Deja vu all over again

A bunch of MPs have decided that Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to run a major international company” and he showed “wilful blindness” to phone hacking. So should Murdoch be worried? Well, swap “Tony Blair” for “Rupert Murdoch”, “government” for “international company” and “Iraq's weapons of mass destruction” for “phone hacking”. And then remember what happened to Blair. [Clue: nothing.]

Ho, hum

So there are technology addicts who don’t talk to other people face-to-face for days at a time, “researchers” have found. Do we care if they don’t? No. Do we think the “research” was worthwhile? No.

Out of one pocket or another

The BBC is asking itself whether politicians should be paid for spouting party propaganda and promoting themselves on BBC shows. But if the Beeb decides to drop the payments, you can be sure that the politicians will still go on radio and TV, and their expenses claims will get even higher.

Exhibitionism rules, nokay

What do you do if you fail your HGV driving test? Apparently, you pretend to be a suicide bomber, you demand your money back from the company that ran the training course, you give hundreds of office workers in neighbouring buildings the afternoon off and you let the police wave their guns around again. Welcome to the aftermath of the entitlement culture and Blair’s Britain.

Hypocritical doesn’t come in to it

How sick-making to see Milipede Labour getting all sniffy about members of the government getting too close to big business. Especially as it was the rule when Tony B. Liar and Gordon Broon were in charge. But then, honesty, truthfulness and doing the decent thing seem to be alien concepts in politics.

So do we panic, or what?

The Office of National Statistics sez we’re in a double-dip recession. But are we? The ONS had to indulge in the same amount of guesswork as you get on an average Time Team show to make its case. And after letting Labour sound off in the Commons (and hope we forget who caused the mess in the first place), the ONS has admitted that its “recession” conclusion could be reversed because it made a Really Big Guess about the state of the construction industry. So it looks like the “recession” is a minor technicality and not something anyone should worry about.

And Another Thing . . .

Roget seems to have come from a very peculiar family, and he’d have been right at home in the US import crime drama Bones, in which FBI Agent Booth doesn’t have a relationship with the emotionally crippled pathologist Brennan – she thinks that every case can be solved just by looking at the bones and the soft tissue is irrelevant. And she works with a collection of similar weirdos. Roget’s lack of empathy would have put him right at home in that bunch.