The End of Darkness?

In just a few hours time, after what's been the longest, most expensive, and perhaps most exciting presidential election ever, we'll know who is going to be the 44th President of the United States.

Being a political news junkie, I've been following the race fairly closely for the last 18 months, and, like pretty much the rest of the world outside of America, I'm praying (figuratively speaking given I'm an atheist) that Barack Obama wins.

The world can't handle another 4 years of a Republican administration in the White House.

A while back I read Bill Clinton's autobiography - 'My Life', and he stated that although history will ultimately judge his presidency, his own view was based on a simple mental list he kept:- jobs created, increased access to healthcare, increased funding for childcare, number of people lifted out of poverty, etc.

Now lets apply that principle to George W. Bush. Here's my mental list:

• Over 4,500 coalition troop deaths in the Iraq War and hundreds of thousands civilian casualties resulting from a war, lest we forget, which was sold to us based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction which never materialised;
• The trampling of human rights and civil liberties via the Patriot Act, Extraordinary Rendition, Water Boarding torture, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other such terms we had all never heard of before 2001;
• The failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty, and furthermore, the continual effort to block and hamper the fight against climate change;
• The abysmal failure to act or show any leadership in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans;
• The complete wipeout of the federal budget surplus and creation of America's biggest ever budget deficit;
• etc, etc.

Maybe I'm being a bit unfair. On the plus side he did give records amount of financial relief to AIDS riddled countries in Africa, and was the first US president to acknowledge that a two-state solution was the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestine issue.

However, on the first, the amount of money given to the fight against AIDS ($30bn if I remember correctly) now seems a pittance in comparison to the $1 trillion spent on the Iraq War to date and the $700 bail-out of the banks (a figure which looks like it could double). And on the second, what progress has been made? We seem no closer to a solution now than 8 years ago. At least 8 years ago there was no wall built around the West Bank. Given what many people believe are the root-causes of 9/11, you'd think that pushing the middle-east peace process would be right up there with catching Osama Bin Laden. Yet both seem to have took a back seat to what I believe is Bush's number one priority - 'Energy Security'.

I remember a few years ago visiting the White House website to see what his administration had to say about climate change. If you go there now there is a section titled Environment but a few years ago no such section existed. Yet there was a section titled Energy Security.

Some cynics may say that Energy Security was the entire basis for the invasion of Iraq. After all, we all know that the Bush family's links to the oil companies are long and well documented.

The last 8 years have been a disaster and George W. Bush will probably be remembered as one of the worst and most unpopular American presidents ever.

So, will we see an end to this darkness?

I'm not naive enough to think that America will completely change its foreign policy and stance on climate change overnight if Barack Obama wins.

Lets just hope it is a new direction and an Obama win will go some way to reverse the damage inflicted by 8 years of the Neo-Cons in charge.

As for John McCain, I had a lot of respect for him before this process began. I've read about his 6 years imprisonment and torture during the Vietnam war, and his refusal to be released ahead of his compatriots. He truly is a war hero. But the way he has fought this campaign has surely undone a lot of the goodwill many people had for him.

Some political analysts say that he has simply learnt from his 2000 campaign to become the Republican presidential nominee against George Bush. In that campaign he mainly refused to go negative and resort to nasty tactics. Bush on the other hand had no such qualms and many Americans, bombarded with adverts and push-poll phone calls, fell hook, line and sinker for the Bush campaign's smear tactics.

McCain has clearly taken some political campaigning lessons from Karl Rove and thrown his morals out of the window. At every step he has attempted to dumb the campaign issues down to the lowest common denominator; painting complex issues as black and white, and virtually labeling Obama as everything from a terrorist to a socialist.

The soundbites coming out of the McCain team over the last few weeks since the economic meltdown really has represented a low-point in intellectual debate. How many times did McCain quote Obama as using the words 'share the wealth', insinuating that Obama is somewhere to the left of Karl Marx with his policy of reducing income tax on the middle tax, as opposed to McCain's policy of cutting corporation tax for big business. It amazes me how that word 'socialist' is used in american politics. It's as if no american has ever visited Western Europe and seen the balance between economic growth and state welfare that has given a high standard of living with free(ish) health care for all.

