a parrot generally couldn’t really command a battalion of storm troops

Cas is currently

So today they obviously decided to have a scary right-wing politics morning on both sides of the House.

Exhibit one, we have Mr Clarke (the Home Secretary, Labour, nominally leftish) with his global database of anyone who might have been a bit naughty. I may be oversimplifying, and I sure as hell know the BBC reportage isn’t giving the full story, but when the dude from the UN gets worried, you have to think twice.

Exhibit two, we have David Cameron (current favourite to take over the Conservative leadership, scary, well, Conservative) giving Conservatives a bad name. Withdrawing from international human rights conventions?!? What happened to the fluffy nice and new Conservatives they keep promising us?

I am on record, I think, with my whole “war = bad idea” ethos, including my opinions on the whole “war on terror” debacle. Yes, we live in a climate of danger and threat, we have to do something about it, and I don’t have much of an idea what we should be doing about it. But I sure as hell know that what we’re doing now ain’t exactly working. I think the figures are at something like 100,000 Iraqi’s dead since the ‘war’ began. That is ‘war’ in quotes, because, remember folks, they never actually declared war. Just a bit of police action between friends.

And as soon as I get one wiki working (even though no one seems to be actually using it yet), the other one goes on the fritz. As I already look like an extra from the “singing in the rain” number, I feel no inclination to tromp all the way up to the lab to see what the hell is wrong with, but as it is currently holding all my thesis notes hostage, I am going to have to go negotiate.

Damn it! My planned evening had better be a whole lot more fun than the morning’s been so far. Grrr.