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Two days before polling some follow-up on how the Welfare Green Paper is playing in Glasgow East would be good.

You could even ask some voters instead of the candidates, so balance shouldn't be so much of a problem.

Of course it may be difficult to find any, thanks to it being Glasgow Fair fortnight as the Scottish media point out. OTOH, maybe the ones still left at home will be the ones on benefit with views of their own.

Anyone interested could start by having a look at the Scotsman's All the fun of the Fair makes for slim pickings on the hustings at

Albinos in Tanzania - that will drive the goose steppers insane! Best stay off the immigration debate for a year or so I'd say.

On Karadic was this a Serb change of heart or a Russian change of heart?

On Iraq we just don't have the troops to keep up this strategy at present. Even McCain will accept that. I think Obama will genuinely set out to get as many troops home as he can but I suspect the reality will be it still takes a long time. It probably will help politically. I also wonder post US whether the oil and reconstruction deals will be renegotiated if the UN intercedes. That will be interesting.

thegangofone (#2) "Albinos in Tanzania - that will drive the goose steppers insane! Best stay off the immigration debate for a year or so I'd say."

It has nothing to do with skin pigmentation, it's a matter of gene barriers and assortive mating limiting gene flow. We have evolved to discriminate by phenotype as a guide to genotype (ensuring some variation but not too much). Some mammals are primarily olfactory driven, humans are visually driven. Intelligent behaviour is neocortically (vision and fine sensory-motor distance discrimination) driven, not paleocortically (vague, olfactory, gut feel) driven. We are scheduled to have skill-based (IQ proxy) driven immigration. Please stop making contrary to the evidence assertions and look instead to how most groups actually mate. Like mates with like, miscegenation is the rare exception not the rule. Immigration is used as a divisive force as is human rights, anti-sexism and the rest. Look at the demographic projections - the EU has a serious problem with declining birth rates and differential fertility. If you still don't undrstand what that means, look at the UN or World Bank data.

Let your thinking be driven by what empirically happens, not by ideology.

Something that higher levels of spin have overlooked:

the former government of India, and the prospective new government, the BJP, is modeled on the ideology of the Hitler Youth.

That is literal fact. Now, should that be a factor to consider in what passes for British and American policy?

FOCAL LENGTH

Those Tanzanians eh! What are they like?
You have to be pretty gullible to believe albino stuff is magic, and then go killing people on the back of a lie. Mind you, now I come to think of it, a lot of Britons thought Tony was magic (particularly Iain Duncan Smith, at whose door The War really lies). There was I, yelling: read his past! read his speeches! (carefully) READ THE MAN! But they queued-up for more of him, at ever higher prices. The IDS tally of war dead is a few more than 10, and Tony is now 'a prat that likes to gallop about doing good'. SHORTEN THE FOCUS NEWSNIGHT. When we hear the Bomber Obama call, we won't just bomb albinos. It is 'Mote and Beam' time again - again - again.

LIKE MATES WITH LIKE (Jaded Jean #3)

Especially brothers and sisters, separated young! Oh, it's a 'natural' minefield out there! All so finely tuned to 'the norm' and right up the creek when Norm goes off with Eric. I have a file of wedding pictures, cut from the local rag (no no - not sad - research) showing how our primary choice in a mate is 'family face'. Maybe JJ can come up with a reason why Nature flirts with incest? My suspicion is that although a wide differential gene mix is preferable, psychologically it puts the union in more danger than recessive genes - how say you m'lady? My younger son looked exactly like me until he got to puberty. He matured with an adult body like his maternal grandfather but facially like both! Ergo: I married the family face. Where was I?
If we are, viscerally, THAT set on sameness, what chance multicultural, global-villagery when the chips are down? We might manage temporary cerebral deceit but when the animal decides otherwise, it's back to nature.

Barrie (#6) I've tried responding but when I post I get a message: "profanity blocked".

I can't find a profanity in what I've written.

