Canal festival

I poked my head into Kidderminster Saturday morning in an effort to report on the roadshow for Tav. Supposedly it was a part of Kidderminster Market; I couldn't find it. Well I could find the market just no stall. I started at the bottom of the Swan Centre; headed up to the top of the Rowland Hill; back down to the bottom of the Swan where I found the stall advertising the Canal Festival.

"Oh yeah that's on isn't it" I thought.

I carried on to the Town Hall, still no roadshow; then into Weavers Wharf following the canal posters. Plenty of boats (photos to be uploaded) [photos starting here] and a couple of stalls; nothing really grand. It was very quiet on the pedestrian front though. Heading back to Crossley I realised why.

The canal itself is hidden from main view by Debenhams, from the town you can follow the posters, but if you miss them there's no way to actually see that something's happening. From Crossley anyone heading into or back from town crosses the canal and there's a set of steps leading down to it. There was no posters or signs along this route and as the canal bends around no boats were in view from the bridge. From the pedestrian point of view here there was also nothing happening.

So if it's hosted in the same place next year (or whenever) stick a poster and arrow on the top of these steps and moor a load of the boats next to the McDonalds where they can be seen. Once you've caught the eye it's easier to get down to it from here then it is from the town.

Red Dead Redemption mini review 2

In my mini review I complained about how Red Dead Redemption would allow you to take on jobs you weren't fully equipped to deal with. Having returned to the game with that knowledge it gets slightly worse. They change one of the weapon dynamics after completing a certain quest.

Running through the tutorials you're taught about Dead Eye the game's BulletTime system. Hold L2 to aim, click R3 and you enter Dead Eye mode. Time slows down, you can move the aiming cursor at someone, hit R2 to fire and if you've still juice in the gauge continue to move along to hit another target. This is excellent as you can take down a group with a set of headshots or if you want someone alive you can target their leg or hand to disarm them.

That is until you complete this one little quest which as a story quest you have to do. Now when you enter Dead Eye mode little red crosses appear on any viable target; as soon as you hit the trigger you exit the mode and fire off a slew of bullets at those targets. Here's the problem - the crosses appear automatically. So you aim at one guy, hit Dead Eye and you get a cross on their shoulder, sweep it across to the other enemies and you get a cross on their head, then their other shoulder - that's three bullets on one guy where one would have been enough. It gets worse.

Crosses appear on any valid target so get a group of horse riders shooting at you as they ride towards you and as you sweep across you'll get targets on their horses, which isn't nice and is a waste of a bullet. If it's someone kidnapping someone you can end up with a cross on the person you're supposed to be rescuing. If you want to take them in alive you might end up with three crosses on them equalling a kill shot.

Checking the 'net this seems to be Level 2 of Dead Eye. Hit Level 3 and it turns off the automatic 'painting' system switching to either Level 1 or manual painting.

Judging by the vitriol I'm not the only one who found Level 2 rather annoying.

Bridge accident

Although they've managed to get the Hartlebury fire story out quickly, complete with picture by Tav*, the Shuttle have still nothing about the accident that happened in Stourport on Tuesday.

So I'm down to 'what people say'. Allegedly a white van went into the back of another car on the highest 'hump' of the bridge heading into town. Said car having children in the back.

And that's it. There was no sign of anything that night or the next morning so it all got cleaned up quickly or didn't cause much exterior damage. No news as to injuries or anything serious.

*You might get trumped by Jim who has a photo of the actual fire (from a distance) taken with his phone.

Portal 2 co-op review

Tuesday night and I managed to see Orphi playing Portal 2 via the interlinked Steam Network - time for some co-operative multiplayer.

I'd played it in person, but had yet to try it out over the 'net would there be any differences? Well yes my headset wasn't working so I couldn't talk with him; but hey at least this gives the chance to try out the tools in-game designed for those who don't have headsets. (Oh it turned out that the PS3 had unpaired my headset for some reason since I last used it).