Obviously I'm making grand generalisations here. It's mainly commentators on the right side of politics in America (right as in opposite to left, not right as in opposite to wrong), such as the state news channel that is Fox News that have done the most to brainwash some Americans into believing that all the issues are black and white; free-markets - good, regulation - bad; religion - good, atheism - bad; etc.

I sometimes play a little game. I put on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News and see how long it is until I want to throw a brick at the TV or start laughing uncontrollably in an effort to hide the tears of frustration at the ridiculousness that is the pompous, egotistical Bill O'Reilly. It's been particular amazing to hear his rants lately against the democratic bias of the MS-NBC news channel. Talk about 'pot this is kettle'.

Anyway, speaking of black and white, some commentators are looking out for the purported Bradley Effect to see if the polls are wrong and McCain can clutch victory from the claws of defeat. The Bradley Effect is a theory that many voters tend to lie in polls when asked if they voted for the black candidate because they don't want the pollster to think that they are racist. I guess we'll find out in a few hours time whether there are truths to this theory.

I've been watching the Emmy award-winning drama John Adams over the last few weeks which is currently showing over here. I wonder what Adams, Washington, Franklin, et all would make of the circus that now exists as a result of Article 2 of the United States Constitution? Whatever happens, these are certainly interesting times we are living through.

UK National Risk Register

The UK Cabinet Office has now made public information from the previously classified UK National Risk Register. This is available at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/national_risk_register.aspx.


This seems to backup what many scientists have been saying. The greatest risk to the UK is not terrorism, or even global warming. It's an Influenza Pandemic.

Google Street View

Google is facing a tough time when it comes to privacy. Only 2 days ago Google lost a court case with Viacom (the parent company of MTV and Paramount Pictures) where the judge ruled that they must hand over the log files detailing everyone who has ever accessed a YouTube video. This ruling could set a dangerous precedent. It effectively forces one company to hand over personal user information to another company (Viacom is a company after all, not a federal agency) containing personal information related to millions of users around the world. Google is appealing the decision and requesting that it be allowed to anonymise the data.

We may have the Privacy Act in Australia, and the Data Protection Act in the UK, but that means absolutely nothing when your data is hosted on a server in the US. It's clear to me that there's now a desparate need for international laws governing data privacy.

In another blow to Google, Google's plans to launch Google Street View in the UK is being referred to the Information Commissioner. Google Street View is criticised by privacy advocates because it could potentially show the faces of individuals. Google can remove the image on request, which it has done for many instances in the US, but in the UK there is an argument that this could breach the Data Protection Act because they're not getting the user's consent before using the image.

Google is currently trialling facial recognition software in the hopes of being able to automatically pixalate the face of anyone that might show up in it's images.

By the way, you may not have seen the following picture. Google have taken this down now but the original photo (below) accidentally caught someone pulling a gun out on a kid at the side of the road.



I personally think Google Street Views is amazing and I can't wait for it to come to Australia. If you thing Google Earth is good check out Google Street View!

BBC - Google Faces Street Views Block
BBC - Google Must Divulge YouTube Log

Grant is Gone

Who would be a football manager? It seems that coming second in the Premier League and making the final of the Champions League (something Mourinho didn't manage for Chelsea) isn't good enough if you're a manager for a club that's owned by a billionaire.

Sadly, it looks like the top clubs in the EPL are going to start suffering the same fate as Real Madrid and Barcelona, with a constantly revolving door ushering in a new Manager each season. It pains me to say it being a Liverpool supporter, but you've got to admire Manchester United. Alex Ferguson achieved tremendous success in the 90's but in the last few years when Man Utd played second fiddle to Chelsea and Arsenal the board at Man Utd kept faith with their manager. It makes you wonder how many more seasons Wenger could last in the current climate if he doesn't deliver the Premiership trophy for Arsenal again.

