Quote:

---

Originally posted by citizen:

Notice how it was EDS, an American Company, that lost it.

Moral of the story, if you want a job done right, don't give it to the Yanks.

---

Quote:

---

EDS Selected as U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VistA Contractor Services Vendor

HERNDON, Va. – EDS today announced it has been selected as a prime contractor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA Contractor Services (VCS) program. EDS is one of eight companies selected under a blanket purchasing agreement (BPA) worth approximately $1 billion, over a potential 10-year term, including options and award term periods.

EDS delivers a broad portfolio of information technology and business process outsourcing services to clients in the manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, communications, energy, transportation, and consumer and retail industries and to governments around the world.

www.eds.com/news/releases/3430/

EDS Stockholders Approve Merger With Hewlett-Packard Company
www.eds.com/news/releases/4697/

"I'm quitting my presidential campaign because CIA director George HW Bush will kill my family at my daughter's wedding."
Ross Perot, EDS founder, Reform Party presidential nominee 1992
www.eds.com/about/history/

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by piratenews:
Fluoride Added To Children's Milk In Schools in UK

http://fluoride.ecobytes.net/Alert/United-Kingdom/England/Sheffield-Fl
uoride-is-added-to-children-s-milk-in-42-primary-schools
www.infowars.net/articles/october2008/271008Fluoride.htm

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:

Thank God! I hope they get it in the water too. My children did not benefit from flouridated water because we lived there and I have been paying dentist bills ever since!
Trolls Against McCain

---

Quote:

---

Billions wiped off workers' pension schemes (snicker)

Falling share prices have wiped billions of pounds off the value of workers' pensions and could force some employees to delay retirement, research showed today.

The study, by employee benefits firm Aon Consulting, showed the value of defined contribution schemes offered by UK companies had dropped by nearly a third (28%) in the 12 months since last October, from £522bn to around £395bn.

The average pension pot a worker builds up in a defined contribution scheme is worth just over £25,000, which would currently buy a single man aged 65 an annual retirement income of around £1,960.

But if the value of each individual's pension fell by 28% it would buy him an annual income of just £1,400.

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/oct/27/occupationalpensions-pensions

---

Quote:

---

Every police force in the UK is to be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners - handheld devices that allow police to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The new technology, which ultimately may be able to receive pictures of suspects, is likely to be in widespread use within 18 months. Tens of thousands of sets - as compact as BlackBerry smartphones - are expected to be distributed.

The police claim the scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.

To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/27/project-midas-fingerprint-scan
ner-liberty

---

Quote:

---

Banks and credit card companies are exploiting obscure legal powers to seize the homes of thousands of people who cannot pay their credit card bills.

In some cases, people owing as little as £1,000 have been served with charging orders – the legal instrument enabling a creditor to order the sale of a property.

The practice has emerged days after Yvette Cooper, chief secretary to the Treasury, called on banks to do more to allow people to keep their homes.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 97,026 charging orders were granted by courts in England and Wales last year, a tenfold increase since 2000.

They allow financial institutions to order the sale of a property to pay off unsecured debts on credit cards, personal loans, store cards and car finance. Some will have been used only to threaten the debtor, or to levy a surcharge on the mortgage to recoup the debts.

Nationwide, the building society, and Northern Rock, which was nationalised earlier this year, are among the most aggressive in using the court orders.

Mark Sands, head of insolvency at KPMG, the accountancy firm, said: “The power of a charging order can come as a horrible shock to someone. When they took out the loan or the credit card, they were almost certainly not told that their home was at risk if they failed to keep up with repayments.”

The rate at which the courts have granted charging orders has increased sharply in the past two months, according to Citizens Advice, National Debt-line and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. Last week a homeowner posted a message on a website saying a credit card company had launched a charging order against him for a debt of £1,000.

From next year banks will be given further arbitrary powers because they will no longer need to secure a county court judgment against a defaulting debtor. They will be able to move directly to seek a charging order after two or three months of missed payments.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: “No one should be allowed to lose their home simply because of a credit card debt. More needs to be done by the government to ensure that lenders simply do not act overzealously, and only take possession of properties as a last resort. The fact that banks can now kick people out of their homes for not keeping up with their unsecured debts is very worrying.”

Alex McDermott, social policy officer at Citizens Advice, said the government had presided over a hidden scandal, because homes repossessed in this way did not appear in the official statistics issued by the Council for Mortgage Lenders.

