... has a popular Twitter message

Yesterday, I puit the following message on Twitter:

What do we want? Evidence-based, sensible policies! When do we want them? After fully evaluating the evidence! #march26 #26march #solidarityless than a minute ago via TweetCasterGareth Winchester
dnotice

As of this moment, it has 92 of the "New Style" Retweets, plus many more of the "Old-style" Retweets.

I stuck I struck a chord!

However, I have to give a big chunk of credit to this sign:

Tweet

How the Middle East protests started

I saw this on Twitter earlier today, and thought that it needed a summat more permanent.

It's an article in the Washington Post about the Middle East/North Africa protests started.

For years, [Mohammed] Bouazizi had told his mother stories of corruption at the fruit market, where vendors gathered under a cluster of ficus trees on the main street of this scruffy town, not far from Tunisia’s Mediterranean beaches. Arrogant police officers treated the market as their personal picnic grounds, taking bagfuls of fruit without so much as a nod toward payment. The cops took visible pleasure in subjecting the vendors to one indignity after another — fining them, confiscating their scales, even ordering them to carry their stolen fruit to the cops’ cars.

He was pissed off an got into trouble with the police and so tried to sort out the situation.

Bouazizi went to city hall and demanded to see an official. No, a clerk replied. Go home. Forget about it.

Bouazizi returned to the market and told his fellow vendors he would let the world know how unfairly they were being treated, how corrupt the system was.

He would set himself ablaze.

The protests and events over the past few weeks are the results of the flapping of a butterfly's wings... Tweet

... blows a tenner

You're all aware that were currently bombing the crap out of Libya, apparently in accordance with the terms of the No-Fly Zone which the UN Security Council approved last week.

I currently favour it because I think that it's the least-worst way of dealing with Gadaffi's attacks on his own population and help out the people trying to overthrow him.

Hopefully not much help will be required.

Anyway, on Twitter, Flying Rodent came up the idea of running a book on when Gadaffi dies and suggested 12th April.

I said that he'll still be alive by Christmas, which was accepted. He's confident of winning.

We'll see what happens. Tweet

How #savingsnotcuts started

This morning I saw an article on Liberal Conspiracy about how the BBC is reporting the government's spending reductions.

Apparently, they have to use the word "saving" instead of "cut".

I linked to the article on my Twitter page and decided to start a hashtag game: #savingsnotcuts.

It's now mentioned in the Guardian's Society Daily and on their Twitter feed.


I'm in the Guardian. My life is now complete. Tweet

The real impact of that insurance ruling

Yesterday the European Court of Justice ruled that sex cannot be used as a factor when determining insurance premiums, i.e. men and women should be treated the same.

Insurance companies are saying that as women's insurance will have to go up.

However, the judgment says nothing of the sort; just that both sexes should be treated equally.

Therefore, any increase that a woman faces is due to the insurance company's own actions, not the court's. Tweet