Sunday morning catchup (part 1)

To clear some tabs from Firefox before it crashes...

1) 'Gordon Brown 'absolutely furious' about Ed Miliband's attack on his economic record'. Do remember that Ed Miliband was a key economic advisor to Gordon Brown before being appointed to the labour Cabinet. Ed Miliband is as much a protoge of Gordon Brown as Ed balls.

2) The Freeman Online asks: ' Will “Clean Energy” Lead an Economic Recovery? Can pigs fly?' I think we all know the answer.

3) Toby Young tells how 'Lefties go mental while watching my school documentary' Is anyone surprised at the violence and hatred shown by the left?

4) The Telegraph report on another legacy left to the UK by the last Labour government.

'Equality Act: firms must not ask job applicants about health

Employers will not be able to ask people who apply for a job about their health under new equality laws that come into force today.

Staff who are dyslexic, have taken a large number of sick days or who look after disabled and elderly relatives will also find it easier to win unfair dismissal cases under the new law. '

5) What is happening in Iran with the Stuxnet virus? The US Report explains the background and The Telegraph blame it on/ give credit to Israel.

6) Watts Up With That reports an invonvenient fact: 'Less ice in the Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago'.

7) C3 Headlines reports that: 'Peer-Reviewed Cherry Blossom Reseach Confirms Japan's Medieval Climate Warmer Than Current One'. So the Medieval warm period was not just confined to Northern europe.

And all must be equal...

"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.


Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.


It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.


George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about."

You can read the rest of Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story "Harrison Bergeron" here, and then wonder where the left's obsession with equality might really lead us...

"Twins not his, but man must pay child support"

"Twins not his, but man must pay child support", just another case of men getting the rough end of the stick -

"A Toronto-area man must continue paying child support to his former wife despite DNA tests proving he is not the biological father of her 16-year-old twins, an Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled.

Pasqualino Cornelio will also not recoup any of the child-support money he paid out since the couple separated a decade ago, Justice Katherine van Rensburg wrote in her decision.

In making her recent ruling, the judge referred to a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision that said if someone acts as a parent and provides support for a child during a marriage, they are obliged to continue that financial support after separation or divorce -- even if the child is not biologically theirs.

"While the failure of Ms. Cornelio to disclose to her husband the fact that she had an extramarital affair and that the twins might not be his biological children may well have been a moral wrong against Mr. Cornelio, it is a wrong that does not afford him a legal remedy to recover child support he has already paid, and that does not permit him to stop paying child support," Judge van Rensburg wrote."

Fair? Equitable?

Equal rights for women

Not a controversial title for an article on a blog, well not in the UK, but in Bangladesh that would be another matter. Bangladesh has a secular system of law but a population that being 90% Muslim follows sharia law for matters related to inheritance and marriage. Now the military-backed government has backed down from a policy to ensure equal property rights to women amid angry protests by Muslim clerics that the move would override Islamic law. Sharia law as practised in Bangladesh means that a girl inherits half of what her brother gets.

Bangladesh's law minister, Hasan Arif, said that the government "does not have any plan to enact any laws that goes against the Koran and the traditions of Prophet Mohammad,". Arif gave the assurance to top Islamic clerics and scholars late on Tuesday, after Islamic groups warned of nationwide protests, saying they would not tolerate any law that went against sharia, the Islamic law code.