Gloriously appropriate abbeviation o' the day.

This, from the Turkish Daily News, is far too good not to share:

"Students who throw eggs during protests will receive a disciplinary warning for “polluting the environment,” according to changes set to be made to the student discipline regulations for universities.  According to the changes by the Higher Education Board, or YÖK, the severity of the penalty will be determined by the number of eggs thrown".

The historic Hansard trawl, featuring brigandage, MPs for gun running and 'adopt a Zeppelin'.

A 1911 round up.

A question, one imagines, that would pre-suppose the answer 'no'?:

Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSON asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that robberies have recently taken place on the Bushire-Isfahan road, and that further acts of brigandage are feared; and whether representations will be made to the Government of Persia with a view to securing the protection of the road?

Apparently not:

Sir E. GREY The incidents referred to have been reported by His Majesty's Minister at Teheran, who has already made representations to the Persian Government on the subject.

So I'm going to recycle the 'he sees a sparrow fall' line.

Mind you, he's a right misery here:

Mr. MORRELL asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he could yet say whether he would lay upon the Table of the House the Report issued by the Egyptian Commission last September on the question of cotton growing in Egypt; and whether he would give the House any further information as to any action which the Government were now taking in the matter either in Egypt or the Soudan?

Sir E. GREY The report is an already published Egyptian document, with elaborate diagrams, which it would be very expensive to reproduce.

I've had a look at the report, and apart from the vigour of the plants, there were outbreaks of  fish jumping too.

This one's quite interesting:

Gun Running (Persian Gulf)

Mr. LLOYD asked the Under-Secretary of State for India if he will state the annual expenditure incurred by the Government of India in regard to the ordinary and the special measures for the prevention of gun-running in the Persian Gulf during the last five years?


Mr. MONTAGU The ordinary measures for the prevention of gun-running in the Persian Gulf form part of the duties of H.M. ships in Indian waters for which a subsidy of £100,000 a year is paid from Indian revenues.

What one might expect, I imagine.  However, someone is not at all happy:

Mr. M'CALLUM SCOTT May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the Government of India have any legal right whatever to interfere by violence with the citizens of a foreign State who are engaged in the peaceful occupation of increasing armaments?


Mr. MONTAGU I should like to assure my hon. Friend that the Indian Government never do anything which is not within their legal rights.

Alexander MacCallum Scott would appear to be a Liberal non-interventionist.  He ended up joining the Socialists in 1924.

Zeppelins....

Mr. BURGOYNE asked the Secretary of State for War how many dirigibles are complete, building, or ordered for the French, German, and Russian armies?

The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane) The German army has nine complete dirigibles, but no official information as to further orders is available. The French army has four dirigibles complete, and eight in various stages of construction. The Russian army has nine dirigibles complete, one building, and four on order.
....

Mr. BURGOYNE asked the amount of financial provision made for aeronautical work in France, Germany, and Russia during the last two years?

Mr. HALDANE The figures are as follows:— Germany.—1900, Expenditure £54,231.  1910, Estimate £400,000 (including the Zeppelin Subscription Fund, £305,000).

I rather like the idea of a Zeppelin Subscription Fund.  Presumably one fronts the money and in return gets updates as to the health or otherwise of the Zeppelin, flying hours and the like.  And maybe a preferential rate for flying in it.

All will be delighted to know that our military aviators were not going to be left to wing it:

Mr. BURGOYNE  asked whether a special course of training for officers and men in connection with aeronautical work had been decided upon; and, if so, over what period of time this training was likely to extend?

Mr. HALDANE The training of officers and men in aeronautical work is proceeding. No definite duration, of course, has yet been fixed, but officers joining are placed on probation for six months.

And so to this:

Mr. WEDGWOOD asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture what is to be the composition of the proposed committee to inquire into the breaking-up of large estates; what will be the terms of reference; and when is it to be appointed?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir E. Strachey) I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave on this subject to the hon. Member for the Wilton Division on the 2nd instant.

Politically motivated expropriation of private property.  Socialism did not first land here in 1945, did it?

Sticking with Socialists, James O'Grady (Lab) has a question:

 Mr. O'GRADY asked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he can now state if the Government of Bengal is subsidising a wekly newspaper published in Bengali; how long the subsidy has been paid; and whether it was granted under a guarantee of a certain minimum circulation, or only to secure that Government views should find expression in the columns of the papers?

Mr. MONTAGU The Government of India telegraph as follows:—"An agreement has been entered into between the Government of Bengal and the Editor of the 'Indian Mirror,' Rai Norandra Nath Sen Bahadur, who has undertaken to publish, on the lines of the 'Indian Mirror,' a weekly vernacular paper, of which the Government engage to subscribe for 25,000 copies.

And having suckered Montagu:

Mr. O'GRADY May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether the India Office or the Indian Government has taken any cognisance of the fact that the great bulk of the papers in India, whether Anglo-Indian or venacular, have protested against these subsidies, and whether any step has been taken in the matter?

And
 

Mr. O'GRADY May I ask who is going to be the authority for putting particular news or a particular feature of politics into this paper—whether it is going to be the Viceroy or the editor?

And

Mr. O'GRADY Are you going to manufacture their politics for them?

My sympathies are with O'Grady.  First Socialist Governor of the Falklands, apparently.  I expect that frightened the sheep horses

An early contender for the Booker?

Newly published "Prospering Land".