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Strange Blogger issue

Although I could log in to Google yesterday I was unable to log in to Blogger. Checking known issues it's listed that some people are having problems.

A check on the forums shows the usual "What's happening?" but some pointed out that if they switched browsers it suddenly worked.

It seems that with Google's upgrades to the Blogger network the old cookies aren't being honoured or refreshed; delete any blogger.com cookies and the system allows you back in.

Accident on the Bridge

About half an hour ago there was an accident on the Bridge over the Severn. No reports yet as to what happened or if anyone was hurt.

The road closed in both directions. According to the Shuttle it's near the Tandoori and the Olde Crown; if it is that side it means that not only can traffic not enter Stourport from the Kidderminster side, but also not from the Bridge side and divert through Raven Street. Lock down.

Enslaved PS3 full review

In my quick review I stated that Enslaved was drunk, one minute it's telling you that it loves you; then it's crying into a pint; then it's threatening you for looking at it funny.

The story is based on the classic Buddist tale of Monkey escorting monk Tripitaka on a... well you know what you don't need to know because the developers certainly didn't bother. Okay slightly unfair; we play Monkey who has to escort Trip using only his staff and 'cloud' under penalty of pain from the headband he's wearing. Beyond that though forget it.

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Republican Presidential hopefuls

A few news stories cropping up of potential Republican Presidential hopefuls stating that they wouldn't be standing rather than announcing they would. A follow up item in the Independent pointed out how odd this was. Why is it odd?

The USA has recently has its mid-term elections for the Senate and Representatives and depending on how it goes it's either a time to capitalise on popularity or rally the troops. It signals for those willing to throw their hat into the Presidential ring to announce this and start to campaign.

This time around all is silent. Considering the Republicans did well in the mid-terms they should be jumping up and down in glee, but instead we get those named as hopefuls standing back; why?

Let's consider the options. The usual reason people try to back out of a job is because it's a bad job. Surely this can't be the case here, but do the Republicans know something we don't? If the next few years for America is going to be tough with lot's of unpleasant decisions that will need to be made by the sitting President regardless of Party wouldn't it be better to leave that with the opposition? Let them be the ones associated with the bad times while you can sit on the edge and snipe.

Another cause perhaps is the campaigning side. As the No2AV campaign showed here in the UK (no I'm not letting that go) one of the most effective ways to gain support is to trash the opposition. The current President just presided over the execution of Number 1 on the Most Wanted list; he is riding on a heck of a lot of patriotic support right now. So ironically like the Bush Jnr terms criticising him will be seen as being un-American; at least for the moment.

A third cause may be the current rifts forming in the Republican Party; the Tea Party was surprising in its rapid growth. While I think most Republicans aren't keen on them that presents a new dilemma. Choose someone from that faction who they don't like, agree with, or think could be elected; or choose someone else and risk them fielding their own candidate and splitting the Republican vote.

Add in some of the sheer foot-in-mouth gaffs made by some of the potentials or backfired embarrassments and the silence coming from them is more understandable.

They'll wait until the shine is off Obama; the gaffs forgotten; the factions either gone or too important to ignore; then they'll come out with all guns blazing to make up for lost time. At least that's my prediction.

Cycle provision supermarkets

I was asked by Dan back in March what the cycle provisions were like at Morrison's; yes it's taken me that long for it to permeate through and it wasn't because of Morrison's it was because of Sainsbury's.

For those who haven't visited in the last month or so Sainsbury's have been remodelling the car-park; I'll reserve judgement on it when it's finished. However over the weekend I ended up having to park at the far right (when facing from the entrance) and walked past the new bike racks; and that's a major plural for a reason there's quite a row. I'd have counted them, but I didn't have the time! We're talking the equivalent of multiple car bays here six; maybe more.