I'd be embarrassed to be a Chelsea fan right now. Where is the heart and soul of the club? How can you support a club whose formula for success is to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into the club and then sack the Manager if he doesn't achieve miracles within months of joining?

It's a sad state of affairs.

Daylight Savings Chaos

It was chaos on Monday here in Sydney. For the very first time, the New South Wales State Government had decided to extend daylight savings a week. Unfortunately I don't think they publicised it very well or thought through the impact, as a lot of computer software that was set to automatically adjust the time was not amended to reflect the change. I saw the result first hand when I went to the client site on Monday morning.

Microsoft quickly released a patch to fix the clock on Windows. However, the patch didn't extend to the Calendar in Microsoft Outlook - so everyone's appointments and meetings were out by an hour.

Apparently even many mobile phones were affected, and phone services, including the Telstra speaking clock. It comes to something when the phone company's speaking clock is an hour wrong!

We don't have such problems in Queensland as the Queensland State Government has so far refused to adopt daylight saving hours. A backwards and stupid decision if you ask me. We're only in Autumn and I'm already getting up in the dark and coming home from work in the dark.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23458405-5014239,00.html

Reported UK Data Losses - It's Worse Than You Think

It comes as no surprise to me that we're seeing a lot of news reports lately regarding lost or stolen government laptops and removable media containing personal information. In the last week alone we've seen records of 600,00 people have been lost by the Royal Navy, as well as the loss of 4000 patient records by Stockport Primary Care Trust.

The truth is, this has been happening for years and the incidents that are being reported to the press are probably only a fraction of the actual incidents. In the UK there are no legal requirements for government departments or companies to publicly disclose data losses, so you have to draw the conclusion that the only reason why the Government is being upfront about losses at the moment is because they know this is an hot issue in the press and if they didn't offer full disclose it would probably be leaked anyway.

I was watching the news yesterday when David Milliband, the Foreign Secretary, made the remark that we cannot legislate against people having their laptops stolen from cars. That's all very well but he's missing the point entirely. You can't legislate against laptop theft but you can legislate against how data is stored and protected in the first place.

Another investigation on its own isn't going to stop this from happening again. As an Information Security Consultant who has worked with both local and central government, I've seen at first hand the systems and processes that are in place governing data protection, or rather lack of them. Unless there's a fundamental change to the approach to security within the Government this type of incident will occur again and again.

Based on my own experiences, there are a number of problems with current arrangements that make these incidents likely, including a lack of clearly defined legislation governing data security, insufficient independent regulatory oversight of security in government departments, and a lack of due diligence and contracts management when it comes to outsourcing services to the private sector.

For what it's worth, here's my two pennies worth of how I believe these issues could be resolved:

1. New legislation needs to be passed mandating strict standards for government systems

The Data Protection Act is not specific enough when it comes to requirements, and can be interpreted in a number of ways. That's why the Information Commissioner has such an hard job with enforcing the requirements and issuing penalties when things go wrong. The DPA has eight principles, one of which specifically addresses data security - Principle 7:

'Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.'

The key word here is 'appropriate'. Appropriate is subjective. The interpretation of Principle 7 in the Act itself doesn't particularly help either because it uses words such as 'reasonable measures'. In guidelines produced by the Information Commissioner supporting the Data Protection Act reference is made to more specific security requirements, but it can be argued that there is nothing on the Statute book that specifies the exact minimum requirements for protecting personal data. Similarly the Act does not properly reflect new technologies and new threats.

The government could address this by first updating the Data Protection Act to strengthen requirements which I believe it is already planning, but also implement new legislation that specifically addresses security standards for Government held data. This should be something similar to the US Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). FISMA is a comprehensive framework that has strict requirements for all federal agencies. The UK legislation would need to make it clear that government departments are required by law to implement the requirements of the HMG Manual of Protective Security, HMG Information Security Standards, as well as the recently published Information Assurance Policy. Whilst the MPS and security standards have been around for a while now, the continuation of these types of security breaches just goes to show that they are not being properly implemented or enforced.