HI JEAN HYGIENE

That doesn't sound like the Beeb blocking you. Is it big brother cleaning you up?

Send it to Grumpy Jon for forwarding?

Can't wait to play 'Hunt the obscenity'. After the way they treat news these days, whose obscenity is it anyway?? I'm sure there was an inappropriate tootling trombone in today's Charles Wheeler report on R4, while some poor devil described his trauma.
But was it in the original?

Further to post #1: I have just spent over an hour logged on to James Purnell's 10
Downing Street live webchat on welfare reform and none of my questions were
taken at all. He has now buggered off.

Perhaps your team in Glasgow East could try to track down Celtic Chairman John
Reid MP for his comments on Karadzic?

Followed up by a studio discussion with Dame Pauline Neville-Jones and Douglas Hurd perhaps?

Will they be testifying and on which side?

Alternatively, you could focus on the court for which this is another major challenge?
I used to go and watch the Milosovic trial and always came away deeply impressed
by the systematic way in which evidence
was compiled and tested. The presence
of the 'Amici' who intervened whenever
there was a point of law in dispute was
also very impressive ....... initially as you
will recall Milosovic refused to recognise
the court - hence the appointment of 'Amici' on his behalf ...... but he would chip in too.

Geoffrey Nice QC prosecuted on a day to day basis on behalf of the Tribunal and he is I think now retired so might comment in general terms on the problems of trying cases such as this.

Charles Taylor is also now in prison in Scheveningen while on trial in another
court in The Hague for his war crimes.

It is perhaps important to remember
that Thabo Mbeki played a key role
in first persuading him to step down
as President of Liberia - to go into
exile in Calabar where he was later
indicted for crimes in Sierra Leone.

Mugabe's cronies should take note.

The Karadzic prosecution will also help erase Dutch guilt over the failure of
their UN troop contingent to prevent
the massacre in Srebrenica - a failure
which as I recall eventually led to an
inquiry which forced the resignation
as a matter of principle of Wim Kok
as Dutch Prime Minister. Either he
or Ruud Lubbers might comment?

Question: In last night's programme, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys (flagged as 'Inventor of DNA fingerprinting'), said that there would be "no genetic characteristics in Madeleine that are not found in at least one of the other people in that family" and went on to say that if one had an incomplete DNA profile that could raise potential problems. Fine. But surely by the same token IF if the forensic science lab had cells from each family member and cells (with DNA) were found in the car etc, they COULD exclude the other family members as each individuals' genome is unique?

Watching the programme last night (and it's not the first time this clip has been shown), nobody said what the forensic samples were, so what Professor Jeffreys said was surely just speculative and unhelful IN THIS CONTEXT was it not? Was this just another effort to discredit LCN and genetic profiling?

It was rather like saying "if the evidence isn't very good, it isn't very good". But what was the evidence newsnight?

ASSORTIVE MATING: THE RULE NOT EXCEPTION

Barrie (#6). Very plausible. Histocompatibility is important as it is related to immunity - there's lots of good research on this (the Major Histocompatibility Complex is on chromosome 6p).

Specifically, as the first people we attach to are our parents (who we usually get our looks/genes) from it's hardly surprising that we are later attracted to people who are somewhat like us. Centuries ago, there wouldn't be anyone else in the immediate vicinity but extended family. Nor is it surprising that we're most fearful of those who are most different from us, as neophobia is an innate defensive response and begins to show around the time we start to learn. Its response magnitude is function of discrepancy from what's safe/familiar.

ALCOHOL TRAVESTY - NOT STRATEGY

British culture is suffused with the poisonous substance: ethyl alcohol. All our rituals rely on it. New substances get outlawed; it is only alcohol's long presence that permits its use in drinks. Were it discovered today, it would be banned. Many of the great and good cannot do without it, just like the down and outs. Every supposed initiative to curb its use will fail while Westminster has 19 bars and around 600 users. Sobriety begins at home. Ironically, the one guy who was successful in turning a lot of people away from the stuff was Mohammed. Now THERE'S a radical point!

