Rapidly drowning in Downing Street ?

Error forces rethink on bird flu risk zone

The report above in today's Scotsman reveals that the government mis-diagnosed the identity of the swan infected with Bird Flu and that the danger zone may now have to be extended to other areas of Britain. Another beaurocratic cock-up that doesn't bode well for the future.

The scandal about selling off seats in the House of Lords was offset slightly by the fact that all political parties are up to it - notwithstanding the fact that Blair pledged to reform the system way back in the days of his opposition. Last night's revelations that he has been "appropriating" large amounts of taxpayers' money to pay for private flights on personal holidays, party business and other suspect activities is altogether another matter. This particular abuse of power is only available to those actually in government and should rightly be condemned by other parties. The use of public money for such activities is bad enough, but the other stink comes from the wastage of fuel by a government supposedly concerned about emissions and global warming. Even the environment secretary herself has been using a private military shuttle service for her trips to Brussels. Hypocrisy certainly - some of us would say "theft" too!

Iran have announced the minor enrichment of some Uranium. This of course means they can effectively claim to be part of the "nuclear club" of nations and the intent seems to be in the demand they be treated as equals in negotiations. It looks like more of a PR ploy than any serious change in their ability to manufacture weapons. Read on here.

My apologies for the slowdown in this blog. The weekend meant being offline for a massive back-up of my proxy server and a reboot of my workstation resulted in some cantankerous behaviour until the beast warmed up again. I may not be daily again until after the holiday weekend - there's a lot to catch up on. "Latest Clicks" will update as normal.

Later.