Most of you will remember the photo I put up of this extremely ugly statue:

Well, the new mayor of Moscow says he’s going to pull it down. 😦

Story

Total idiot drives into reservoir and drowns.

Though the Telegraph headline says: Any guesses?

let’s sue 10:10, The Guardian, Sony, Kyocera and O2:

Extremely offensive film clip.

Take a look at the film clip on the Guardian site. If you feel as strongly as I do about this you can make a complaint here:

http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/process.html

UK Hate Crime Law:

A hate crime is any criminal offence that is motivated by hostility or prejudice based upon the victim’s:

disability
race
religion or belief

…

I have only just now learned that a guy I knew when he was a young officer in my Squadron, (cavalry, not RAF) was killed on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. Excuse me, but shit!

Well, no, not really, but I’m sure something will transpire…

Here’s an example of innovative Britain – remember TSR 2, Blue Streak, hovercraft, that nice Mr Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology?’

The question is, where do we think the first manned, or passenger-carrying version will fly?

You could take to the air 🙂

There’s some interesting stuff here if you’re in a geeky mood.

The Register

Or, at least, a vigorous discussion to liven up a dull, rainy Sunday, (dull and rainy in Bucharest, at least.) Before President Obama was elected, I opined that he was nothing more than Tony Blair writ large. Sometime later I wrote that the American public seemed to be catching on to him much more quickly then we did to our own version. There is more

Two items in today’s newspaper illustrate perfectly the problem we face as citizens* in our own countries today. First, there’s this in which;

the Prime Minister makes clear his intention to “give something back” from a stronger economy.

Later on we find this where we learn that

Lord Mandelson is still paid £8,600 a month by the EU despite leaving his Brussels post two years ago and earning hundreds of thousands in royalties from his memoir…

So what?

First, the why-do-we-bother. First and foremost it’s a business requirement. We protect our brand reputation just like any other brand owner. We produce products that our consumers like and build brand loyalty by ensuring product quality. If a consumer has a bad experience with one of our products, he’s likely to chuck it and switch to a competitor. Secondly, our product is consumed. You know what is in a genuine product – no matter what you might think of the dread habit, think chocolate bars, or baby milk powder if it helps, the principles are the same – but as you will have seen, if the product is produced in filthy conditions in an abandoned chicken farm… Thirdly, counterfeits cut into our sales – it is unfair competition. and there’s more

Most of these were taken with my Fuji Finepix set on sports mode and shot from the window of the car as we zoomed past – some half decent shots nonetheless 🙂

I couldn’t stop to take photographs – except in the mountain gorge – because we were on such a tight schedule – six cities and a thousand kilometres in three days with a couple of hours or so work to do in each place checking piles of seized cigarettes in Romanian Customs warehouses to see which were counterfeit and which real. (If anyone would like to know why, I can tell you – it’s not Classified!) See the pics