I checked out the web on albino killings in Tanzania and indeed it's a disturbing story which I shall watch with interest.

re 2,3 5,6
Ignoring thegangofone's call to 'stay of immigration' (and his disbelief of my claim of 17th to be happily married to an Asian) -
it is true that in many cases opposites attract, though rarely in nature except for symbiosis.

During my career in several 'black' countries I was attracted to, and lived happily with, beautiful 'opposites.' Marriage didn't result after bringing them to UK due to clashes of culture, not colour. The cultural clash - of female assertiveness - had earlier caused separation from my English wife, and now brings happiness through the more amenable Asian wife, who insists that I'm head of the family! And I've brought several of her neices over who now make my friends contented wives.

Why am I always ranting on against immigration?
(1) I love to see diversity, but in it's own land, and not at levels that bury English heritage; (2) I believe that every Englishman should have the right to bring into UK a marriage partner from any other country, without let or hindrance;
(3) despite working on UK-funded projects, no foreign country allowed me to enter or work without a one-year contract and strict controls; and (4) 2 years fighting ±«Óãtv Office to bring in my wife, during which countless thousands flooded in without any invite or sponsorship.
Employment of non-Brits should always be on time-limited contract terms, subject to renewal process, and non-employment immigration should always be through sponsorship, with financial responsibilities.

A sympathetic look at binge-drinking might be a welcome corrective. By 'sympathetic' I mean a look that starts with the premise, as it plainly ought to, that this is about young people going out and enjoying themselves.

Apart from anything else there's simple evolution to consider. Some of us after all have to go and do this thing and reproduce for all our sakes however painful it might personally be. Plainly a decent gene-pool is a Darwinian prerequisite and seeing how churches can't provide them any longer then the pub and disco no doubt serves just as well as far as random variation goes.

Alcohol dependence is a dreadful thing but I venture to suggest for every binge drinker who gets into a fight there are another ten quietly sitting at home getting totally out of it on Asda lager (Sainsbury plonk if a toff) not reading bedtime stories to the kids and so on - and there's real harm which goes unspoken and unnoticed.

CLOCK WATCHING

I remember jolly music and a badly drawn clock-face with hands whizzing round. The latter, it seems, was saying: 'Doha ROUND and TIME is running out for arriving at an agreement'. Was the music saying: 'then it will be TIME to FACE the MUSIC'? Any chance of an FOI costing on all that? Could you get the team who contrive and create such masterpieces of banality onto the show to illuminate job satisfaction?

LEMMINGS AND TFRs

hillsideboy (#15) "The cultural clash - of female assertiveness - had earlier caused separation from my English wife, and now brings happiness through the more amenable Asian wife, who insists that I'm head of the family!"

Statistically, the encouragement of female assertiveness is not only an historical and even contemporary world population anomaly, but demographically, in the developed world it's a disaster when one looks at the birth-rate (and levels of distress). Ultimately, biological fitness is all, and as that = reproduction rate, we 'liberal-democratic equalitarians' who ignore hints like height, muscle mass and other sexual-dimorphic characteristics at our peril, are now heading practicing demographic suicide.

Tell young females this and they will indignantly argue. tell older ones and they'll usually acknowledge that it's true but lament that they're economilaly trapped. The reality is that they've been cleverly entrapped by people who know how to make money out of them (two salaries to pay the mortgage, more consumers with disposable incomes etc).

AMEN TO THAT. jj #18

Nothing to add.

For many years, I thought that, in the lower halves of their faces at least, alleged Newsnight Reviewer Paul Morley and alleged-Serbian-war-crime-suspect-and-poet Radovan Karadzic resembled each other, but I never could recall the latter's name, properly, nor how to spell it. All has been a bit clearer, now. What would Mr Morley look like in a long flowing white beard?