Heard recently that the govt is going ahead with bringing in a subsidy for domestic solar hot water systems, whereby you get paid 18p or so per kWh of heat that you generate (as well as saving off your gas bill, of course ( Read more... )

The eviction of the Travellers at Dale Farm is fairly local to me, so it's been on our news pretty much every day for the last however long ( Read more... )

You've probably heard about the recent round of Arts Council England cuts in the regular funding they dish out. One group that has been particularly vocal about the effects is poetry publishing: three small publishers have had their funding removed altogether ( Read more... )

It struck me recently, while listening to various enthusiastic people in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere enthusing about the prospect of ganing democracy, that they were likely to be in for a disappointment ( Read more... )

Our new MP has only been in office a fortnight, and already there's a satirical blog devoted to reproducing his exploits as a lego figurine ( Read more... )

After the best part of three years in power, which saw his initial honeymoon period dissolve into a rather incoherent mess, culminating in leading his team to the brink of a disastrous wipeout, he's finally got the push. The final straw was the emergence of two new leaders whose eccentric negotiation style and none-too-subtle undermining made his ( Read more... )

Did anyone else catch the 4-part 'Tutu Talks' on BBC4 the other week? It was a series of round-the-table discussions between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and assorted African academics, journalists, politicians, NGO workers etc, under the following titles (which don't very well reflect the themes of the actual discussions -- the summaries here are ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I was expecting the Is the BNP racist? site to be along the lines of Has the LHC destroyed the Earth? - but no, instead it's an attempt to wrest the top Google spot for that question from the BNP's own apologia page.

So not really very funny, but worth linking to I think -- maybe you will do so too.

(Also known as, closing some tabs.)

• Democracy Club -- an organization formed to help make the next UK general election more open and accountable, by crowdsourcing info. Affiliated with mySociety and other such. I've signed up -- recommend you do so too, if you are concerned about our political system and want to do more than just whinge.
• Emails from ( Read more... )