to make political capital out of Murdoch bashing. Just before Christmas the LibDem Business Secretary, Vince Cable was forced to resign his cabinet post after being secretly recorded assuring what he thought were voters that the BSkyB deal would never get past the supposedly independent broadcast regulator because he had "declared war on Rupert Murdoch." It was little surprise then that in January the broadcast regulator, OFCOM announced that it would be referring the matter to the fair trade regulator, OFT. The OFT have now basically told News International that they must re-submit their entire plan before it can be considered. The rumour is that for government permission to be granted BSkyB will have to hand editorial control of Sky News over to the government.

This would be a major problem because Sky News is one of only two free to air news channels in the UK. The other is BBC News which already has it's content significantly influenced by the British government. Since the coup/general election the quality of BBC News' output has dropped dramatically and the channel is looking less and less like a news service and more like a televised community centre for the presenters, the production staff and small group of loyal viewers.

Therefore the re-emergence of the phone hacking scandal is an attempt by the government to put pressure on News International in order to force it to give up editorial control of Sky News silencing one of the few independent voices left on British television. The decision for the story to be re-broken by the BBC's business editor at the World Economic Forum is an attempt for Britain to assess what, if any punishment it will recieve for a move that is hardly in line with the principles of free trade. Of course if you'd been relying on BBC News for your news you probably wouldn't have known that the World Economic Forum was going on.


In an unrelated Sky scandal two presenters with Sky Sports have been sacked for questioning whether a female referee was capable of knowing when something was off-side. This happened the day after Vincent Tabak was charged with the murder of Joanna Yeates. So while it's obvious that Andy Gray was never that popular with his colleagues I thought I'd covered this with the phrase "people have openly started to question why the British Crown thinks it's OK to kidnap and murder random members of the public."

Tunisia's Thing.

In recent weeks the people of Tunisia have overthrown their corrupt and autocratic government. Now you couldn't really call this a coup 'd ete because at all times the military were technically following the orders of the government. Nor can you really call it a revolution because there was no organised opposition party driving the movement ready to swoop in with an alternative political system. Instead it was just the Tunisian people telling their government it was time to go. So I suppose the correct thing to call it is an uprising even if in Arabic this translates as intifada and carries with it connotations of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Apart from being difficult to name the uprising creates the problem of where does Tunisia go from here. As the protests were largely driving by high unemployment, rising prices and a thirst for democracy I think it's fair to say that the Tunisians want to build a capitalist society regulated by a democratic government. In itself this is a problem because you only need to look at the attempts and failures of governments across the democratic world to see that organising a fair and functioning, democratic government is not the easiest thing to do.

In Tunisia this task is made even more difficult because for the past 50 years the country has been a one party state. This means that regardless of their actual political persuasion any Tunisian with skills in, say, urban planning would have to join the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party in order to get a job in the civil service. As a results anyone with the skills to actually run a government department are tarnished by links to Ben Ali and the RCD. This is very similar to the situation in Saddam Hussein's Iraq at the time of the American invasion. On that occasion the Americans decided to instantly dissolve Saddam's Ba'ath party and ban any of it's members from playing any further role in public life. This quickly proved to be a huge mistake as Iraq's civil society collapsed throwing the country into a chaos that took seven years and hundreds of thousands of lives to even begin to put right.

Obviously Tunisia doesn't share some of Iraq's other problems such as two religious groups that hate each other or a foreign military occupation but the Iraq example does demonstrate that the Prime Minister, Mohamed Ghanouchi's promise to hold elections within 60 days (mid-March) probably won't be possible. In fact as that promise was made during Mr Ghanouchi's brief time as President you could argue that it was just another attempt by Ben Ali's cronies to cling onto Tunisia's past then help build it a better future. So while I think that the fact that Tunisia's uprising must result in free and fair elections is an absolute the people should be careful not to lose the progress they've made by rushing into them.

Instead I think they should work with and within the government of national unity to allow it to solve so key problems;

Firstly there is the issue of security. Although this problem seems to be solving itself there are still reports of violent protests, looting and members of the secret police loyal to the RCD acting as something of a stay at home army by committing acts of sabotage. These people need to be identified and arrested to bring stability to the country.

Secondly there is a lack of a credible political opposition. As Tunisia has been a one party state for so long anyone who disagreed with the politics of the RCD was sent into exile and those who remained were kept so neutered that they posed no real challenge to the RCD. What's needed now is for those exiles to return and be allowed the time to form proper political parties with real policies about how to run the economy and manage the police force etc.

Thirdly there needs to be a cleaning up of the Tunisian civil service. While everybody had to join the RCD to get a job in the civil service there are those civil servants who joined the party because they genuinely believed in what it stood for and what it was doing. Over time and starting from the very top these people need to be identified and removed from their jobs along with those who are just plain incompetent. Eventually the RCD should be disbanded and prevented from standing in any future election.

Finally there is the issue of the Trablisi clan and the money they stole. It seems that most of them have already fled the country and taken their wealth with them and steps should be taken bring them back. However the priority is to focus on those who have not fled. They should be arrested and put on trial and if convicted forfeit their assets to the government.

Obviously this will all take time so there is little point in holding an election in mid-March. Ideally this should all be done within three months but must absolutely be done within six months. For that to happen the Tunisian opposition need to engage with the RCD through the government of national unity if only to see how the RCD are attempting to slow the process down.

Home Safe

Fair point there was more then a little bit of puking on the train home from Brighton. I blame this all entirely on the silly little welsh bitch of a barmaid at the other Queens Head. Initially I wasn't going to say anything because she's just a young girl down from the valleys. Then I had to walk a mile and half home literally caked in my own vomit so now I'm rather keen to see her face burnt from the history from the planet.