Morrison's? Eight upside-down U pipes next to the door. I would say that I think Sainsbury's have gone a little overboard, but I can see people using these when they want to visit the rest of the retail park (as I don't recall anything purpose-built on that side) or even to have a walk down to the canal after dropping off their bikes. So well done to them.

Incredible questions - cough

An email in one of those amusing ones from a friend listing a set of questions exploring bizarre circumstances in reality. Well they would be if I couldn't answer them all.

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Electric cars

Had a phone call from someone trying to get me to invest in a particular brand's electric car market which got me thinking. There was a Channel 4 programme on last month, (last year?) asking why we didn't have electric cars - good programme, but it didn't expand much beyond the immediate. So rather than ask 'why don't we have electric cars?' let's ask 'why would we want electric cars?'.

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The railway review

We pay more for using and running our railway services than any other comparable country according to the BBC. So a review is required.

It's easy to say that if the government had maintained them it wouldn't be costing so much, but to an extent that's true. That combined with government policy to put people into cars dealt a serious blow to the rail industry.

However consider the following: DaBoss needed to head to a Southern part of this country. To go by train would mean getting to the station; either by public transport, cadging a lift; or driving and then paying to park. Waiting for the train; then once arrived either taking public transport or cadging a lift to get to his destination.

Or he could just drive down whenever he wanted to.

In terms of cost of fuel used it would be cheaper to take the car.

To that end suggesting adding more car-parking places to stations; not that good a plan. The other suggestions are more interesting

getting Network Rail [..] to work more closely with the train companies.

You mean they don't already. That would be like Amazon not working closely with their delivery firm; shouldn't it just be a given that they work together as closely as possible?

The other amusement is the quote from Crow

"The railway runs 7-days a week, 24-hours a day."

 Yeah the railway as a whole works like that, but parts of it don't.

Coriolis Effect and sink drainage

This old saw came up in conversation the other day (don't ask why) about water in a sink or toilet draining counter (anti) clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

The trouble is that it's true. For a given value of true. That is given a large enough volume of water and no other factors water will drain in this fashion. When I say no other factors I mean absolutely still water with a uniform surface over which it drains. But why not in normal sinks and toilets?

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The Sony Welcome back package

With a 24 day outage Sony are offering us gamers some free games for keepsies to say sorry yay! Select two from the following five:

Dead Nation (top down zombie shooter)
InFamous (I already own on disc)
LittleBigPlanet (I already own on disc)
Super Stardust HD (souped up Asteroids)
Wipeout HD + Fury (racer)

Hmm the 6/10 Dead Nation or two 9/10 games. Gosh I feel so spoilt for choice here. I mean sure I could take InFamous and LBP then trade in my physical copies, but this offer is likely to drop their resale value. Besides as I've said before I own the discs and can trade them in if I so choose; can't do that with digital copies.

Yup looks like Stardust and Wipeout for me. That's assuming the store comes back on line.

Oh wait silly me that's the US rewards we in Europe don't get offered Stardust but Ratchett & Clank Quest for Booty instead.... which I already own.

So out of five I own three and I can choose two; yeah that's going to be hard.

Enslaved PS3 quick review

Enslaved (going cheap [sigh]) is a drunk game.

It scatters collectables around and then penalises you when you try to collect them. A large open world with only one path you can follow. A game that seems to revel in multi-enemy fast motion combat but doesn't allow a lock-on. A game where combat plays a big part yet with only two combat moves.

It just really doesn't know what it wants to be.

[Update - and the cut scenes though skippable aren't pauseable by any means. Care to guess how many times I got called while one was playing?]

PS3 Portal 2 achievements on Steam

The Playstation version of Portal 2 has a neat twist in that it links up to the Steam Network. Once you've linked your two identities you can not only play with others through both networks, but thanks to cloud saving continue from where you last saved on either PC or PS3.

It also syncs up Achievements/Trophies, but here's the catch. Play the PS3 offline (which we've all had to do recently) and obviously it can't sync up to Steam. However go back online and the PS3 will pass on all the Trophies you've earned. So far so what.

