Gavin’s Gaily Gigest

The BBC don’t seem to have read my original complaint about the complaints, judging by this response:
We note your concerns regarding comments made by Jeremy Clarkson during ‘Top Gear’ on 02 November.  This issue was raised with Executive Producer Andy Wilman who has made the following statement.
"Top Gear is BBC Two’s long-running motoring show and [...]

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Alan West yesterday, hurriedly throwing his toys out of the pram following the government’s defeat in the Lords on 42 days detention, on the current terrorism threat facing the UK:
Some of the measures that we have put into place in the past 15 months have made us safer, but that does not mean that we [...]

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Having lunch in the Starbucks opposite the Home Office / Ministry of Justice does have its advantage. For example, overheard today whilst sitting next to two bores in suits:
[Discussing planned legislation regarding database security]
“This could open a can of worms. For example, the PNC [Police National Computer] and the DNA database don’t have an explicit [...]

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Birmingham City Council confessed today they could not tell their arse from their elbows.
Leader of the council, Mike Whitby, said:
“For years we’ve been balancing on our arms at council meetings. We didn’t know the round flabby bits between our back and hamstring should be sat on. Councillors could barely hear each other at meetings, but [...]

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Tip for design types: When putting together a new logo, like say this for the Office of Government Commerce …

… Always check how it will look side on, especially if the logo is going to appear on mousemats and pens:

Hat-tip: Dizzy, Comment Central and The Register, where you can find out more about [...]

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Just when you thought you couldn’t be surprised, the Labour government have displayed their ingenuity and previously untapped skill at losing or misplacing data once again, this time by ignoring a Dutch DNA data disc sent to them a year ago, only running checks on it against the UK DNA database this month and finding [...]

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Discussing the Northern Rock nationalisation on The Today Programme, former FSA chairman Howard Davies:
"… the government has become a sovereign wealth fund"

You can listen to the full 08.10 discussion here (MP3 format).

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Northern Rock is the gift that keeps on giving for the opposition parties, as the BBC’s Business Editor Robert Peston is reporting on BBC News 24 right now that emergency legislation will be put to the House of Commons tomorrow nationalising the beleagured bank, probably wiping out its share price and marking the first full-scale [...]

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Via just about everywhere comes Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable’s contribution to the Northern Rock debate in the Commons yesterday:
"I am tempted to recall the Danish economist, Hans Christian Andersen, who told the story of the two conmen who visited a particularly credulous king to sell him an imaginary suit of gold to cover [...]

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Speaking to News at Ten last night, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Peter Hain’s failure to declare all donations to his deputy leadership campaign was:
"… a mistake that was made. It was an incompetence that he has readily admitted to"

That means that what we’ve all long suspected is now official - being incompetent is [...]

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