Apart from that it's been quite a good night out and if you use public transport I've found rather a good way to grauntee a carriage all to yourself.

Change of Plan.

As it's a Tuesday I will be going to the pub this evening. However instead of going to a pub in Croydon with my father I'll be going to a pub in Brighton with a friend. There should be absolutely nothing exciting about this but it does mean that I'll be leaving earlier and returning later.

It also means the Tunisia thing is going to have to wait until tomorrow. The main gist of it though is that the Tunisians should now start thinking about working with the government of national unity for the time being at least. I'm not really the Tunisians need me to tell them that because they seem to be doing so well on their own that pretty much everybody is queuing up to claim responsibility for their actions.

Back From Holiday.

With the US/China talks forcing me to keep quiet for a couple of days I decided it was an opportune moment to take a break. So since my last post I've been on an exhilarating holiday to my house where the most adventurous excursion was to the fridge and the most exciting activity was sleeping. Basically I've just had that week off that most of the rest of the country took between Christmas and New Year.

Even this almost didn't get to happen because at dawn on January 20th there was a dramatic development in the Joanna Yeates murder inquiry. If you've not been following this story a young woman, Joanna Yeates went missing on December 17th from Bristol, UK. Her body was found on December 25th (Christmas day) leading to two weeks of overwhelming news coverage where we were all enthralled by the random and unanswered questions of the case such as what happened to the frozen pizza the she brought on the day she disappeared, why was one of her socks missing and most importantly who killed her. At one point her landlord, who lived in the same apartment building, was arrested and held by the police for several days before being released without charge.

At around 06:00 on January 20th the police announced that they'd arrested another man in the very early hours of that morning but refused to give any more details. This forced the media and anyone else who might be interested to risk exposing their Bristol based intelligence networks if they wanted to find out more. Clearly someone decided that the risk was worth it because it soon emerged that the new suspect was a 32 year old Dutch national with a PHD in architecture called Vincent Tabak who lived in the apartment next to Joanna Yeates. As I'm sure you all know Tabak is a Dutch word for Tobacco. Therefore the arrest was an attempt by the Brits to raise the question of what role tobacco played in the failure of the Bristol Abuse Case (BAC) with a view towards strengthening the case that smoking should be banned. Also I think it's fair to say that the phrase "Dutch Tobacco" could be considered a euphemism for cannabis. What probably fewer people know is that while I was at university I shared a house with an architecture student who would look a lot like Vincent Tabak if Vincent Tabak had a dodgy blonde dye job. Therefore the arrest was also an attempt to squeeze anything even vaguely resembling useful information out of the BAC and promote discussion about this housemate and the quality of the information he provided during the planning stages of the BAC.

Of course the fact that Mr Tabak has actually been charged with the murder is a little bit surprising. It was probably done because there are now people openly questioning whether or not the British Crown randomly kidnapped and murdered one of it's own subjects in order to justify a crime against humanity and divert attention away from events in the middle east. Having a foreign national convicted of the crime helps to suppress those questions. As to why Vincent Tabak was specifically chosen there are several possibilities;

1. Vincent Tabak is a Dutch dissident who has caused problems for the Dutch government. So having him framed for this murder and buried in a far off corner of a foreign land solves a problem for the Dutch and solves a problem for the British. I cannot over state how unlikely I think this is but if you don't think this sort of thing goes on try typing the words "Simon Chapman", "Womble" and Thessaloniki" into any Internet search engine.

2. Vincent Tabak is a Dutch spy sent to join the ever growing community of intelligence operatives in Bristol since the BAC begun. He was causing problems for the Brits so they framed him for this murder in order to take him out of the game. Again extremely unlikely because Britain and the Netherlands have enjoyed excellent diplomatic relations for the best part of 500 years. Plus even in espionage circles this is a very dramatic step to take especially with someone who appears to be so low level.

3. The Joanna Yeates murder was a joint operation between Britain and the Netherlands who most certainly gave their prior consent to the BAC. As such Vincent Tabak and the landlord, Chris Jefferies carried out the murder together but the situation evolved so someone had to take the blame it had to be the foreigner because the Brits couldn't be seen prosecuting one of their operatives for carrying out the instructions they'd given him.

Also on January 22nd nuclear talks with Iran ended without resolution or plans to hold future talks. Today (24/1) an Islamic Terrorist bomb killed at least 30 in Moscow preventing the Russian President travelling to the World Economic Forum in Davos. If I was conspiratorially minded I would think that these two events were connected.

Whoa Trippy.

Exactly 20 minutes after I started writing my 20:03 post last night (18/1) the US Geological Survey announced that a 7.4 magnitude struck the Baluchistan province in Pakistan. Observers in the region later confirmed that significant, earthquake-like, geological event took place in that region at that time. Although a 7.4 magnitude earthquake is quite large it's epicentre occurred in a vast area of unpopulated desert meaning that no-one was even knocked off their feet let alone killed in the incident.

Even so with the Chinese President meeting the American President in Washington this was possibly the worst place on earth for an earthquake to strike. Back in the 1970's when Pakistan was developing it's nuclear weapons program it actually used the Baluchistan desert area to test it's nuclear bombs. So any discussion about shock waves in the area automatically touches on issues of nuclear security, India/Pakistan relations and Iran. Also while the historical credibility is open to some debate there are those who claim that like Kurdistan Baluchistan is actually an independent nation made up of bits of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. Over the years literally everybody from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Britain, India, the USA, Russia, the Taliban and Israel have all provided support to the Baluchistan independence movement in order to help destabilise Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan. So any discussion about the region automatically opens up a million and one unsightly arguments about espionage, deception and secret military operations.