Well apparently I earned 27 trophies in one minute. Yup rather than pass on the date and time the Trophy was earned Steam uses the date and time it was synchronised. Fine if you're online as it syncs when you get them. Work offline (for whatever reason) and it looks a little strange.

Either Valve can't access the date/time information or didn't consider what would happen if trophies were earned offline.

[Update - Steam Support has come back to me stating they are aware of this problem and are investigating]

CDs aren't vinyl nor tapes

It's easy to forget sometimes how much technology has jumped and left so many behind grasping at its heels to understand.

DaBoss needed a CD burnt for his children; just six tracks.
"Can we make it loop" he asked
"Not on the CD it's the CD Player that needs to be set to do that"
"Well there's a lot of blank space at the end"
Then it dawned on me
"No from the point of view of the player that space doesn't exist the last track is the last track when it gets to the end it'll either stop or return to the first track"

Trouble is CDs (and DVDs) look like the old vinyl records and behave in some respects like cassettes. If you recorded half and hour of songs onto an hour long cassette the player would broadcast half-an-hour of nothing until it reached the end. If you could record onto vinyl as easily the same would happen.

Not with CDs

The IMF and the World Bank

With the IMF in the news for reasons it doesn't really want to be the question arises - what exactly does the IMF do; and how is that any different from the World Bank. It's really quite simple:

You own a restaurant which is in some financial trouble there's no-one else who can help so you turn to the lender of last resort - the mob. The World Bank is the kindly grandfather figure who counts out the money, hands it over with a pat on the bank, and urges you to take care of yourself. The IMF is the guy tapping the baseball against his palm who makes 'suggestions' regarding how you should be running your restaurant now you've got funds to do it up.

You know simple things really such as lowering the wages of your staff until you're left only with unskilled work; hiring entertainment for the diners such as mimes (everyone loves mimes don't they) and pointing out useful businesses such as that neat little print shop that'll make up your menus for you and that just happens to be owned by the boss' nephew. Sure it charges twice as much as the competition, but you get what you pay for don't you [tap tap tap]. And what's with all the Chinese food? You should start making good honest Italian food instead like the other five restaurants in the street.

Imogen Thomas and the super injunction

It's in the news thanks to the missive from Mr Justice Eady which just goes to highlight how bad the privacy laws (or lack thereof) are in the UK.

The Judge's decision to award the injunction was based on "ample reason not to trust" Imogen and that "appeared strongly to suggest that the claimant was being blackmailed". Except no charge of blackmail seems to be forthcoming.

So Imogen has had her reputation damaged by allegations of blackmail. As injunctions are ordered to protect reputation doesn't this mean that Imogen could have had an injunction taken out against Eady to prevent him publishing this, or that now it's out pursue him in court on a charge of libel.

I'd like to see her sue him.

Red Dead Redemption mini review

Prior to the PSN shutdown I picked up Red Dead Redemption going cheap; damnit will I ever learn to resist the sweet siren's call of cheap games? No I doubt it. I managed to download my free goodies the Deadly Assassin outfit, the Golden Guns, and the War Horse just before everything went phut and started a new game some time later post-phut.

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The Eurovision Song Contest

I managed to perform my usual trick with the Eurovision Song contest switching on a couple of minutes before the 30 second recaps of each song; so much better than the whole thing :-).

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Police officer claims - you can't film this.

Last year I pointed out how much the police hate it when you film or take photographs of, well, pretty much  anything, but in particular them; and how in some US states they were even using wire-tapping laws to prevent this. It it therefore worrying to read that during an Edinburgh Uncut protest on officer told someone filming an arrest that they were

"not allowed to record a police action"

Really? Under which law would that come? While the arrest made seems harsh on its own; this statement is just chilling.

