McCain Picks Palin

It seems John McCain has stuck to type and taken a risk in his choice of running mate. Instead of a safe picking some middle aged white dude like Romney, he has tapped Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Having a female running mate will help feed the doubts of any feminists unsure of supporting the man who beat the best chance yet of a woman president (helped even more by Palin's gracious comments about Clinton) and her impeccable conservative credentials will help pacify the base.

Her enthusiasm for challenging the ethically challenged in the Alaska republican party show that she is no pushover and will no doubt hold her own against Biden.

There will no doubt be many more twists and turns over the next two months, but in this McCain done good.

Gary Glitter

Gary Glitter is a vile man who engaged in unspeakable acts. It is entirely right that he be required to register with the authorities, and that they should keep tabs on him.

It is however unreasonable that the gutter press continue to hound and pursue him incessantly. It is unreasonable that he be plastered across newspaper covers and television news bulletins destroying any prospect of a private life.

Glitter has served his sentence, and the best thing he can do now is fade away andlive out the rest of his life in obscurity. The corollary of this is that he must be allowed to do so.

The authorities have a role to play in protecting society from Glitter, the press do not.

McCain's a Nazi so na na na na na.

A video backdrop to Madonna's latest tour features a montage of tyrants, including the likes of Adolf Hitler and Robert Mugabe. It also includes John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

Godwin's law states that as an internet discussion proceeds, the likelihood of one side invoking Hitler/Nazism tends to one, and that unless it is a legitimate comparison that person is deemed to have lost the argument.

Only the most deranged members of the Daily Kos fringe believe that McCain is in any way comparable to Hitler, but the fact that his celebrity friends feel the need to stoop so low shows how little substance there is behind the froth.

Madonna should stick to what she knows best, showing just enough flesh to shift a cd.

C. Difficile on the march.

The government likes to say that it has got MRSA under control, and indeed the number of MRSA related deaths has gone down slightly since last year.

Unfortunately, it seems that clostridium difficile infections are rising rapidly, having doubled in two years.

We go to our hospitals to be healed, but it seems that in the modern health service we run the risk of contracting unpleasant and potentially fatal infections while we are there.

The first principle of medicine must surely be to first do no harm, but the conditions our hospitals have to operate under to meat the governments beloved targets mean that frequently they are doing harm.

Before dictating how many ingrowing toe-nails must be treated each week, the department of health should concentrate on ensuring that those who go in to hospital do not come out more ill than when they started.

Witch cleared.

A court in Switzerland has cleared the last witch executed in Europe, some 200 plus years after the event, and declared her to be a victim of judicial murder.

While I support the right of those wrongfully convicted to appeal their sentences, surely there must be some logical limit. Are we to go through history, retrospectively overturning any sentence for something we now consider absurd? Are we to pay reperations to the descendents of those executed for witchcraft?

Any family members still alive will not be tainted by something now widely seen to be laughable, and 225 years later, there will be nobody still alive who suffered personal loss or hardship as a result of her execution, so why not let sleeping dogs lie instead of raking over the mistakes of history.

Bullshit BingObama

It goes without saying that the BBC's coverage of Obama's convention speech will be positive, so it is redundant waiting for them to start.

In my younger days, one of the few highlights of NUS conference was the "Bullshit Bingo" card produced in a rare moment of utility by the Labour Students. In honour of the beebs NUS style balance and impartiality, I am resurrecting it.

Simply cross of the words below as they are uttered by the enraptured reporter, and if they complete the set, shout bullshit at your tv/radio.

Free speech UCU stylee.

There's a story doing the rounds about the Harry's place blog being dropped by its ISP following a libel complaint from one Jenna Delich. (Apparently the fact that the article in question referred directly to a post made by Ms Delich on the UCU activist list is irrelevant.)

The offending post was one drawing attention to a post by Ms Delich, linking in a positive fashion to a piece on David Duke's site. (For those unfamiliar, David Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the knights of the Ku Klux Klan and general all round tosser.)

Ms Delich followed the link with the comment

"No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves"

which any reasonable person would agree is an endorsement of the article to which she was linking.

Harry's place have thankfully been able to find a more robust ISP, and will hopefully be able to continue operating free from harrasment. It is however a sad indictment of the hard left that when presented with a situation like this, the first instinct is not to appologise for the mistake (If it was such) but to attempt to shut down the site which embarressed them and to maliciously accuse their opponents.