The Consumer Credit Counselling Service said Northern Rock and Nationwide were particularly aggressive.

Northern Rock confirmed it used charging orders where customers had missed payments on unsecured loans, saying: “Any application for a charging order on an unsecured loan is in strict accordance with the Consumer Credit Act.”

Northern Rock and Nationwide declined to discuss how many homes they had forced to be sold.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/bankin
g_and_finance/article5014781.ece

---

Quote:

---

Menezes police 'were just having a laugh'

London Independent
30 October 2008



Armed police fired on Jean Charles de Menezes without shouting any warning, a witness told an inquest today.

A commuter said he first thought the gun-wielding plainclothes officers who ran on to a Tube train might be "a group of lads who were just having a laugh".

Ralph Livock said he had no idea that it was anything more serious until one of the armed men fired at Mr de Menezes at point blank range.

Mr Livock and his girlfriend Rachel Wilson were sitting in a Tube carriage opposite the 27-year-old Brazilian on the morning of 22 July 2005, the inquest heard.

The passenger recalled that their train was held up for longer than usual at Stockwell station in south London - and then four casually-dressed men armed with guns got on board.

Nicholas Hilliard QC, counsel to the inquest, asked him: "Did you have any idea who they were?"

Mr Livock said: "Absolutely not."

He went on: "One of my initial thoughts was it was all a game and they were a group of lads who were just having a laugh - a very bad taste laugh but just having a game on the Tube, because they were just dressed in jeans and t-shirts but with firearms."

Mr Hilliard went on to ask: "Had you heard anything said about police?"

Mr Livock replied: "No, certainly not.

"And I remember that specifically because one of the conversations that Rachel and I had afterwards was that we had no idea whether these were police, whether they were terrorists, whether they were somebody else. We just had no idea."

He added: "The thing that made me realise it wasn't a group of lads playing around or something else happening was when the first shot was fired."

Mr de Menezes was shot seven times in the head at point-blank range after being mistaken for failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman.

Mr Hilliard asked the witness: "Did you hear him saying anything to Mr de Menezes?"

Mr Livock said: "Absolutely not."

Mr Hilliard continued: "Did you hear Mr de Menezes say anything to him?"

The passenger replied: "No, absolutely not at all.

"If anything, Mr de Menezes looked as if he was - I hesitate to say confused, confused isn't really the right adjective.

"He looked as if he was expecting somebody to say something but he didn't look frightened.

"He looked as if he was waiting for somebody to tell him what was going on."

None of the passengers in the Tube train were called to give evidence at the Metropolitan Police's Health and Safety trial over the shooting last year.

This is the first time they have spoken in public about what they saw.

Firearms officers involved in the operation have told the inquest they shouted "armed police" at Mr de Menezes before shooting him.

But giving evidence today, Ms Wilson also insisted she did not hear this and had no idea who the men who killed the Brazilian were.

Mr Hilliard asked her: "Was anything said at any time during the incident to give you a clue as to who they were?"

She replied: "No, and I know this because similar to Ralph's statement, first I thought they were messing around.

Mr Hilliard went on: "Specifically, did you ever hear anybody shout 'armed police'?"

Ms Wilson answered: "If I had heard that, I would have thought they were police, so no."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/menezes-police-were-just-ha
ving-a-laugh-979238.html

Security video of this assassination:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7038430.stm

---

Quote:

---

Climate Change Bill makes chilling reading



Who says the Almighty has not got a sense of humour? Last Tuesday MPs spent yet another six hours discussing what is potentially the most expensive single piece of legislation ever put through Parliament.

The Climate Change Bill, which had its third reading, commits Britain (uniquely in the world) to an 80 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

As MPs droned on about the need to fight global warming, Peter Lilley drew the Speaker's attention to the fact that, outside on the streets of Westminster, snow was falling. It was London's first October snowfall for 70 years, and similarly unseasonal snow was carpeting a wide swathe of Britain.

In all that six hours of debate, only two MPs questioned the need for such a Bill, which had swept through its second reading with only five opposed.

The sole MP who tried to raise the matter of the cost of the Bill - which could run to trillions of pounds if all its measures were implemented - was Mr Lilley. He was ruled out of order by the Speaker.

If the Bill's intent is taken seriously, the cost of cutting our CO2 emissions by 80 per cent would cripple our economy, closing down much of what remains of our industry and rendering most motorised transport impossible.