So I apologise for sounding like a hippy but excluding a convoluted conspiracy theory involving secret, underground nuclear tests it seems to me that this earthquake was the environment's way of announcing that it's held a meeting about this global warming thing and decided that it's true. Therefore it would prefer it if the USA and China, as the only two nations with the ability to accurately measure global temperature, could possibly find a way of jointly releasing their climate data for public scrutiny as part of the United Nations process on climate change. Obviously not by the end of this current round of talks but ideally before the start of this years COP17 Summit.

Also I'm trying to work out if I'm getting more or less healthy. You see I feel much more tired then I did at this point last year but I also feel as though I've done much more work then I'd done by this point last year. Speaking of which are these US/China talks really going on until January 22nd? It's just I really should start a discussion about the situation in Tunisia and that is going to have to touch on Iraqi reconstruction post-invasion so I really can't think of a way not to make it controversial.

House Nil. Mice Minus One.

The main news of the afternoon is that one of the mice in my grandmother's house met with a bloody end on one of the spring loaded traps. Although the defunct rodent made a terrible witness the general consensus is that it nibbled a bit of the poison and then threw itself on the trap in an act of suicide.

Elsewhere I am trying to work my way through season six of House MD on DVD which is making discussions about pressure patterns within the Hadley cell no less complicated.

On the plus side I will definately be trying to give that quiet thing a try tomorrow.

Yes I've Had a Haircut

And yes that undercover police officer Mark Kennedy is doing his best to impersonate me. And no having having to file and indent report every time I get my haircut doesn't help matters. About two weeks ago I had a short back and sides. This is because apparently if you're a man and you walk into any hairdressers or barbers in Croydon whatever you say gets translated into "short back and sides." I am seriously considering giving up and shaving it off my self but apparently combined with my heavy build and a degree of facial scarring that makes me look a bit threatening.

Or to put it another way; It's 20:03 and I'm back from the pub without anything even remotely interesting to report.

Although I should point out that amongst people who worry about these sort of things the Apple/Israel thing has been something of an open secret for about a year. So much so that an episode of the TV show CSI:NY that was broadcast in the USA in late 2010 and in the UK in early 2011 featured a storyline where a couple of iPads were major clues in the crime. The Israeli government took this as a US government attempt to warn their citizens against using Apple products. So in the most recent round on tension in the Middle East the Israeli Defence Force attacked Palestinian protesters with and excessive amount of tear gas. This prompted American Palestinian solidarity campaigners to protest outside the offices of the company that made the tear gas, CSI, in New York.

Although I thought that response was rather clever I hope the Israelis were wrong about it being a US government thing because from an intelligence perspective it was a f**king disaster. Oh and the important Chinese person is meeting the important American person in America so much to my annoyance I think I'm going to have to go quiet for a while.

Oldham and Saddleworth By-election.

At the British General Election in May 2010 voters in the Oldham and Saddleworth constituency misbehaved terribly. Rather then voting for a Liberal Democrat (LibDem) candidate as they'd clearly been instructed to do they voted for a Labour candidate. Not only that they voted for Phil Woolas the Labour Immigration Minister who committed the great crime of tactfully and humanely diffusing the Ghurka immigration scandal.

Obviously the will of the people couldn't be allowed to stand in this way so for the first time in 100 years a special election court was convened and Mr Woolas (a politician) was convicted of lying during his election campaign. As punishment he was banned from sitting as an MP and expelled from the House of Commons meaning that a by-election had to be held in his constituency to select his replacement.

The idea was that the voters would be so outraged by yet another Labour scandal that they would get it right second time round and vote in a LibDem MP increasing the majority of the ConDem coalition by one. The problem is that on January 13th the voters of Oldham and Saddleworth again failed to do what they were told and voted in another Labour MP with an increased majority. Since then the Crown has frantically been reviewing the result and the campaigns of the political parties involved because if no-one told the voters to behave like that then it means they worked it out for themselves and that's a thought that terrifies illegitimate and authoritarian regimes across the World.

Given the result of the election and the response it provoked it is rather appropriate that in British electoral shorthand the Oldham and Saddleworth constituency is known as Old & Sad.

On a related subject Tunisia has formed a government of national unity but now seem to be backing away from the idea of holding full elections that would allow the people to have a say in that government of national unity. What will happen now is that the Trabelsi clan will try to avoid these elections by playing the Islamaphobia card by arguing that is the elections are allowed to take place it will create a domino effect bringing down neighbouring regimes and increasing the spread of Islamists across North Africa. Although this is an attempt to cling to wealth rather then a legitimate argument it's being helped by activists in neighbouring countries trying to use the Tunisian uprising to instigate uprisings of their own.

Finally.

Today (19/1) Steve Jobs has announced that he is to take a medical leave of absence from his role as the CEO of Apple computers. In an ironic twist he has requested that people respect his privacy during this time.

This is Apple's way of admitting that prior to the worldwide launch of the Apple iPad the company gave details of the security encryption of this and the iPhone to the Israeli government while withholding it from the American government. This gave Mossad sole access to the personal data of Apple users while other countries battled to break the encryption. When you consider that the COP16 Summit was largely organised using a specialised Apple App this is actually quite a serious security issue. I can't comment on how other nations are progressing with the task of breaking the devices encryption but I know that Britain is still on the cusp of achieving it.

When you think about it this was pretty obvious. After all surely most men know to leave Angry Birds alone.

The Tunisian's Have Nearly Done It.

For the past 23 years Tunisia has had to endure the Presidency of a venal little man. Under the rule of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali the nation was turned into a very real police state with censorship, secret police, political kidnappings and lots of torture. Ben Ali's endemic corruption also ruined the economy and over the past few months tensions have been growing amid rising inflation and chronic unemployment.

