Nosemonkey's EUtopia

Via The Virtual Stoa and Early Modern Notes, for today, tomorrow and Sunday only the Oxford University Press are offering free online access to the Dictionary of National Biography, one of the finest academic achievements of all time. Truly superb stuff – I don’t think I can over-emphasise just how damn good the DNB is – register for free access and indulge. You won’t regret it.

German elections: Some possible scenarios (and interesting discussion in the comments), plus a look at why the German mess does NOT mean that Proportional Representation systems are rubbish (with more good debate/links in the comments – including my solution to all this country’s political ills, which should net me all kinds of awards and stuff, naturally…)

Read. Now. Then ponder if the next time you see an episode of Are you Being Served? and John Inman minces on to utter his catchphrase you won’t pause for a moment and sigh with nostalgia for a more innocent time when, despite the fact that terrorists were bombing this country on a regular basis, the words “I’m free” could be uttered, meant, and still be true.

Hopefully nothing – “incident” at Manchester airport…

Jarndyce has more – once again, Manchester police manage to arrest someone without killing them. Good work Manchester police! Fancy coming to London and showing our lot how it’s done?

First one of these I’ve seen, but trust anyone but the government to come up with it. My old mates St John Ambulance have come up with a sensible and cunning idea, following their experiences tending the wounded on 7th July: First Aid lessons via podcast.

Stupidly good, simple idea. Download the buggers, whack ’em on your MP3 wotsit (assuming you have one, of course), and then should you be faced with an emergency you’ve got an expert in your pocket ready to talk you through how to help people out. Top stuff – and completely free. (Might be nice if you made a donation though…)

What. The. Pissing. Shit. Is. Going. On. With. This. Fucking. Country?

More at Perfect. (I are too busy at the moment, hence delay in picking up on this…)

Emigration is beginning to look increasingly appealing. Either that or I’m going to freeze to death this winter through fear of wearing a coat the police deem “suspicious” for no apparent reason. Bunch of cunts. I blame Blair and Blair.

Via Ken at EU Realist, let’s help some poor PhD student, shall we? Spirit of altruism and all that. Go here and follow the instructions – it’s a survey to check public perception of “the EU�s public diplomacy strategy online and its use of the Internet to promote a European public sphere”, looking at the websites Europa (aimed at us European types), EurUnion (aimed at the yanks) and Europa at the UN (aimed, I assume, at the rest of the world – I’d never heard of it before…)

There are, of course, more than just those three (like the recently revamped European Parliament website) – but the Europa site itself is so damn vast you can find pretty much anything on there, once you work out how – it’s also the home to dear Margot’s blog.

There’s a total of 27 questions, most fairly simple and quick to fill out. So go on – and let’s try and keep this scientific, shall we? No childish spamming of the place with “Brittania roolz, E-U SUXX0rz” type crap, shall we? Leave your political opinions at the door and answer the questions honestly and sensibly. For science and stuff. Everyone likes science.

German elections: If you don’t know what the hell’s going on (which is most people, German or otherwise), you could do a lot worse than this round-up by Alex. Missed it yesterday – good stuff.

This – largely my take on the whole shoot to kill fiasco, with only minor quibbles, differences in interpretation and/or additions. It’s hard to summon up the will to write about it any more, it’s just so obviously been so shockingly poorly handled and ill thought out. Perhaps I’m suffering from this kind of thing.

Let’s hope so, eh? Today the wonderful data retention and electronic surveillance proposals put forward by our delightful government are being tabled by the European Commission amid EU-wide differences of opinion over their legality and effectiveness.

Blair’s lovely plan, for those who missed it, is to force all phone companies and internet service providers to record all your phone calls (and keep tabs on missed calls), texts, emails, internet usage etc. etc. etc. and store them for anything up to three years (with, naturally, the potential to extend this at a later date), enabling the state to poke around into our lives whenever the hell they feel like it (especially were this information to become linked to the proposed biometric ID cards for ease of cross-referencing – although, obviously, if you’ve got nothing to hide… and anyway, human rights are outdated…)

However, Blair’s initial proposals seem already to have been watered down by the Commission – at least to an extent. There have apparently been clauses inserted stating that the stored information can only be used for the investigation of serious organised crime and terrorism. Which, while no doubt intended to be reassuring, summons up an image of using five-mile net to catch a single flea – after all, how many of the 450 million people whose details will be stored will actually have been involved in any of those activities? And don’t you think, just possibly, that criminals and terrorists will switch to non-electronic communication methods to excape detection? (Sorry, repeating myself, but the point apparently still needs to be made.)

Perhaps most promisingly, the European Parliament is to be given co-decision powers, allowing MEPs to scrutinise and amend this crappy legislation. (Of course, the European Parliament – as the only democratically-elected body in the EU – should ALWAYS have co-decision powers, but that’s another matter altogether).

The only danger, of course, is that these measures are forced through the EP in a bit of a rush, with little time for debate, and are passed unthinkingly by our anonymous MEP masters, thus daubing them with a touch of democratic respectability. This is unlikely to happen here (largely thanks to the unpopularity of the measures with business, with poorer EU states who don’t like the idea of the cost, and with anyone who thinks for half a second about how hapy they’d be fore some civil servant to be able to poke through their inbox and read their texts), but I’m still worried about the ID threat, about which there has, of yet, been no word… When they go quiet, that’s generally when they’re about to pounce.

There will also be a Commission discussion paper on the radicalisation of European muslims published today. Be on guard for Blairite thoughcrime language in the small print – and be aware that, on this occasion, it is thanks to Britain holding the EU presidency that the EU is pushing ahead with these dodgy, antidemocratic moves. But enough should be reluctant (or simply pissed off with Blair over the rebate) enough to try and drag it out until our term at the top ends, and if so there’s a good chance we can get it all pushed out. Perhaps it’s nearly time to cynically raise the spectre of Nazism, still far more powerful an epitome of all that is repressive across the Channel than it ever has been over here? That should raise a bit more opposition to giving Uncle Tony the right to, effectively, flick through our diaries whenever he likes, eh?

Keep an eye out.

Hmmm… Booze, you say? Free, you say? On the BBC, you say? If you’re a London-based blogger, it may be worth checking out. I shall reserve commitment for the time being, as I can’t remember if I’m meant to be doing anything on Thursday evening – if anyone’s planning on popping along, though, let me know. Could be entertaining, plus a chance to spout nonsense on the radio by the sounds of things…

More info via the person organising it. Apparently she was on the telly once or something – weren’t we all, dear? (In the nicest possible way, of course – I’m sure she’s lovely really…)

It would appear (via la Worstall) that those of you who contributed to my London bombs beer fund a couple of months back in preference to Ken Livingstone’s official Red Cross one made the right choice. Am I seriously more efficient than the Mayor’s office and the government put together? What a bunch of shoddily-organised fuckwits. They should give me a job, I’ll whip ’em into shape. Using tanks.

This BiasedBBC cross-post actually makes some very valid points. I may have to re-assess my opinion of Auntie.