2. The CSIA and CESG should be given a larger budget and more powers

In 2003, the Central Sponsor for Information Assurance (CSIA) was established in the Cabinet Office with responsibilities for providing strategic direction in information assurance across all government departments, guided by a National Strategy for Information Assurance.

The Computer Electronics Support Group (CESG) is the Information Assurance arm of GCHQ (GCHQ is responsible for electronic surveillance, similar to the NSA in the US) and acts as the National Technical Authority for the UK Government, similar to the National Institute for Standards (NIST) in the US. However, if you look at the output of the CESG and need for the CESG to rely on private sector specialists to carry out work on their behalf (through the CLAS scheme), it's clear that they have a long way to go before their standards become as clear or prolific as NIST, or they have the ability address Government security in a way that NIST is doing through the FISMA Implementation Programme.

As for the CLAS programme, even though HMG Security Standards specify that that IT projects should go through formal security accreditation by a CLAS consultant, many don't.

It seems to me that both CSIA and CESG don't have the budget or resources to properly fulfil their obligations, because if they did, we wouldn't keep having to read about data losses. If the CSIA and/or CLAS had the powers and resources to carry out regular, in-depth audits of all government departments and carry out full security accreditation and certification then issues such as poor data handling procedures and lack of encryption on laptops and backup tapes would be picked up and addressed.

3. Government departments should be given a dedicate Information Security budget

This may have changed now but from what I've seen IT security expenditure is usually taken out of the general IT budget. Companies that have good security generally ring-fence approx 15-20% of their IT budget specifically for security. Government departments should do the same.

4. Government departments should be subjected to more stringent regulatory oversight

When the Nationwide Building Society was fined £1 million by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) after a laptop was stolen containing thousands of customer's banking details, this was enough of a wake-up call to other banks to finally implement the end-device security programmes that their security departments had been recommending. A good proportion of the banks are now using technology such as that provided by the likes of PointSec and Safeboot to lock down laptops and encrypt the hard drives. I personally use TrueCrypt on my home laptop which is open source (free).

Government departments should be subject to similar compliance penalties. Now I'm not one who particularly believes that financial penalties for public sector bodies is the right way to go. After all, it's tax payers money that pays the penalty and it's tax payers, not company directors or shareholders as with a PLC, who ultimately lose out because there's less money to put into government services. However, it's clear that the current situation, where the Government suffers some embarrassment and a Civil Servant is forced to hand in his resignation (sometimes, not always), is not enough of a penalty. This is a tricky one, because if the penalties are severe then the departments concerned will be less likely to publicly disclose the incident in the first place.

How about this: what if (1) a law was introduced similar to the California Security Breach Notification Law making it compulsory to publicly disclose security incidents that impact personal data, and (2) senior management and ministers are made directly accountable for any security breaches. Depending upon the severity of the incident the Civil Servant up to the Minister and finally the Secretary of State will be forced to resign (completely from Government, not just shuffled to another post) and/or personally fined. That could work?

By the way, I believe strongly that a security breach notification law should be introduced that also applies to all companies. I've seen many a security breach that has been completely covered up internally and not even reported to the authorities through fear of damage to reputation and contractual penalties.

5. Improve due diligence and contracts management for outsourced contracts

The scary thing is that large parts of government services have been outsourced to the private sector, and many of these private sector companies have not made the investment in security that you would expect when we're talking about the protection of government systems and government held data.

I've seen at first-hand how companies bid for government contracts, promise the world in the bid so that they'll win the contract, and then fail to deliver what they've promised and get away with it because the Government doesn't carry out sufficient due diligence before awarding the contract, or in-depth audits for the duration of the contracts.