Matters came to a head around Christmas when a young, unemployed man was arrested by the police for trying to scratch a meagre living by selling fruit and vegetables on the street. He responded by, very publicly, setting himself on fire in protest. Huge publicity stunts with President visiting the injured man in hospital and promising to listen to the concerns of the people had no effect and on January 4th the man died and all hell broke loose. At first the President sent the army onto the streets to break the strikes and quell the rioting. When this didn't work he ordered the army to open fire on the protesters. Although dozens were killed this still didn't work and Ben Ali was forced to make a final, last gasp TV appeal to the public where he promised to step down at the end of his term in 2014 and hold fresh elections. That didn't work either and January 14th Ben Ali was forced to hand the Presidency over to the Prime Minister and flee to Saudi Arabia in the hope of being able to return as President once things had quietened down a bit. The Tunisians were having none of it and the new President was quickly overthrown and was replaced by the Parliamentary speaker who promised to hold full elections within 60 days.

Obviously the full success of the Tunisian uprising can not be known until these elections have taken place. In the meantime the countries politicians are trying to cling to power and avoid elections by forming a coalition government of national unity and Ben Ali's supporters in the secret police are on a rampage looting businesses and burning buildings. The idea is to delay the elections by keeping the state of emergency going on for as long as possible. Then if the elections are held the hope is that the people will be so sick of the violence and chaos that they will vote Ben Ali's supporters back into power to restore law and order. So I think it's time for the rioting to stop.

Haiti: Progress Denied.

On January 12th 2010 an earthquake struck the poorest nation in the western hemisphere killing at least 316,000 people. In the days following the disaster the international response from both governments and private citizens was amazing. Heaven, earth and the US military were moved to provide emergency food and medical aid to the destroyed nation. US$5.8billion was pledged to help with the re-building effort and the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) was set up to safe-guard the money and provide some of the best expertise to help re-build the country.

One year on precisely nothing has happened. Sure there has been a Cholera epidemic that continues to kill around 50 people a week but I would hardly call that progress. The main problem at the moment is the election of a new government. Constitutional terms limits meant that the President at the time of the 'quake, Rene Preval was unable to continue in the job after November 2010. For some reason a state of emergency that would suspend the election and allow Preval to continue in the job was not declared meaning that the Haitian government led reconstruction effort would have to wait until a new government could be selected at a general election in November. In the meantime the only relief and reconstruction work being done is done by international aid agencies further undermining the Haitian government and hollowing out the nation state making Haiti even more of a "Republic of NGO's."

With Haiti's civil service all but destroyed and most of the population either dead or displaced when the general election finally came it was little more then a sick joke. To no-one's surprise it failed to provide a clear winner meaning that the reconstruction effort would have to be delayed again until a run-off vote between the two leading candidates could be held in January 2011.

With the date of the run-off fast approaching and under extreme pressure from all sides Haiti's election officials suddenly discovered that they could suspend the date of elections. So on January 4th 2011 they pushed the date of the run-off back further until the Organisation of American States (OAS) publish a report into the fairness of an election where only around 4% of the population were actually able to cast their vote. This delay is simply not acceptable because the mandate for the IHRC expires in September 2011 and if it is not making progress by then it's mandate will not be renewed and the money pledged for Haiti's reconstruction will go back to the donor countries.

The problem the OAS has in it's involvement in Haiti is quite simple, Venezuela and Bolivia. These two countries constantly accuse the OAS of being biased towards the Imperialist Unites States and keep threatening to leave and set up a rival organisation. This forces the OAS to give both these countries more of a voice then perhaps they deserve. This is a problem because both Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are trying to divert attention away from massive problems in their own countries by engaging in a diplomatic pissing contest with the United States. This means that they would rather run down the clock and see hundreds of thousands of Haitians die then allow America the diplomatic victory of turning Haiti into a safe and secure nation.


On the plus side though Haiti seems to have sorted out many of it's post-'quake bandwidth problems meaning that I can stop talking to them like idiots. Now if only the international relief agencies can try and remember that the country is a disaster area not an adventure playground we might make some progress.

Insurrection Over.

In case no-one's noticed Tunisia is currently in the process of swapping their Fascist Dictator for a Communist Dictator who suspiciously has exactly the same name as the Fascist Dictator. At the moment Britain is leading the discussion over who will get control of the North-African nations lucrative tourism concessions.

Meanwhile back in Britain both Croydon Council and the Notting Hill Housing Trust (NHHT) have both been given the Queen's permission to re-occupy #50 Beechwood Avenue (the henhouse). They had a large conference at the address yesterday (13/1) and I assume NHHT won because today they sent a builder round to carry out light maintenance work and generally try to provoke anything looking like a reaction from me.

Also today (14/1) my father had a routine meeting with his GP at the Parchmore Road Medical Centre to discuss his medication (statins). This was made much more stressful for all concerned because at around dawn this morning someone dropped a medicine bottle in my grandmother's house marked "Retard" meaning that for today my father has officially been taking Retard Pills.

Finally British doctors have released some nonsense about breastfeeding which was mainly designed to make all the middle aged women who present the news focus on babies. Aww! babies aren't they lovely.

Isn't it so nice to be back to normal?

Chiles Terrible Year.

I was going to avoid telling this story just to spite Silvio Berlusconi but it turns out he's really not that important so:

Back in February 2010, long before the miners, Chile was struck by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake. Although the epicentre was off-shore and didn't result in any meaningful tsunami this was technically known as "A fu*king huge earthquake." If that wasn't bad enough at the time the 'quake struck the Chilean authorities were loading their stocks of unstable, weapons grade nuclear material onto US trucks to be transported to a more geologically stable storage facility within the United States. This was being done as a prelude to the US convened summit on nuclear security that was held in April 2010.

