Today's news is that the Alitalia operation is a great success for the government. Who said that? The President of the Council, Silvio Berlusconi who is praising himself to bits all on his own. Even because from the experts he has just received raspberries and criticism, not to mention the press and all the international operations that measure things according to the free market and not according to the despotic little Italy that is coming back together with the regurgitated bits of fascism that have been rightly denounced by Famiglia Cristiana. It's not easy to understand what he is celebrating, this gentleman, given that in the last 15 years he has been President of the Council for about 7 of them, that is half: in these 15 years, Alitalia has lost 15 billion euro of our money, thus half of the money lost is his fault, of his governments, and the other half is the fault of the Centre-Left governments, because politics has always kept its hands on Alitalia and as we shall see, it will continue to keep them there even after having made it collapse innumerable times.
Prodi and Padoa Schioppa, one of the few good things done by the Centre Left government, had found the arrangement, they managed to convince AirFrance to take the whole thing. That would have meant no bankruptcy, no need to rely on the Marzano law on loss-making companies, the creation of a very big European group including AirFrance, KLM and Alitalia that could have been of a decent size for the international markets where, by now, the airlines are big, in consortium, based on alliances between a number of companies. We would have got away with 2150 excess personnel: that was according to the plan presented by Monsieur Spinetta, and that's what would have happened if the negotiations with the French had been concluded straight away, at the beginning of spring, whereas now we have 6-7000 personnel in excess, that is triple the number. AirFrance would have paid one billion 7 hundred million to buy Alitalia shares and it would have invested 750 million. Basically it would have shelled out and there would have arrived from France the great sum of 2 billion 6 hundred million. Now we see that, instead, that money it's us that has to give it. It's not just that we don't get the cash, but we lose it. What's more, Malpensa would have been saved and restructured and the airport at Fiumicino would have been strengthened. This, in short, was what had been agreed between the Prodi government and AirFrance and that went up in the air because of the arrival of Berlusconi and his henchmen and because the Trades Unions, completely blinded by the short term, did not know how to choose between the tiny sacrifice today and an enormous blood-letting tomorrow, which is what we will have instead.

aaargh...

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

The girls took to the move quite well whereas the boys spent the journey panicing and shaking. I wasnt in the car however as I was still waiting for the movers to turn up with a second van. They were all quite stressed until we were all in the house. when they all calmed down. theyve now explored the whole space, and are being kept in for the next few weeks till they have become adjusted to the move.

pics of cats in cupboards, exploring new spaces will be forthcoming when i've got a real connection.

Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

Is Helen Mirren right about date rape?

The actress stepped into a political and social minefield when she claimed date rape should not be a matter for the courts. Paul Vallely examines an issue which raises divisive issues of women's rights and personal responsibility

It might be that Helen Mirren didn't quite know what she was doing when she, casually it seemed, ventured the thought that date rape was, in some circumstances not an issue for the courts but one which needed to be worked through as part of the subtle negotiations of modern gender manners. Or it may be that the award-winning actress deliberately wandered into a political minefield out of a conviction that the pendulum has swung too far on the issue. There is, controversially, a new sense of that in the air.

Dame Helen's contention was that a woman who voluntarily ended up in a man's bedroom and engaged in sexual activity - but then said no to intercourse - could not seriously expect to take that man to court on a charge of rape if he ignored her last-minute insistence that she did not want full sex.

That had happened to her "a couple of times" 40 years ago when she was a budding actress. She had not reported the incidents to police because "you couldn't do that in those days". And perhaps, she suggested, that was not such a bad thing.

Such views violate the current orthodoxy that, when it comes to sexual consent, no means no. Women's groups and anti-rape campaigners were infuriated by the 63-year-old's views, which, they insist, hark back to a mindset that transferred the blame for rape from the rapist to the victim, by suggesting that what a woman wears, or how she behaves, can in someway mitigate the culpability of the man who violates her. It is back to the subliminal "she was asking for it" defence.

Gov. Sarah Palin in 2007 in her downtown Anchorage office, which has a decidedly Alaskan touch to the décor.

Colorado - McCain Leaning
Florida - McCain Leaning
Indiana - McCain Leaning
Iowa - Obama Leaning
Michigan - Obama Likely
Minnesota - Obama Likely
Nevada - McCain Leaning
New Mexico - Obama Likely
Ohio - Toss-Up
Pennsylvania - Obama Likely

And the always Bell Weather State of Missouri.  If Obama takes a lead here we need to start analyzing the potential for a Obama Landslide.


Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bonk! Bonk! Bonk!

The consensus of the polls seems to be Obama right at 49% and climbing.  McCain seems to be at 42-43% and sinking.  How much of that is noise, how much is outrage over Palin -- we don't know yet.  But I'd, of course, rather be on our side of those numbers.

If this Silver/Abramoff thing on her turns out to be a big deal, Palin's "reformer" presentation goes from floating in the toilet to being flushed.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

Our only hope is that when our economies collapse under the weight of their lack of preparation for global warming or oil shortages that we get out from under (temporarily).

keep to the Fen Causeway

Course you might question her committment to the republican party, especially in the light of her video address to them from the governor's office. you might question her fitness to be VP (although that's McCain's job) but a traitor... ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

Now Todd Palin, we find, was an AIP member until 2002.

I can't even keep up.

Josh Marshall has thrown his hands up.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

"I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city."

and ends up:

"Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness."