couple good number crunching in the current Eye, reproduced below

£82m value of Stagecoach shares transferred by founders Brian Souter and Ann Gloag to family trusts to beat changes in capital gains tax
£61m Approximate cost of four new Pendolino trains which Virgin Trains (half owned by Stagecoach) isn't buying for crowded west-coast mainline services
£3m start-up subsidy Souter demanded for a hovercraft shuttle across the Forth, now on hold until taxpayers cough up
£500,000 Souter's pre-election donation to the SNP, which suddenly dropped its policy of regulating Stagecoach and other bus services *

+

5,000 jobs lost in manufacturing in three months last year, which CBI described as "very welcome revival"

10,000 jobs predicted to be lost in financial sector in next three months, which CBI describes as "very serious crisis"

* if it's good enough for the lovely Taylor Parkes in an edition of When Saturday Comes, then it's good enough for me, which is to make the obligatory observation re Souter's past opposition to repealing Section 28

Drink-soaked Trots on Somerset business-man Mike Dolan: shafts his workers and then, quite disgracefully, tries to blame their union

UK politics: why is Geoff Hoon a Chief Whip? that's a reward.

to paraphrase C Hitchens, someone like Hoon should be out in the street selling pencils from a paper cup, hollering

you can say he's a member of a progressive (now, i know that could provoke debate..) party in an established, plural, peaceful democracy, which is all well and good, but when he was at the MoD alone, that should have been enough to send him to Coventry.

meanwhile, the Guardian has a list of the 39 members of parliament rightly signed up to Frank Field's rebellion.

big up

and rank, miserable, tragic news - as the UN food envoy makes compelling claims - twenty people drown off the Bahamas (nineteen of them Haitian nationals, the other victim being Honduran)

fingers crossed - some potentially encouraging news here

RIP Gwyneth Dunwoody

RIP Pete McKinless

Jeff Weintraub has a very good post up responding to recent remarks on American immigration reform made by an aspirant to the Senate from Colorado.
you can read it here

Philip S on the Beta Lounge

Derek: new build music

jane on MJ and Dubai

Han Bing walks the cabbage

Matt Y with some Turkish rap

S/FJ brings the wonderful Erykah

i currently rinse this YouTube {not having an American Express: Red} [it's The Way I Are; i was dancing to it in Dublin last week and got nostalgic, i guess]
(and this- Wayne launches a new feature and Arsene and Jose Clash..)

concrete, Simon Fraser (from here)

FACT's Sinden on Rye Rye

SCAVENGER HUNT

Tim on Hungarian stereotypes
[sorta related- the Economist with their own theory on the Hungarian language]

pigs in Bath

Owen, immense, on the functionally fantastic in Hertfordshire, and portals