This turned out to be the shortest summit in history. The Chairperson simply stood up and said something like; "Across the World there are vast stockpiles of nuclear materials being held in politically and geologically unstable regions. For the safety of the World we need to agree how to move these stockpiles to safe and secure locations. The other delegates then all looked at the Chilean delegation who were rocking gently in the corner before turning as one and saying; "Right, where do we sign?!"

With the main business resolved in about ten minutes the rest of the summit was used to give the USA and the Russian Federation time to answer questions about how their newly signed START II Treaty would attempt to make the World safer by reducing both countries stockpiles of nuclear weapons. There was also an attempt by the Russian and Brazilian delegations to present their freshly negotiated fuel swap deal that would allow Iran to fuel it's nuclear reactors without gaining the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons. This quickly shot down by the Americans who decided to impose more sanctions anyway. During the process the Iranians gave everybody the impression that they must be up to something sinister because their diplomats quickly manage to turn every attempt at negotiating into a farce by leading people down endless and pointless blind alleyways. Although I cant support this assessment I can't help but agree that Iranian diplomats can be very hard work. Personally I blame the sanctions.

Obviously with Hugo Chavez and Evo Morale's "South American Socialist Miracle" simultaneously both failing and threatening to expand into Brazil the fact that Chile helped the "Evil Americans" secure a massive diplomatic victory by managing to reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by nations and reduce the chances of terrorist gaining nuclear weapons while also caving in to the dirty Jewish/ Zionist/ Lizardpeople conspiracy could not go unpunished. So Chile spent the next five months being ignored and insulted by their South American neighbours. So I think we can excuse them for getting a little over excited by the rescue of their miners.

More Flooding.

For more then three weeks Australia's North-eastern province of Queensland has been experiencing extreme flooding that has so far killed 12. For about the same length of time Sri Lanka has also been experiencing extreme flooding that has killed 23 and forced another 325,000 onto emergency food aid. In the last few days Brazil has joined this unfortunate group with flooding and mudslides that have killed at least 370 with the death toll expected to rise as high as 500.

Obviously now is not the time to be playing politics. However these extreme weather events and natural disasters do serve as further evidence of global warming and climate change. Over the years global warming has caused global ice masses to melt increasing the amount of water in the hydrosphere. In the northern hemisphere, which is currently experiencing it's winter, this extra water has frozen and fallen as snow. In the southern hemisphere, which is currently experiencing it's summer, this water has fallen as extra heavy monsoon rains. This trend of increased rainfall has actually been going on for a couple of years now but normally the trade winds cause the rain to fall over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean so no-one really noticed.

This year the La Nina weather system has changed all that. Normally what happens is you get two areas of high air pressure off the coasts of Australia and Peru creating an area of low pressure across the Pacific. This allows all the weather from Australia and the Indian ocean to sweep into the area of low pressure. Due to changes in ocean temperature La Nina forces the South-American area of high pressure back across the Pacific until it meets the Australian area of high pressure creating a blocking system. This quite literally blocks the rains from moving out across the Pacific and prevents weather systems formed in the Indian ocean moving on towards Australia. With an area of low pressure now formed over South-America weather systems that were formed over the Atlantic Ocean are able to force their way across the continent starting with Brazil.

Given the role that climate change has played in these floods it is perhaps a cruel irony that the extensive coal mining that goes on in Queensland actually makes Australia the worlds largest, per capita, emitter of greenhouse gases. For the last couple of years there have been heated political arguments in the country over whether or not a levy a sort of carbon tax against these mining operations. The flood water has shut the mines down completely.

Britain's Legal Barrage.

On January 11th Britain released such a flood of surprise legal verdicts you would think they were trying to cover something up. The following list is nowhere near exhaustive but I think it seems to cover the main points;

Wikileaks. The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange appeared at Woolwich Crown Court for a procedural hearing as part of his fight against extradition to Sweden. The purpose of the hearing was to allow the Judge to establish that the accused would surrender to bail and hear skeleton arguments from both the prosecution and defence in order to decide if there was still a case to answer. The Judge decided that there was still a case to answer and set the date of the next hearing for February 7th. As this is only an extradition hearing rather then a trial and because the Swedish authorities only want to question Mr Assange rather then prosecute him this case should be thrown out. However as the Swedes really want to use Mr Assange as a bargaining chip with the Americans the extradition will probably go through with little regard for the law.

N10 Rioter. On November 10th 2010 British students rioted outside the Conservative party HQ in Millbank Tower. One of the most sensational moments of the day was a fire extinguisher being dropped from the roof of the building. After an appeal by the police an 18 year old student, Edward Woollard quickly handed himself in and admitted the offence. With it being obvious what he did wrong no defence evidence was presented at the trial and it was just up to the Judge to impose a 32 month prison sentence for the offence of violent disorder. The police are keen for this to be seen as a deterrent by claiming that Mr Woollard ruined his life in a moment of madness. Unfortunately they've failed to notice that Mr Woollard is both ginger and a bit ugly so without the opportunity of a university education his life was ruined long before the riots.

MP's Expenses. Also at Southwark Crown Court Labour MP, Eric Illsley, changed his plea and pleaded guilty to a charge of theft by way of fraud and false accounting relating to his expenses claims. He has been freed on bail for the Judge to consider pre-sentencing reports. Apart from enforcing the public's perception that Labour MP's are all criminals who can't be trusted the idea is to enforce the idea that I'm a thief and a fraudster.

Rapey Policeman. Stephan Mitchell was sentenced to an indeterminate prison sentence for abusing his position as a police officer to rape and sexually abuse a series of vulnerable young women. Apart from being an attempt to take the sting out of any future protests by showing that the state is prepared to prosecute police officers for wrong doing this was intended to enforce the message that apart for being a thief and a fraudster I'm also a rapist, a paedophile and a sexual predator. Of course if any of that was true the Brits would have no problem bringing criminal charges against me. But if any of it was true they wouldn't bother because it would mean that we actually have something in common.

BBC Ageism. When the BBC moved the show "Countryfile" to a prime time slot they replaced one of the female presenters with a younger model . The presenter, Miriam O'Reilly, then sued the BBC for unfair dismissal by way of age discrimination and yesterday she won. It is always difficult for the media to report on itself and this case was even more distracting because it had a lot of people in the media checking the terms of their employment and their faces for signs of wrinkles.

Godstone Farm. Back in 2009 there was an outbreak of E-coli at a petting farm near where I live which left 76 children seriously ill. The parents of those children went on to sue the owners of the farm for damages. Yesterday the farm owners backed down by admitting the liability and opening negotiations over the level of compensation payments. This was intended to give the impression that the Brits had suddenly realised the error of their ways and were negotiating with me over compensation payments. Sadly this is not true because I've not had any contact with them. So if a story like this emerges in the future the first question to ask the Brits is why I've not confirmed it on this blog.

Bup eht Morf.

That's right I'm back from the pub. I actually got back around 20:05 but failed to report it because absolutely nothing of note happened. So much so that I'm forced to make up part of the following story.

So I went to the pub and they were showing the West Ham V Birmingham semi-final on the TV so everyone was talking about the football and David Beckham's possible move to Tottenham (the Jews) Hotspur. Personally I think this is all a reference to Natalie Portman. If you're not familiar with this Israeli-born actress you soon will be because she is widely tipped to win an Oscar for her role in "The Black Swan" - the one with the ballet not the pirates. Apart from that she has rather carelessly got herself pregnant by her non-Jewish boyfriend. Although they have since got engaged there are a lot of people interested to know if he will be joining the Jews full time or whether he just intends to train with them at weekends. I'm more interested to know if she's realised that the moment that baby is born she is going to have to introduce it to every single person in Israel individually.

Elsewhere Britain has been deluged with a barrage of legal judgements. I will try and cover all of these tomorrow but they include a ruling in the Godstone farm E-coli outbreak that makes no sense to me and the sentencing of one of the students involved in the November 10th student riot. Most importantly though a female TV presenter has won her age discrimination case against the BBC which has had women across the media asking themselves if they're starting to look old. I think the answer is a universal "yes."

Now That Is Interesting.

More details have begun to emerge about the collapse of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station trial. The first detail is that reports that the undercover police officer, Mark Kennedy was planning to give evidence on behalf of the defendants is untrue. He had previously offered to act as a defence witness but that offer had been withdrawn several weeks ago. The second detail is that the decision to allow the jury to be informed of the presence of an undercover police officer was not taken on January 10th. It was actually taken on Friday, January 7th - the day before the Arizona shooting.

The fact that Britain appears to have been able to prepare it's response to the Arizona shooting before it took place makes it a lot harder to believe that it was the random act of some troubled loner and makes the conspiracy theories surrounding the incident seem a lot more plausible.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Trial Collapses.

Those of you with long memories will recall that back in April 2010 British police arrested 114 climate change protesters on the allegation that they may, at some point in the future, attempt to commit a crime by shutting down the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. After the furore over pre-emptive arrest and the right to protest had died down the police very quietly admitted that they had no case whatsoever against 90 of those arrested. It also emerged that one of the key conspirators who played a central role in suggesting and organising the protest was a man known as Mark Stone. Mark Stone's real name was Mark Kennedy who was a serving officer with the Metropolitan police who had been working undercover in protest groups for the last ten years.

Despite the clear suggestion of entrapment the trial of 18 of the protesters went ahead against the backdrop of the COP16 Climate Change Summit. Before and during this trial the defence made repeated requests to have the role of the undercover police officer presented to the jury but all these requests were refused and all 18 were convicted. Today (10/1) the trial of the remaining 6 protesters was set to begin but there was a sudden change of heart and it was decided that evidence of the undercover police officer would be allowed. This caused the prosecution to withdraw their case and the trial collapsed.

Obviously this sudden change of heart was a response to the arraignment hearing that is due to take place later today in America of Jared Loughner who I suppose could be described as a "political protester" if you stretch the term to absolute breaking point. Also Spanish terror group ETA have called for a ceasefire.

It's Today We've Decided.

Sometime this summer my 90 year old, heroin addict grandmother will die. While I'm single handily taking on hospital security and an entire shift of the Metropolitan police in order to force a Home Office pathologist to lie Israel will launch an air attack against Iran's nuclear facilities. Based on current allegiances this will provoke a regional war involving Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and possibly Syria. Crucially Egypt will remain neutral in this conflict allowing any Palestinians who remain alive to flee to the Sinai Peninsula and the Reich will stand for a thousand years. Or until Israel decides it needs to expand into the Sinai Peninsula.

It's a shame that post-2006 the only two options are a war that will kill thousands or the type of progressiveness that will kill millions. With choices like that you'd think the Americans would be prepared to do themselves a favour every once in a while.

Collateral Damage.

It is a universal fact of life that in times of heightened national tension the nutters start coming out of the woodwork. I don't know about the United States but in Britain it is certainly a time of heightened national tension.

Today in Arizona, USA a man went on a shooting spree killing 6 and injuring 18 more. Amongst the dead and injured was John Roll, a Federal Judge and Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic Congresswoman. If you think that's bad you should see the massive spike in stroke and heart attacks that British hospitals having been forced to deal with since the start of this Joanna Yeate business.