PSN update means access to Steam

Imagine my surprise when I started up my PS3 on Sunday and it told me it couldn't log in not due to the 800nnnn error I've been getting since the network went down, but because I needed a system update.

Five minutes later and the update applied I still couldn't log in as the network was down for maintenance. Still it was progress.

Later in the afternoon I fired it up again and this time I got no error messages. Hmm. Trying to sign in it asked me to set a new password. I continued and was signed in yay! Trophies now updated phew! Store was still down though.

[Update - the secure section that holds the account information such as Trophies is now online (but very, very slow) so my Portable ID has updated. How many trophies did I gain during this 24 day black-out? 84! 31 of those are for Portal 2 though.]

So with that I now have a Steam ID too. Orphi you got Portal 2 yet; fancy some co-op?

Teenagers don't like being drunk

Claims report from alcohol funded group. One I'd have posted last week had Blogger not decided to crash. The Drink Aware charity appeared on BBC Breakfast with regard to a report that showed that teenagers don't enjoy being drunk unlike the portrait painted by the media. This may well be the case but as Charlie pointed out on the show they're funded by the alcohol groups. Ah but Drink Aware is a "blind trust" the backers have no say in what they research.

Fair enough except as I've said before you don't bite the hand that feeds you. If the report had demonstrated that teenagers loved getting drunk and tried to do it as often as possible would we have heard about it? Take a look at their site under binge drinking. They state that:

Alcohol is a factor in:

• One in three (30%) sexual offences
• One in three (33%) burglaries
• One in two (50%) street crimes.

To me that's not a group afraid of offending their backers. So if they've produced a report that says what it does I'm inclined to believe them.

Shuttle style changes

When making longer comments on the Shuttle (and indeed here) I try to break up paragraphs with a white space line gap. I should use the paragraph tags, but as I can't add HTML code directly a double break substitutes.

After updating to Firefox 4 I noted that I was no longer seeing the gaps. I fired up Chrome and Opera and they displayed with line-breaks. "Damn! Is the new Firefox compressing double break tags?"

Turns out no. Pulling the style apart I find line breaks universally have been set to a line height of 0. Opera and Chrome appear to ignore such an instruction; Firefox honours it. Assuming that they've been set as such for a reason I've emailed the paper to ask if an exception could be added for comments.

I'll wait to see what happens.

[Update - a very quick response. My comments have been passed on to the relevant people]

Outcasts review

A quiet weekend meant being able to finally catch up on some recorded television. In this case watching all of the BBC series Outcasts. Well I say all somehow the final episode of the eight part series didn't record and it had slipped off iPlayer. However given that by episode 3 I was watching only out of some misguided sense of duty to British SF I wasn't that bothered; would have been nice to have some of the threads tied, but frankly - meh!

It's a shame really as the premise was good - humanity fleeing an exhausted Earth to a new planet with a group sent on 10 years ahead to prepare the way and waiting out of contact for anyone to follow them; with strange incidents occurring on the planet. It could have been good. So what went wrong?

Firstly I'm not going to point to the actors or the acting; although Hermione Norris emoted like a block of wood there's little that Daniel Mays can do wrong and even he couldn't save this. The major flaw that I see is that this seems to have been written as a novel.

Although there are small glimpses of show don't tell we still had two characters doing the equivalent of starting conversations with "As you know..." and lone characters spouting expository dialogue to themselves. None of this was helped by the large helpings of incidental storylines that were heaped over the main narrative thread.

Done well, such as with the subplot for Daniel May's character, these can illuminate motivations and behaviour of characters within the main storyline. Handled badly it either dilutes attention, because it really is completely incidental, or comes across as shouting at the audience to pay attention. Outcasts managed to do both and worse yet couldn't even keep its own sub-plots consistent from one episode to the next.

So with contradictory subplots and dialogue apparently written to be read rather than spoken I'm amazed the actors managed to do as well as they did. Sad to say that even if this had been given a standard American pilot run of 11 episodes to give it a little more room to establish itself I don't think it could have been salvaged.

