"Peak water"

Spotted by Graeme at Huff Post : In the keynote speech at London's annual City Food Lecture on Tuesday, Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke warned th...

A couple of notable absences, methinks...

Via Bob E from the BBC : Viewpoints: The civil service and reform Nick Herbert, former minister of policing and criminal justice: "Whi...

Alcohol Concern strongly denies existence of "embedded black ops teams"

Full story at the BBC . Headline by Bob E.

It's not just me then.

From It's Grim Up North : The recent trend of chilly winters has continued, with figures showing that this season has been the fourth in...

Maria Hutchings' CV...

... has been given a closer look by Ministry of Truth .

"Officials step down after rape allegations misreported as blood poisoning"

From The Daily Mail : Another hospital could be at the centre of a Mid Stafford-type scandal after 'discrepancies' were found in the...

"Cristiano Ronaldo targetted during match"

From The Daily Mail : Cristiano Ronaldo was targeted with an air rifle during last night's football match between Barcelona and Real Mad...

"Pilot badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire approved"

From the BBC : After years of lobbying by the British Airline Pilots Association, culls of pilot badgers are set to go ahead later this year...

This is what you want, this is what you get. This is what you want, this is what you get.

This is what... hacks me off about right-wing think tanks like the Centre for Policy Studies . As far as facts and figures go, they are usua...

"Alcohol sales under-reported by fifty per cent"

From the BBC : The amount of alcohol consumed in England is twice as high as reported sales figures, a study has decided. Counting units Uni...

Wildly misleading statistic of the day: "41% of homes sold at a loss since 2007"

This got an "oh woe is us" write up in some of the papers, but let's refer back to the original press release from Castle Tru...

Peak wind

From The Register : Both these assertions, however, have been called into doubt - and the first one, that there's plenty of wind power t...

"Bullock in Darlington escapes cattle market"

From The Daily Mail : Residents in a quiet cul-de-sac in Darlington, County Durham, were left stunned when the animal ran amok after escapin...

The Emperor's New Mobile Phone

From The Independent : Nokia has launched a new mobile phone that needs charging less than once a month and costs just £13 to buy. The Nokia...

"Giant human weighing more than 67 kg reeled in off Shetland"

From the BBC : A North Atlantic fish is celebrating after reeling in a giant human weighing more than 67 kg (150 lbs). James Cod caught the ...

"Ranulph Fiennes pulls out of Saharan challenge"

From The Daily Express : The 68-year-old cousin of acting siblings Ralph and Joseph Fiennes has been preparing to embark on the 2,000-mile (...

They own land! Give them money!

Spotted by Bob E at Inside Housing : Ealing Council in London has offered the owners of empty homes £30,000 to make their properties suitabl...

"It would be wrong to assume"

These problems facing rural communities rarely get much coverage in the media. As a culture, we are in thrall to a sepia-tinted ...

Reader's Letter Of The Day

Over at the YPP blog .

Statisticians make shock discovery: There are more people in densely built up areas!

From The Daily Mail : Police have lost track of almost 140 paedophiles, sparking fears(1) many may have left the country, it has been reveal...

Fun Online Polls: Fizzy drinks & Inappropriate advances

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows : Should fizzy drinks be more heavily taxed? No - 48% No - 10% No - 26% Other...

BBC: fair and balanced reporting

Compiled by Bob E: From the BBC 22 February 2013 : Property sales in the UK were slightly higher in January than during the same month a yea...

Airborne car attack

From The Daily Mail : A speeding driver lost control at a turn, sped up a hill, and bounced off one house before going airborne and crashing...

Economic Myths: Social housing in the UK is subsidised by the taxpayer

I always find it useful to look at the bigger picture and compare like with like. Using data culled from various government sources, I have ...

There are no jobs

I don't often go to Oxford, but had to go shopping there yesterday in a particular shop, and one thing I noticed was that they were afte...

"Ability to pay"

*rant* It strikes me that this is one of the most abused phrase in the whole debate about taxation and housing. The dawn of social housing a...

"Osborne 'humiliated' by rating cut"

From MSN Money : The UK's Director George Osborne has been accused of having suffered a "humiliating blow" after Britain was s...

Nick Clegg learns a few valuable lessons

From The Independent : Older people affected by the Liberal Democrats’ proposed “mansion tax” could have payments deferred until after death...

"Top maths pupils fail to keep up with world's best"

From the BBC : The ablest 16,348 primary pupils in England almost match those in Taiwan (pop. 23,305,021) and Hong Kong (GDP $244 billion) i...

"Female Oxford Street workers purposely adopt 'high street' look in written dress code that scruffiness signals a lack of interest"

From The Daily Mail : They are some of the hardest working women in the country. But Oxford Street's female shop assistants fear they wi...

We've had our chips/I'll drink to that

From The Daily Mail : Men who eat fried foods more than once a week may increase their risk of prostate cancer by a third. New research sugg...

"The 'leftover' girls: Afghanistan defines official age for females being left on the shelf as 13"

From The Daily Mail : Afghanistan has upset its young female population by labelling those who have not been married off by the time they ar...

Nope. He doesn't get it.

JimS has left a new comment on post 4G Auction Is Yet Another Blow For Osborne "Mark, so the existing telecos decide that they can char...

Ten questions

Pinched from The Metro : Question one: ‘You have defined the defence of marital coercion on page five of the jury bundle and also explained ...

"4G Auction Is Yet Another Blow For Osborne"

From Sky News : If you cast your mind back to George Osborne's boasts of last December, there was one moment in the playground debate th...

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (302)

I've been compiling these on my other blog for the time being. This week's mutterings from The Two Eds has really flushed out the id...

"Red Arrows to be scrapped in 2015"

From the BBC : The future of the Red Arrows is safe as long as David Cameron is prime minister, Number 10 has said...

"Dozen homes rocket in value after the ones in front of them collapse into the sea"

From The Daily Mail : It could be Britain's most profitable property collapse after a dozen houses, once worth over £6million, finally c...

"Yes We Vati-can!"

When I saw this in The Metro last week, I initially assumed it was a spoof, but it is actually a gloriously tasteless genuine advertisement:

Fun Online Polls: The EU Budget and Taxes on fizzy drinks

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows : Did David Cameron get a good deal in the EU budget negotiations? Oh come...

"I'll mix my metaphors on benefit tourists, says IDS"

From The Daily Mail : Ministers will ‘shut the door’ to migrants wanting to come to Britain to live on benefits, Iain Duncan Smith claimed y...

Oops they did it again.

Spotted by Bob E in The Guardian : Atos, the company contracted by the Department for Work and Pensions to carry out medical assessments of ...

Town Planning: The Developer's Decision

(This is all old hat to Lola, but it's worth restating the case for general consideration) 1. Let's imagine we are advising a tax-ex...

Not a sweeping claim of no substance whatsoever based on his own particular prejudice, or anything like that...

Spotted by Bob E at the BBC : The work and pensions secretary has criticised people "who think they're too good" to stack supe...

My ex-wife's first published work [Fun with Google translate]

My ex-wife informs me that she has had her first book published ! Let's stick the blurb into Google translate and tidy it up a bit: Thi...

"Actually, I think even Miriam has a sneaky regard for them....

... whereas I of course despise the place, absolutely... we Lib Dems prefer "traditional" sources of funding and not from City Spi...

Meanwhile, on Planet Home-Owner-Ist...

From today's Evening Standard Letters page: If Miliband has any sense, there is no way he will actually implement a mansion tax that wo...