Of course the more interesting theory is that it was a CIA plot to bring down Barack Obama. In the coming session the new Republican dominated Congress is expected to challenge Obama's healthcare reform bill of which Gabrielle Giffords is a strong supporter. In preparation for this political battle the Democrats have been attacking the Republicans for stirring up a culture of hatred and violence amongst their rightwing supporters. Therefore it won't take long for right-wing conspiracy theorists to suggest that Obama set this whole thing up in order to smear the opponents of his "communist takeover of the United States." The BBC are actually trying their hardest to start these conspiracy theories themselves.

It's 00:02 And I'm Back. Early.

I'm just looking in my bag now and there's no cats there. There's some fluff, some snuff and quite a bit of bourbon but definitely nothing feline.

That's right I have returned from dinner with my mother and other selected nouns. I would like to tell you that we spent the evening watching this great B&W film from the 1950's in which an alcoholic British army officer has to drive a rag-tag bunch of misfits through enemy lines in an ambulance to escape the advancing German army but I thought that would be rather intense viewing. So instead we ordered a takeaway and zoned out in front of the TV. It was actually rather pleasant.

Oi! I Need a Word.

Specifically a noun. This evening (7/1) I will be having dinner with my mother, my brother and my mother's partner. The fact that my mother's partner is also a woman is probably the least controversial part of this story. However, as yet, the English language, in all it's long and glorious history, contains no single word to explain my relationship to her. Therefore for the rest of this post I will be referring to my mother's partner as my step-partner before stopping because it clearly sound ridiculous.

The last time my mother, brother, step-partner and I had dinner it was on Christmas day (25/12). As within this small social circle I'm considered the chatty one I was in charge of conversation and small talk. Shortly after the introduction of alcohol and I'd explained that if you'd been looking at my internet history you'd think I was obsessed with the actress Kristen Stewart because I every time I see a link featuring her Hollywood nickname "K-Stew" I click on it to find out who's unlucky enough to have the nickname K-Stew before instantly forgetting trapping me in a never ending Kristen Stewart loop the conversation started to flag. Then someone brought up the topic of my step-partner's house which led to the inevitable suggestion that we should all come round and visit at some mythical point in the future. Eventually this became a firm commitment that we would definitely arrange something just as soon as we could all find time in our busy schedules to suit all four of us. After a week of deliberation my step-partner decided that she would be busy with important, government related appointments until early March so it would have to be tonight or no night.

So at around 17:00 I will be meeting my mother in South London. We will then get into a very small car and drive to North London via Jews Walk, the Blackwall Tunnel and the 2012 Olympics site. On a good day this journey is expected to take two hours but snow is forecast and I'm not expecting a good day. Assuming that my mother and I both make it through this trek alive we will be joined by my brother and step-partner for an unspecified length of time during which unplanned events will take place. At around 22:00 I will leave and in the absence of a ministerial car will travel back to South London using public transport. I should finally return home at around 01:00. Given that the Russian Orthodox Church only celebrated their Christmas yesterday (6/1) I'm tempted to refer to this little adventure as "Christmas II: The Revenge!" but am going to chicken out due to concerns about my editorial control.

On the plus side though my mother and step-partner have two cats which is very nearly a surplus of cats. So if you encounter me on a train late tonight and my bag suddenly start to miaow then I think you know what's happened.

Terror Alert.

At around 18:00 MI5 issued a terror alert to police at all major transportation hubs (airports/seaports/railway network).

Earlier in the day the American State/civil service opened a dialogue with Britain over how much British Petroleum would like to pay for the Deep Water Horizon rig explosion and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that followed. Obviously this discussion involved reference to Britain's own off-shore drilling operations in the North Sea. Norway also has a stake in North Sea oil so they joined the discussion by arresting one of their Iraqi Kurd pets for apparently trying to hijack a passenger jet.

So Britain's terror alert was the British state looking at Norway and going "WTF going on?"

You Couldn't Make it Up.

Remember a while ago I told you there was a mouse in my grandmother's house. Well either that mouse has returned or there is a new mouse. The point is we are now trying to remove the mouse.

This meant that my father spent most of yesterday trying to lay what he is finding to be very complicated traps. Meanwhile I'm just standing there thinking; "Wouldn't it just be easier to bring the cat back to life?"

Oh and I think I've found that one piece of vital information the police in the Joanna Yeates murder inquiry say they've been looking for. Turns out it's Senior Judge Denzil Lush and the charges are perverting the course of justice and conspiracy to murder by poisoning during the commission of a crime against humanity. Of course if the question is why the Crown thinks he's worth £5bn then I'm afraid I don't know either.

See. A Mistake.

After I pointed out to the Americans that the Micheal Jackson Doctor Trial was a bad idea the Brits immediately tried to convince them that it was a good idea by offering them positive reinforcement by announcing details of the upcoming Royal Wedding at Westminster Abbey. Like pretty much everything at the moment this contained many coded references to the Bristol Abuse Case.

Of course the fact that the British are still treating the Bristol Abuse Case as a research project does rather prove my point that they don't have the capability to make it a success even if they had the intent.

Micheal Jackson Doctor Trial.

Now that's going to have to go down in the mistake column.

However without acknowledging that negotiations can begin until the Bristol Abuse Case is successfully rectified as verified by myself I will point out that I have no interest in owning property in Croydon. However if Britain is not able to make a full cash payment I may be prepared to take control of the Parchmore Road Medical Centre as part payment. The charge there is attempted murder by way poisoning in the commission of a crime against humanity.

Bad Luck Lads

But at the time of writing it looks like we're going to get another 25 minutes.

Back From Dinner.

I've actually been back for around 25 minutes.