Flawed at a fundamental level.

Gracious loser

AV lost 67.9% to 32.1%. I'd like to be a gracious loser and declare that - hey the people have spoken and made up their minds to stick to FPTP. I'd really like to, but I can't.

The reason I can't is that I'm willing to bet a large stack of money that the majority voted No not because they'd carefully considered the arguments for both sides and come to a reasoned conclusion; but because they wanted to punish Nick Clegg. Because they believed the outright lies and fabrications thrown about by the No2AV campaign.

Is this arrogant of me; elitist even? Perhaps, but I have to wonder what the result would have been had the political parties not stuck their oars in. If the No2AV poster campaign had been placed under the purview of the Advertising Standards Authority.

If the people had been given just the plain facts from both sides shorn of the emotional rhetoric would they have voted for AV? I'd like to think so, but who can say as that's never going to happen.

Name and shame

Not an entry on the twitter feed supposedly breaking superinjunctions, but a topic I haven't visited for a  while - poor driving. The gap is not due to everyone driving well, but because if I noted every infringement of the rules I'd be writing about nothing else and hey we all make the odd mistake. However it's back due to the sustained poor driving skills I witnessed on Saturday.

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Phasing out cheques

The abolition of cheques popped up again in the news recently due to the forthcoming deadline of scrapping the guarantee scheme in June this year.

Several arguments have been issued as to why the scrapping of cheques is a good idea:

They're expensive
Time consuming
Usage has fallen.

Okay expensive. As a business our bank charges us 28p for every cheque we receive and 76p for every cheque we write. However to make a one-off bank-to-bank payment the sort of thing we'd use cheques for we'd be charged £5.17. So cheques from our point of view are cheaper.

Time-consuming. Only from the banks point of view.

Fallen Usage. This puts me in mind of the Beeching Axe, cutting off the local rail lines and keeping the profitable (or at least the most heavily trafficked ones). The people who use cheques do so for a reason and it is highly prevalent amongst the small to medium businesses.

If it's removed something needs to replace it; but what? We need something that doesn't require messing about with computers or automated telephone systems. Something we can just write out for one off items without having to keep cash on us something like um cheques?

And there's the problem. As it stands the format of cheques is pretty much the ideal choice for one-off payments without cash or the need to carry around card-reading equipment.

New graffiti

We have a new player in town - Venom. Mostly stencilled names with the odd freehand V. Most stylish work is on the power substation off Dunley Road towards Areley Common; sadly black paint on a dark brown door doesn't real stand out.

Osama legality

I find it interesting to look at the arguments of those who claim the death of OBL was legal. The two most prominent arguments are:

1. The law allowed the President  to take this action.
2. It was a military action taken during wartime against the opposition's leader.

Let's look at each. In the first case there is a law passed during the W Bush era that allowed the President to take any necessary action against anyone he thought was involved with the 9-11 atrocity. That is the US Congress passed a law that allowed the US President to take any action he wants against an individual. Somehow that's supposed to apply legally outside the US? Of course not. It does mean that legal action can't be taken within the US and as they tend to ignore anyone else there's little point in trying such outside; however that doesn't make it legal in the same way that an American citizen can't claim fifth amendment rights in a UK court hearing. Your laws don't apply outside your country.

The second case is that this is war. Except is it? Several countries have been attacked by Al-Qaeda and they have claimed responsibility and OBL has claimed leadership of them and issued what amounted to a public declaration of war against them. We in turn have retaliated and thus a state of war can be said to exist. Except if that's the case certain restrictions come into play such as the Geneva convention regarding humanitarian treatment of prisoners. Everyone now look at Guantanamo Bay and other facilities. If this was a war actions taken in them were illegal under international agreements; if it's not a war than this second case argument is moot. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Some of those pushing these views attack the opposition by calling them hand-wringing lefties; and in some cases that might be true. However look at the liberties being lost or constrained in the name of this war; look at how they're being misused and applied to cases that they were never meant to cover.