The likes of EDS and Capita have large multi-million pound contracts to manage a huge proportion of government IT systems and services. Some of these contracts run for 10 years and were written at a time when security wasn't the issue it was today. Even the contracts that are written today don't go far enough to mandate security requirements. The contracts that I've seen have some reference to the Manual of Protective Security and usually state that providers should 'demonstrate compliance with' ISO 27001 - the international best practice standard for Information Security Management. However, there's a big difference between compliance and certification.

ISO 27001 certification should be a minimum requirement, at least this would demonstrate that the company has a formal security risk management and governance framework in place, and this has been independantly verified by an external auditor. However, even this does not go far enough. I help companies achieve ISO 27001 certification and I know how easy it is to get certified by simply choosing the right auditor (there's a massive difference between success criteria from one auditor to the next) and producing documentation that looks the part but does not necessarily reflect reality. Government contracts should specify in detail the exact security requirements. Instead of having security specifications which have ambiguous statements like 'Data should be protected according to risk' they should say, for example, 'data held on backup media must be encrypted, and as a minimum AES encryption with a bit-strength of 256 must be used'. This would make it clear to service providers that investment in technology such as data encryption is not optional.

As for due diligence, what tends to happen in my experience is that bidding companies are asked to provide copies of company security policies and standards. This is not good enough. Just because the security policy stipulates that a certain level of security is required that doesn't mean that it's standard practice for the company to implement it. No, there needs to be thorough due-diligence which includes in-depth investigation, inspection of systems and processes, and even visits to reference sites.

Furthermore, once the contract is awarded, it's not good enough, as is usually the case at the moment, to simply send out an annual security questionnaire to the service provider. Again, just because someone puts some good sounding words in a completed security questionnaire it doesn't mean that those answers reflect reality. There needs to be regular, full, independent audits of all aspects of the IT environment and services being provided.

Anyway, I've said my piece. How are we supposed to have trust that the UK national ID card programme will securely hold our biometric identifier, an identifier that we can't revoke or change, or that the NHS Spine, which has been contracted out to BT, will securely hold all our health records? You may think so what if someone gets hold of my personal information, they can't do anything with it. Think again. The risk of identity theft should not be underestimated. Identity theft is said to be the fasting growing crime and with a few pieces of personal information it's possible for a fraudster to take over your entire life - access your bank account, get your mail redirected, get identity documents such as passports and driving licences issued to them in your name with their photo. There's many documented incidents that prove this is happening all the time.

I worry because my details are on UK and Australia government systems!

When I read about the loss of the Royal Navy laptop it made me wonder if I could be affected. It's been over 16 years since I joined the Navy but 600,00 records were lost and there's only 36,500 personnel currently in the Navy. I know the 600,000 figure includes people who have just expressed an interest in joining the Navy but even so, it makes you wonder how many years back the records go. After all, if they're allowing full recruitment records to be copied out of a central database and onto a laptop, and they're not encrypting the laptop hard disk, they're probably not doing much to enforce the fifth principle of the Data Protection Act - ‘Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes'.

British Army Developing Invisible Tanks

If reports are to be believed, the Ministry of Defence in conjunction with QinetiQ (lots of MOD contracts), and the British Army, are testing technology that can make tanks and troops invisible. Apparently it works by using "cameras and projectors to beam images captured from the surrounding landscape onto a specially-adapted tank coated with silicon to maximize their reflective qualities". Now that sounds familiar, wasn't that exactly how the invisible car worked in Pierce Brosnan's last James Bond film - Die Another Day?

I gasped with despair in the cinema when that scene showed - thinking that they had surely gone too far into fantasy world this time.

The question is, do you think QinetiQ got the idea from Die Another Day? Just kidding of course. Mind you, it's not the first time that James Bond films have been ahead of the game when it comes to technology. The underwater camera in Thunderball (1965) and the digital watch in Live and Let Die (1973) are just two examples of gadgets that were shown in James Bond films before they became widely available to the public.

