April 2009

Breaking news c/o Luther.

Torshin linked to this unbelievable (to anyone under about 30, or who is intrepid enough to visit urbandictionary.com – Mum and Dad, if you're reading, not you) segment about the Republicans protesting Obama's tax rates (the anchor's main argument being that they're lower than under Reagan when the Republicans didn't protest, so STFU) along with some blatant lies from Fox about their well-organised coverage of the astroturfed rallies:

In an interesting January 2009 article in the Independent (recently re-run in the Huffington Post), Johann Hari makes the surprising argument that Somalia's current wave of piracy is due not just to the collapse of civil government but is also in significant part a response to the dumping of Swiss/Italian/other nuclear and chemical waste, believed to be in large part by an illicit Italian operation, on Somalia's beaches, poisoning both the fish and the locals (particularly after natural disasters broke the transport containers open):

Don't use the IRD tax calculator to estimate or calculate your company tax for 2008 – it's currently outright wrong. Despite asking you what tax year you want, and including the 2009 FY (April 2008 – March 2009) as an option, it does not have the correct data for that FY – it still calculates based on a company tax rate of 33% whereas it is now in fact 30%, as confirmed to me by the IRD:

Grrr. The UK will now require that you file your travel plans with the government whenever you leave the country – whether citizen or noncitizen, going for the day or for a year, needing a passport or not.

This is an excellent little video of 2006-2007 segments including economics guy Peter Schiff being a) 100% bang-on about what was going to happen to the American economy given how ludicrous their borrowing was and b) getting quite literally laughed at by all the other commentators who found it inconceivable that the debt-fueled boom would not pick right up and keep inflating:

I think if I felt like this about my recent post-nuptial ceremonies:

From Ed, Hemel Hempstead, via text on 81111: “I'm laying [sic] in the marital bed of my honeymoon suite the night after my wedding and I can honestly say I'm more excited about today's race than yesterday's events.”

I'd probably keep my bloody mouth shut.