If you can justify the actions taken it becomes precedent.

Professor Robert Winston and No2AV

Professor Robert Winston appeared on the BBC Breakfast show this morning to defend FPTP; or to be precise denigrate AV. I think this is the first time I've watched a respected scientist with my jaw agape at the sheer rubbish he was spouting.

Consider if this was a scientific project presented to him by one of his students. The student bases his conclusion on the following:

1. An argument that neither validates nor invalidates the project;
2. Data from another paper taken out of context;
3. Consensus opinion with no validity to the argument;
4. A personal opinion; and
5. An argument based on no data that is refuted by several other papers and experiments.

I think he'd return it and be very disappointed. What did we get from Professor Winston:

1. The referendum was rushed through Parliament. This doesn't make it bad, it doesn't make it good; it has no bearing on anything.
2. A quote from Nick Clegg that wasn't referring to this AV, but a proposal from Gordon Brown.
3. That the majority in all the political Parties don't want it; who cares what they think?
4. AV will still have tactical voting it will just be more complicated; with no evidence to support that claim.
5. AV will lead to more hung Parliaments; despite a paper that states that the likelihood under either system will increase and that historically AV Australia has had less hung elections than FPTP Canada an indicator that such is more Party based than voting-system based.

Sorry Professor, but you've let yourself down.

More on Osama

This just gets better doesn't it? So now he was unarmed and shot resisting arrest; a simple disabling shot... to the head.

To recap - A US Military force illegally enters another country; invades someone's home; shoots the defenders and then shoots dead one of the occupant for refusing to be kidnapped.

Yep "Justice" is definitely the word I'd use to describe that.

On the changing use of language

I could say that something was cooked to perfection, or that a dish was perfect in its execution; what I could not say was that a meal was cooked perfect.

Perhaps cookery shows exhibit this more, but I have noticed it in other contexts; the simple dropping of a -ly where one would normally appear. I cannot place this as a dialectual difference as I have heard it uttered from many accents. Yet there does seem to be an increase in a dropping of this suffix as well as a few others that don't form the main task of tenses in separating past, present, and future.

I am finding it irritating and must stop myself from verbally adding the -ly to so much that is being spoken. Is it just me?

I can learn my ABCs

Devil Child came over for a visit with her parents and Chewie; as something to keep her occupied I gave her a large piece alphabet jigsaw puzzle to do. It didn't take her long, but then she started reciting "A,B,C,D..." a song which demonstrates its origins in that it only rhymes if you end it in "zee" instead of "zed".

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Yet more distortion from No2AV

After the rubbish that was their first advert the No2AV campaign have gone for simple declarative statements in their next showing.

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Justice?

On the 2nd of May 2011 the President of the United States addressed his nation to inform the people that the USA's most wanted was dead after a decade of searching.

A US military team entered a foreign country with (allegedly) neither permission nor authority from that country's government. Despite having no jurisdiction they then invaded someone's home, shot the people trying to defend it; and then executed someone who has never stood trial and thus never been convicted in a court of law.

The verdict from the President - "Justice has been done".

[Update from the BBC with Cameron's speech to the House

"He was he man who was responsible for 9-11"

No he was the man who claimed responsibility for 9-11; it would be up to a court of law to state that he was indeed responsible

"He was a man who posed as a leader of Muslims but was actually a mass-murderer of Muslims."

Yes? Those two points aren't contradictory. I could claim myself to be a leader of Christians (meaning Roman Catholics) and kill large groups of Christians (meaning Protestants). Either Cameron doesn't understand the difference or he's just playing up to the House.

"and of course there is no punishment at our disposal that can remotely fit the many appalling crimes for which he was responsible"

Again - court of law.

Believe me I'm not defending this piece of scum, but I get worried when these sorts of things are bandied about]