As always the steak was terrible and father was difficult. However as MI5 took the precaution of sweeping the streets, at the time of writing (20:24) there are no major or minor problems to report.

Of course last Tuesday as we were driving back from the pub my father an I were confronted by an irate female motorist. Speaking as an ex-traffic warden who has dealt with literally thousands of irate motorists I didn't report it at the time because I didn't think it was worth causing her the embarrassment.

Real News Alert.

Today (3/1) Israel has arrested two British government employees for trying to obtain rockets that presumably would be fired into Israel as part of a false flag attack.

Amid all the heat and noise this is actually the Israelis telling their British allies that Britain has no choice in this matter. This warning was first issued in early November 2010. Britain did not heed it then and as a result now has to do all the heavy lifting starting with a certain senior judge.

Joanne Yeates Murder Saga.

In Britain this has been a story that's been hard to avoid over the Christmas period. It began on December 17th when a 25 year old woman went missing in Bristol only to be found dead on Christmas day. This prompted a huge police operation first to find the missing girl then to find her killer. Eventually the police arrested Ms Yeates' landlord, Chris Jefferies only to release him without charge after three days of questioning.

This entire saga relates to the Bristol Abuse Case (BAC) which is a UK government operation that began in Bristol back in 2006. Now you have to understand that Britain never fails, it merely re-defines success so the exact objectives of the BAC have been changed frequently over the years. However initially it was expected to provide a cure for cancer, a vaccination program for homosexuality and make Britain a world leader in mental health care and elderly care while making the nation incredibly rich and simultaneously proving that global warming doesn't exist.

Almost five years on precisely none of this has been achieved and the wealth of the nation has actually got dramatically worse. So the Joanna Yeates murder was a pretty desperate attempt to salvage the BAC by piling on huge amounts of pressure in an attempt to squeeze something, anything out of the situation. It was also an attack on the media to identify and destroy what observation routes they have on the BAC. This was being done because what is going to happen now in the BAC is going to be very unpleasant and if the British public are able to watch then it will be very bad for morale, especially the morale of the two primary victims who can't be that far away from hoping death will come to end the pain.

As for the mechanics of the murder it's a bit dull really. Jo Yeates' landlord, Chris Jefferies has long been part of the Brits stable of pet paedophiles and there's a suggestion that he's previously murdered a young woman for fun. So in order to get him to carry out the murder the Brits simply told him to carry out the murder. The decision to release him from police custody was just a last gasp attempt to stretch out an already failed operation and avoid an embarrassing trial.

Long before the Jo Yeates operation had started to go wrong the Brits had already set the New Year's Day riot a Ford Open Prision in motion. The idea behind this was that I would post something incendiary at around midnight on New Year's Eve and this would be blamed as the trigger for the anarchist riots. The Brits would then confidently spend the London New Year's Day Parade explaining to the world how they were going to punish me for this outrage. As it happened I didn't post until about and hour after the riot started leaving the Brits looking pretty stupid. This forced them to resort to the Midsumer balloon crash because; "Imagine you were there, floating higher then anyone has ever gone before when suddenly there's a pop and you're spiralling, spiralling down towards the ground. Then there's a crash and you're on fire and it burns, burns, burns!"

Having already promised not one but two inquires into the Ford prison riot the Brits are currently trying to work out how to explain it. The early indication is that they'll try to spin it as an apology for the London riots that blighted the final days of the COP16 Summit.

I Have Good News.

It is 22:52 and my DVD player did not commit suicide before I got to the end of V: The New Series.

I shall risk the extras tomorrow while trying to work out what that strange green, glowing light was on my adjacent wall. It was either the worlds worst surveillance device or my rosary.

Either way I'm sure it's better then the book.

News on the Cold Front.

Turns out my plan to kill all the nasty germs with alocohol has been a partial success. Instead of having the usual symptoms of sore throats, coughs and sneezes it's instead all gone to my head. So I'm now enjoying a third wonderfully woozy day where gravity is a constant challenge and every inanimate object is it's own new and unique surprise.

Apart from having great fun I've been thinking about this royal wedding. I've decided that because in the monarchy the creation of male heir to carry on the scared bloodline is all important the moment Prince William was born the search began to find him a wife so he could produce a heir all of his own. Initially this search included every British woman born a year before and five years after William along with some Princesses from foreign monarchies. Over the years the field was narrowed to exclude everyone who wasn't white enough, wasn't posh enough, wasn't fertile enough, was to fat, to catholic, to ugly or wasn't grabby enough. By the time Kate Middleton had been selected it had already been decided that while he was waiting to become King the Prince's life would follow a path that at least looked like the path a majority of his subject would follow so Ms Middleton was granted a place a St Andrews university.

Since then the relationship has been carefully choreographed to resemble what the the monarchy think life for the British public is like. So they lived together at university and broke up after graduating only to get back together again. The while the Prince set an example by beginning his career in public (emergency) service she kept herself busy with a nice little job to do with sewing and they lived together in a starter home while she waited for him to marry her. When the proposal finally came the dress was like one they sold in Tesco's and copies of the ring were available on the shopping channel.

The idea being that as the wedding approaches British subjects, regardless of nationality, will project their own hopes, dreams, fears and insecurities onto the royal couple and the monarchy will learn enough about them to better control them. The wedding itself will be held at Westminster Abbey to provide an excuse to remove Brain Haw's protest camp from Parliament square and in the spring when the unions are expected to start their campaign against the spending cuts Of course once the ceremony is over William and Kate will be free to start having affairs with the people they really love because you can afford to lead a double life when you've got the power to increase everyone's gas and electricity bills every time you feel the cold.

Now I think it's time for a little lie down because I've got to start dinner in a while and there's something about the combination of sharp knives and hot flames that makes me think this might not go so well.