Water features

£3.6m? For this? Wow, that must make people proud.

Because of course for a dim troll princess so supposedly into good causes and Doing Good^™, a fountain is a really smart idea. It sums up everything about Diana, doesn’t it? A fucking fountain.

Perhaps a hospital ward – or even a building. Perhaps something to house an AIDS unit. You know, something that would actually work as a memorial to the things she helped bring into the public eye.

But no, a bloody fountain. That’s great. It’ll make everyone remember her with so much more affection than if it’d been anything useful. Twats.

RSS

Well, OK, it’s an Atom feed – I assume that means something to someone out there. Personally, I’ll freely admit I haven’t got Clue One when it comes to this stuff. However, the RSS/Atom feed is now accessible here (http://www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk/rss/atom.xml. With luck, that’ll make sense to some people. Just not to me.

So if it works, grand. If not, let me know, and I’ll try and figure out what the fuck is going on. Sometime when I’ve got a spare couple of hours.

Oh, and thanks to David for pointing out that a lack of RSS was losing some readers.

Conflict

Some of you may recall back in March/April time when the immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, resigned. It followed a bit of a scandal about immigrants from certain countries being allowed in to the UK without having visa claims checked.

Today, the man who blew the whistle on this story is being given a chance to put forward his side of the story and to respond to a Home Office report on his behaviour. It’s quite probable that at the end of this meeting/board/inquisition, he will lose his job, and be sacked.

In general, there is an Act of Parliament known as the Public Interest Disclosure Act which should protect whistleblowers from being sacked or disciplined for revealing something that is in the public interest. In this case though,

” the Home Office report concluded he had acted reasonably but his revelations were not covered by the Public Interest Disclosure Act.”

© Guardian Newspapers

So – the Home Office report into an incident at – um – the Home Office that has caused an MP to resign for being a sleazebag suddenly isn’t in the Public Interest, and as such the person who caused the story isn’t safe under the Act? That sucks, and surely is a pretty major conflict of interest.

Open Mike

While I remember, Mike Troubled Diva now has a new home – www.troubled-diva.com. Yes, the old domain name, just with an added hyphen. It’s good to have him back in normality, or as close to it as we get, anwyay.

Nature

Over the weekend, there was also another walk in Sulham Woods – and some more photos.

Dumbfounded

It’s not often that I find myself left utterly gobsmacked. Yet it’s happened twice in the last 24 hours, so it must be one of those weeks. Oh goody.

One gobsmacked moment isn’t yet for public consumption – it’s likely to be so soon, but for now, well, I’m keeping it. The other one is over at Dragon’s place. (And Dragon, if you want me to pull the link, just let me know – I don’t want to trivialise that post in any way) I simply can’t find the words that work to express what I want to without drowning in pap platitudes. So I won’t, although I may add to this later, if I can find the right way to do it.

The Inner Walkman

I don’t know about everyone else, but I find on occasion a tune will stick itself right in my head, and nothing will get it out. It just keeps on playing, and it’s normally something earth-shatteringly inappropriate to the situation.

If I were at a funeral, it’d be – for example – Travis’ “Dying To Meet You”, or Lyle Lovett’s “Since the Last Time“.

However, on some occasions it’s not just a slightly relevant – if dodgy content-wise – lyric, but something so brain-numbingly awful, and at that point it’s normally a lyric you can’t help singing.

Today, while shopping in Tesco it’s been Blink-182’s “I Wanna Fuck A Dog In The Ass“.