Come to think of it, Q Branch, QinetiQ. Could there be a connection?

Engadget - British Army looks to make tanks, troops invisible

I Was Wrong - It's Riise's Payslip

According to this BBC report, Liverpool FC have launched an investigation into how John Arne Riise's payslip has appeared on the Internet.

So, if Riise is on 120 grand a week base salary, what is Gerrard on?

Look What You've Done Radiohead!

On Saturday I wrote about how the news that Radiohead's decision to bypass the record labels and distribute their album themselves, at a price chosen by the customer, may signal the demise of the industry. Well guess what, this week Nine Inch Nails, Jamiroquai, Oasis, and, wait for it, Madonna, have all announced that they're dumping their record labels.

This is going to be interesting to watch. My bet is that in 10 years time the only artists on EMI's books will be X-Factor runners-up!

Another Hammer in the Coffin for Record Labels?

On the 10th October, Radiohead will release their new album 'In Rainbows'. More interestingly however, the album will be made available as a download from their own website and we, the customer, can decide how much we want to pay for it. If we don't like it, we don't have to pay a penny! What's more, they haven't signed a deal with any of the major record labels or the major distributors, including iTunes, and there will be no promo's for the album. They'll be releasing it and distributing it themselves, and it will be made available to everyone at the same time.

Radiohead are regarded by many as the best band in the world, which is what makes this announcement even more important. According to an A&R Executive at a major label, as quoted in this Time artice - "If the best band in the world doesn't want a part of us, I'm not sure what's left for this business ... if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I'm not sure there's any going back".

This comes at a time when the record labels and the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) in particular are facing increasing criticism over their approach to music copyright protection. It wasn't long ago that it was discovered that SonyBMG was surreptitiously including Rootkit installers in CD's to enforce copyright protection - when the CD was placed in your computer CDROM drive an hidden installer would install the copyright protection on your PC without you knowing. Once this became public SonyBMG had to quickly backtrack after what become a PR disaster for them.

And just this week, in yet another RIAA lawsuit in America, SonyBMG's head of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, while testifying before a jury, stated that making a copy of purchased music was tantamount to stealing, even if you'd bought the CD and was simply making a backup. So in the eyes of the record labels, if we download music or buy it on CD and then copy it to our MP3 player, which most people do these days, we are in fact thieves. With an attitude like that it's no wonder that many people don't think twice about downloading music illegally.

The truth is , in every area of business, the Internet is introducing new business models that give more power to us, the consumer, and increasingly allows small business' to take on the big guys. It's truly democratising the world, well at least those parts of the world that have access to the Internet! If the big corporations don't recognise this and adapt to it, they'll quickly lose market share.

I complained to FIFA, you should too!

I've just read this news story on BBC Sport about comments made by FIFA Vice-President Jack Warner. I was so incensed it drove me to writing a strongly worded complaint to FIFA calling for his immediate resignation.

What do you think, should we finance a 'hit' on him?

Complain here

Britain's banks face £1bn bill from charges revolt | Special report | Guardian Unlimited Business

HSBC's half year results show that the banks are having to pay a lot more out than previously thought:

Britain's banks face £1bn bill from charges revolt | Special report | Guardian Unlimited Business

If you haven't already claimed back your unfair charges, like we did, you've probably missed the boat as the FSA have allowed the banks to suspend any further payments until the high-court ruling. You may still get your charges back, but it's not likely to be the full amount

Banks agree to charges test case

The banks must be tired of paying out to those of us (in our thousands) that have reclaimed bank charges, as they're finally accepting a test case in the courts.

Having worked for banks and knowing a little about their operations, I doubt very much that they'll be able to prove that they can justify the unauthorised overdraft charges. There's no way it costs them £30 a transaction, particularly the big banks which benefit from massive economies of sale and where everything is an automated computer transaction.

The banks will always win in the end though. They may lose their day in court and be forced to lower their penalty charges, and be forced to make refunds to customers, but they'll probably counter this by bringing an end to free banking in the UK.

