Pint glasses will never be the same again. According to this Parliamentary Question, the current pint glasses will become collectors items in October. From then on they will have to dispaly the CE mark instead of the current Crown mark.
Blair really is doing badly. His approval rating is actually lower than George Bush’s (28% compared to 39% for Bush).
Well I’m sure the troop withdrawal announcement yesterday will change all that.
There’s an interesting new blog all about Gordon Brown over at wouldbeking.co.uk. It aims to find out all about the man who almost certainly will be the next Prime Minister in 6 months time. Hopefully, it’ll reveal some interesting facts.
Great moment on today’s Marr show. In Andrew Marr’s interview of Tony Blair he gave him a hard time over Iraq, which clearly left Blair rattled.
The other interesting thing was the look on Tony’s face when Marr said Cameron reminded him of Blair in the 1990s, when Blair was shadow Home Secretary. (A point taken from his colleague Nick Robinson) Blair’s reaction was priceless. It looked like he blushed and smiled. He really is proud of the Cameron he helped to create.
I’ve never understood what getting a bunch of over paid, egotistical, hedonistic rock stars together, to sing about love and sex will do to help the world. Did it really help with Africa? Will it really help climate change? If anything having concerts around the world is likely to be worse for the environment.
In a ruling yesterday a judge found the government’s energy review “misleading”, “seriously flawed” and “procedurally unfair”. The challenge to the consultation was made by Greenpeace. I raised my own concerns about the government’s conduct of the review last July.
In response to the ruling Greenpeace called for the government to “go back to the drawing board”. Tony Blair said the judge’s findings would have no effect on policy.
Given the strong language of the ruling it seems likely that the government will have to, at least, make a token effort at a second consultation but I doubt this will change anything. Energy policy has already been decided at the highest levels of government and given the top-down nature of the current administration it’s hard to imagine and amount of consultation leading to a change of course.
Time is running out to replace our aging and unsecure power supplies and nuclear energy, for all its faults, has the advantage of being ready to go immediately. What’s really needed, instead of crowing by Greenpeace and the opposition parties, is for someone to present a coherent, accurately costed alternative to the nuclear route as soon as possible.
Millions of voters think Labour are more sleazy than the Major government according to today’s poll in the Sun. I love the spin on this. Out of a poll of 968 (just under the Sun’s millions) only 24% think Labour are more sleazy. The majority (50%) think both governments are as bad as each other- this demonstrates the lack of trust in Government as a whole rather than Labour being any worse.
If you look at the trends, you can see that more people think Labour are more sleazy than 6 years ago. Not surprising when you consider all the fuss over the Loans scandal.
The Sun then tells us that only 15% think Cameron will do any better. True, but they forget to mention that 17% think Brown would be better. The majority (54%) think they will be no difference.
It looks like the Sun is trying to make more out of this than they need to.
Sad news! Ian Richardson has passed away today.
Oh dear what a banana! David Miliband made a great slip up on Question Time tonight. Miliband’s not going to be getting a job with Brown now- assuming that he ever was.
I challenge Miliband to find me anyone in 6 months time who’s saying it would be great to have Blair back- that’s assuming he’s left by then.
Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has written a piece outlining his thoughts on the current state of online music delivery and digital rights management. In the piece Jobs suggests that it is time for an end to DRM:
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
So far Apple have been unsuccessful in pursuading the music labels from whom they license music to agree to DRM free downloads but there are signs that change may be coming. EMI have said that they will no longer use DRM on CDs perhaps after seeing the damage Sony suffered after their use of rootkits to secure CDs came to light. The sooner the big four record labels see sense on this we can get back to a far more sensible world where digital files work as they should.