The novel, a part of the serial "Immortal Guidance", was written by Pak Thae Su, with the background of the late 1990s when the country was undergoing ordeals.
It is based on the fact that General Secretary Kim Jong Il initiated land rezoning in Kangwon Province and successfully guided the project.
In the novel the leader unfolds an ambitious plan to adjust all the arable land of the country as befitting the features of the socialist country and makes the project start in Kangwon Province with many plots.
Under his leadership, the huge project for improving the layout of fields is completed successfully.
During the project, people come to cherish ardent love for their land.

Sounds thrilling, doesn't it? And yes, I know the Booker is for novels in English.

What's wrong with Otto or Brünnhilde?

I ask, as the results for the top ten names for German newborns in 2010 are in, and neither of those monikers feature (2009 results in brackets)

Boys
1. Maximilian (1)
2. Alexander (2)
3. Paul (4)
4. Leon (3)
5. Lukas/Lucas (8)
6. Luca/Luka (5)
7. Elias (6)
8. Louis/Luis (11)
9. Jonas (9)
10. Felix (7)

Girls
1. Sophie/Sofie (2)
2. Marie (1)
3. Maria (3)
4. Sophia/Sofia (7)
5. Mia (6)
6. Anna (4)
7. Lena (9)
8. Emma (5)
9. Hannah/Hanna (11)
10. Johanna (10) 

I would think that of that lot only Lukas is a dead giveaway for ethnic identity.  Thank are due to thelocal.de, where I found this.

Headline o' the day

From Unite's media site:

Unite warns against privatisation of the National Blood Service: 'No to Blood Money'.

Not a hint of melodrama, eh?

Meanwhile, the date of the release can be contrasted to this extract from the release:  "On 16 February, the Health Service Journal learned that the Department of Health's commercial directorate held talks with private providers about running parts of the NHS Blood and Transplant service. Capita and DHL are understood to be interested in taking over parts of the service".

Granted, one might argue that HSJ did not necessarily go to press on the 17th (although this website item is dated 16/2...), but it does rather suggest that Unite is not as on the ball as perhaps it might be.

Can't see what the fuss is about, personally, and I will declare an interest as an erratic blood donor.  That's erratic as in the frequency of my donations, rather than as in my blood which I think is something dull like O.

Going backwards - at speed.

Our friends in Brussels have just published the first, ahem, 'Parlemeter' of 2011, which looks at awareness levels and the image of the EU 'Parliament' across the 27.

One of the questions is whether MEPs sit by nationality or political allegiance.  Overall awareness that it is the latter is a less than brilliant 42%.  I will grant that it is not wholly ridiculous to think that MEPs might cluster by nationality, but what is unexpected are the changes in level of awareness over the course of last year:

 
So, 18 countries saw a higher level of incorrect answers than at the start of the year.  I would suggest that +/- 2% represents a fair margin of error, but that still leaves 14 countries with drops of 3%-10%.  So, just what happened in Finland that some 10% of the population saw its awareness going backwards?  Maybe knowledge of the EU 'Parliament' is not the most mission critical item of information in the mind of the average sane person, but I am bewildered by the degree to which knowledge has been lost.  Have evil trolls been spreading disinformation on the streets of Helsinki, perchance?   Mind you, our figure is down 4% on the year too.  At the other end of the scal, something must have stirred up our Portuguese chums as their awareness climbed 12%.  Looking at overall figures, the Dutch are the most up to speed on these things, with 61% knowing it is political allegiance, whereas only 26% of Czechs know that.  Going off at a tangent, it might add to the gaiety of the nation if Westminster MPs sat geographically - Bercow surrounded by Tories, the Ulster MPs sharing bench space, Wirral West's Esther McVey in a sea of red etc etc.

Elsewhere, I am delighted that we Britons are least likely to think that 'democratic' describes the 'parliament' well.  

That UN Human Rights Council membership in full

Now that Libya has been suspended, is all rosy in the UN human rights garden?

Here is a list of members of the UNHRC with Freedomhouse.org's rating for its level of freedom, ranging from 1, free via 3, partly free to 7 - unfree.  While Freedom House has its critics - and don't we all? - it is clearly not the plaything of any particular political ideology, bar its bias towards freedom.

Angola	5.5
Argentina	2
Bahrain	5.5
Bangladesh	3.5
Belgium	1
Brazil	2
Burkina Faso	4
Cameroon	6
Chile	1
China	6.5
Cuba	6.5
Djibouti	5
Ecuador	3
France	1
Gabon	5.5
Ghana	1.5
Guatemala	4
Hungary	1
Japan	1.5
Jordan	5.5
Kyrgyzstan	5.5
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya *	7
Malaysia	4
Maldives	3.5
Mauritania	5.5
Mauritius	2
Mexico	2.5
Nigeria	4.5
Norway	1
Pakistan	4.5
Poland	1
Qatar	5.5
Republic of Korea	1.5
Republic of Moldova	3.5
Russian Federation	5.5
Saudi Arabia	6.5
Senegal	3
Slovakia	1
Spain	1
Switzerland	1
Thailand	4.5
Uganda	4.5
Ukraine	2.5
United Kingdom	1
United States of America	1
Uruguay	1
Zambia	3.5

With Libya, the average score is 3.4, which maps to such places as Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Liberia.  Excluding Libya drops the average to 3.3....  Meanwhile, China, Cuba and our friends the Saudis have the chutzpah to pontificate on rights.  Still, at least there's no DPRK.