Free banking is practically unheard of in Australia. There are a few accounts that don't make monthly account charges, however these tend to be dependant upon maintaining a certain balance in your account. For instance my main account is with the Bank of Queensland. If my balance remains above $2000 then I don't get charged, but if it drops below $2k at any time then I'll get charged a $4 monthly account fee.

I can imagine the likes of Barclays, HBOS and HSBC introducing something similar. Barclays have kind of already done this by stealth with their Barclays Additions account. If it's anything like the Barclays Additions account the monthly fee will be a lot more than $4 (£1.60)!

BBC NEWS | Business | Banks agree to charges test case

Liverpool unveil stadium plans

Liverpool today unveiled the design for the new stadium, scheduled to open in 2010.

The design is an upgrade on the initial plans as the new owner's would like to be able to increase capacity above 75,000, subject to the plans being approved by Liverpool council. It was always a nightmare getting tickets for Anfield so I'm sure they'll have no problems filling it. Not sure if there's the road infrastructure in place though to support it - it will be only a stone's throw away from the current home of the real theatre of dreams, which is not the most accessible of stadiums.


Exciting times ahead, especially with all the new acquisitions, which Liverpool added to today with the signing of Brazil's under-20 Captain Lucas Leiva.

More info at Liverpoolfc.tv.

Brisbane CBD comes to a stand-still for Brett Irwin funeral

I should read the local papers more often, as when I went out for lunch today I had no clue why roadblocks had been set up and why police were milling everywhere. I soon discovered the reason why when I came round the corner to St Stephen's Cathedral. It was the funeral for Brett Irwin - the police officer who was shot dead last Wednesday issuing an arrest warrant to a man in Brisbane's north west.

As you can see from the photo's I took, the mourners and onlookers were numbered in their thousands....
According to the local paper there were 3000 police officers in attendance...

This would have been a good time to rob a bank..


Photo's were taken with my camera phone, hence the dodgy quality. I didn't take any pics of the honour guard as they came out of the cathedral as I thought it would have been a bit crass to have taken photo's while everyone was paying their respects (especially when there's 3000 coppers in the immediate vicinity!).

Jamie Oliver E-mail Threat

If it wasn't for the fact it's not April Fools Day I would have thought this news story was a joke:

Devon and Cornwall police today confirmed they'd arrested a man in connenction with the Cornwall National Liberation Army (CNLA) threats against celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein and their Cornwall-based restaurant ventures, news agencies report.

Read the full story here - Man cuffed over Jamie Oliver email threat (The Register)

Banks ordered to reveal true cost of charges

Banks ordered to reveal true cost of charges - Guardian Unlimited Money

I may have got my money back, but I'd still like to know how they justify the charges.

John Smeaton - a hero of our time

It seems John Smeaton has become a bit of a cult hero on the web.

Only in Glasgow would a member of the public tackle a man on fire and get a boot in. There's now numerous sites and videos on the web dedicated to (mostly taking the piss out of) John Smeaton.

I know I shouldn't, but you've got to laugh about the whole affair. I think the terrorists must have been been watching too much A-Team, for it's only in The A-Team that you can drive a Jeep full of propane into a building and cause a dramatic explosion. Surely everyone knows cars don't necessarily explode when they're set on fire, except on TV.

JohnSmeaton.com
John Smeaton on YouTube

Torres is a Red!

Finally, a signing that might help us challenge for the title.

Liverpool has completed the signing of Fernando Torres from Atletico Madrid. He's taking up the number 9 shirt left vacant by Robbie Fowler. If Torres turns out to be half the striker that 'God' was in his prime then we're in for a really exciting season ahead. Although it was brief, from what I saw of him playing in the World Cup I predict he could become world-class.

Finally some honesty about the Iraq War

Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has publicly admitted that oil is one of the reasons for Australia's continued troop presence in Iraq. This is the first time such an admission has been made, although his boss, John Howard, denies it.