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a story in this week’s Time magazine is being called the definitive Barack Obama puff piece…According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published…”I’m not quite sure how he intends to turn around the economy or get us out of Iraq,” said California resident Geoff Mills, an ardent Obama supporter who read the Time story. “But any man who prefers his steak cooked medium-rare has my vote.”

The Onion, ‘Time’ Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece

The Real Tuesday Weld – The Day Before You Came

The Abba song, The Day Before You Came, covered by The Real Tuesday Weld

The British government is to fund a board of Islamic theologians in an attempt to sideline violent extremists…Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said it was government’s job to support Muslim leaders on controversial issues.

The BBC, Government funds Muslim thinkers

It’s absolutely fine by me if Muslim leaders wish to get together to discuss how they might help deal with the animosity towards liberal, Enlightenment values evident in some quarters of the Muslim population of the UK. Whether it’s the role of the Government to provide funding and direction for such a setup is highly questionable, given its previous embracing and subsequent rejection of self-described community leaders.

Hot on the heels of Home Secretary Harriet Harman’s proposal to legalise sex discrimination in employment comes news of my local council’s non-white swimming sessions:

A council has been fiercely criticised for holding ethnic-minority only swimming sessions.

Wolverhampton City Council employs special life-guards and instructors for the sessions, which are open to the city’s black and Asian residents only.

It claims the weekly periods are for women and children with “religious or cultural issues which would otherwise prevent them from taking part.

But furious pool-users say they amount to racial segregation and claim they are being prevented from using the pool – simply because they may be white.

The Evening Standard, Row over ethnic minority only swimming sessions for women and children

This almost illiterate answer in an English exam:

If he wasent doing enthing els heel help his uncle Herry at the funfair during the day. And had stoody at nigh on other thing he did was invent new rides.

“Becoues he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn’t live with his mum he lived with his wife

was given higher marks than this answer:

Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever.

“At the age of 7, he was training for a local competition when his horse, Mandy, swerved sideways unexpectedly, throwing Pip on to the ground, paralysed.”

The Times, Exam littered with spelling mistakes scores higher than one written fluently

Nobody cares. This is run-of-the-mill stuff for national examination marking standards in the UK.

Button Gwinnett was one of the lesser-known signatories to the Declaration of Independence. He moved from Wolverhampton to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1762.

It appears he left behind some other Gwinnetts. Councillor Malcolm Gwinnett, from Wolverhampton, is reported as having some very illiberal views on photography in public.

The story goes like this: a father of two visited the annual Wolverhampton Show with his family and took photos of his children on a large inflatable slide. Other parents claimed he was taking photographs of their children and accused the man of being a ‘pervert’. The man was understandably upset and left with his family shortly afterwards.

Councillor Gwinnett offered his views because the inflatable amusements concession for the Wolverhampton Show had been awarded to the Councillor’s company. The Daily Mail reports his response:

Our policy is to ask people taking photos whether they have children on the slide. If they do, then that is fine.

The Daily Mail, Father-of-three branded a ‘pervert’ – for photographing his own children in public park

Mr Gwinnett should really know better than this. In the UK there are, generally, no legal restrictions on photography in public places and there is no presumption of privacy for individuals in public places.

For Mr Gwinnett to declare, by personal fiat, some perfectly legal action ‘fine’ or otherwise, regardless of the actual law in this country, suggests he might have become too accustomed to the deference of petty office and could do with a spell as an ordinary citizen.

Today is the anniversary of the first detonation of an atomic bomb, at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, New Mexico.

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.

J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita

“We are not going to solve society’s problems. People have to do that on their own …[I]f you can’t get your kids to eat vegetables, why is it my job?”

From the Cato Institute’s blog McDonald’s CEO on Globalization and Eating Your Vegetables

As the blog post goes on to suggest, McDonald’s may well try to anticipate market demand by including supposedly healthier foods on its menu – which would be, after all, the expected action of a fast food chain that wants to stay in business in a market in which consumers are becoming more health-conscious. But is it really the job of McDonald’s to parent your children?

Young people who carry knives will be made to visit hospitals where stabbing victims are treated, in a bid to shock them into changing their behaviour

Mrs Smith’s proposals will see young people caught carrying knives being made to go to accident and emergency wards, to see the consequences of stabbings

BBC, Shock tactics for knife carriers

Imagine how the Home Secretary’s plan might work.

Young Dwayne is found to be carrying a knife. Currently, Dwayne might be given a police caution, which is a serious telling off, (BBC, What if I’m caught carrying a knife?.

At the time of his serious telling off the police might be lucky, and happen to know that the local hospital’s A&E department have a fresh knifing victim to hand – perhaps they’ll be kept informed about new stabbings as they arrive in Casualty – and they might wish to take Dwayne straight along to see what a knife wound looks like.  As the police haven’t arrested Dwayne, they will have no powers to detain him or to oblige him to hop into their car. He won’t have to go with them and unless he is peculiarly interested in wounds, he won’t bother.

If there aren’t any conveniently bleeding victims available just at the time Dwayne’s been stopped, they’ll have to take his details and then get in touch with him as soon as the hospital contacts them to tell them another young knife victim has been brought in. Then, the police could phone Dwayne on his mobile and, hoping he’s sober and undrugged, persuade him to come with them to the hospital.

There’ll be more people like Dwayne, found to be carrying knives, than there will be people who have been stabbed, so there’ll probably be quite a few young hoodlums like Dwayne to be rounded up. The police will need to take out the station minibus, if they’re able to persuade anyone to agree to the outing.

Dwayne and the others  – he’ll probably know quite a few of them, as they’ll all be around the same age and from the same area – won’t be the most organised of people so even if they agree to pop along to the hospital with the police, it’ll take quite a time for the collection of hoodlums, chavs, gangstas an ne’er-do-wells to be collected by the minibus.

Eventually the party will turn up at the hospital – and then what? By this time the victim, if he’s alive, will have been sewn-up and drugged-up and put to bed; the doctors and nurses will have moved on to the next cases; the sick and injured already there, queuing to be examined, surely won’t be too pleased to see this gang arrive in the waiting room.

This is only part of Jacqui Smith’s response to the public concern about knife crime. you can be certain the rest of her proposals will be just as stupid and unfeasible.