But the cloud cuckoo land that our politicians have floated off into no longer touches scientific or practical reality at any point.

What they should have been discussing was the near-certainty that, within a few years, thanks to the imminent shutdown of 40 per cent of our electricity generating capacity, Britain's lights will be going out.

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/02/do0207.
xml

---

Quote:

---

Pub-goers to be tested for drugs

Pub-goers in Aberdeen are facing a drugs test before entering bars as part of a crackdown by Grampian Police.

Officers in the force will be the first in Scotland to use an Itemiser - a device which can detect traces of drugs from hand swabs in a matter of seconds.

The test is voluntary, but customers will be refused entry if they do not take part. They could be searched and even arrested if traces are found.

The device was trialled by the police force in the area earlier this year.

The Itemiser allows police officers or door staff to swab customers hands as they enter a pub or club. It can tell almost instantly if drugs are present - including cocaine, cannabis, heroin and ecstasy.

The device can show three possible results: green, amber or red.

Customers who get a green reading are allowed entry to the pub, those who get amber are given a drug information pack and those who get red could be searched by police.

If drugs are found on that person they could be arrested and a report could be sent to the procurator fiscal.

The Itemiser is already being used in pubs in England where concerns have been raised about the possibility of customers getting a positive reading simply by touching a surface where there are traces of drugs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/7702856.stm

---

Quote:

---

Brown's £17,000 tax raid on EVERY private pension... as value of cushy public sector schemes soars to £1trillion

Gordon Brown's tax raid on pension funds has snatched £17,000 from every worker's retirement pot, research says today.

Yet the value of public sector schemes - funded by taxpayers - has soared to an astonishing £1trillion.

Opposition MPs, business chiefs and campaigners demanded an investigation into the growing 'pensions apartheid'.

The number of members of private sector schemes has fallen from 6.1million in 1995 to 3.6million last year. At that rate, says the report, there will be no paying-in members of occupational schemes within 12 years.

The growing gulf between private and public sectors has become an increasing source of bitterness over recent years and this is particularly acute in the current economic crisis.

The average private sector worker retires with a pension pot worth £25,100 - enough to pay them about £1,700 a year. The average public sector worker will retire with a pot of £427,275 - worth £17,091 a year.

Private sector workers pay £14billion a year into their own retirement funds, but contribute around £21billion through their taxes for the pensions of retired public sector workers.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082511/Browns-17-000-tax-raid-EVERY-
private-pension--value-cushy-public-sector-schemes-soars-1trillion.html

---

Quote:

---

London Musicians Must Give Police Swathes Of Personal Information To Perform Live

Eight page form will detail names, aliases, private addresses, phone numbers of all musicians and ethnic background of the likely audience

Musicians and performers in London will soon be required by law to complete and hand over to police an eight page form detailing all their personal information and the ethnic background of their audience if they want to perform.

The information will be collected by venue owners and managers throughout the city, who will have to adhere to the process should they wish to promote live music.

Failure to comply with the information demanded on Form 696 could mean the loss of a licence or even a fine and imprisonment, reports the London Independent.

Police quietly introduced the legislation in 2006, and have recently defended it, saying they need the details in order to ensure safety and "identify troublemakers".

Groups of musicians and promoters have slammed the move, suggesting that it will harm the live music scene and encourages venues to effectively spy on patrons. Others have described the bureaucratic process as a form of racial discrimination. There are also fears that the legislation will be applied throughout the country if it is accepted in the capital.

The Musicians' Union is consulting lawyers over the invasion of privacy, while another group, UK Music is seeking a judicial review.

As with most recent legislative erosions of civil liberties, form 696 is a phenomenon of the culture of fear our governments have consistently fashioned and promoted over the past decade. In a post 9/11 / post 7/7 world, everyone is treated as a suspect until proven otherwise, especially if you have brown skin and a foreign sounding name.

Musicians and performers are no exception.

Take the case of The Clash tribute band member Mike Devine who was arrested at his office in Bristol and taken away for questioning after he sent an SMS text message containing lyrics from the song Tommy Gun to his lead singer who had forgotten the words.

The message read:

"How about this for Tommy Gun? OK - SO LET'S AGREE ABOUT THE PRICE AND MAKE IT ONE JET AIRLINER AND TEN PRISONERS"

A terrorism analyst told reporters that the interception provided proof that Britain's spy teams at GCHQ were actively monitoring all vocal and textual mobile phone traffic.

That was 2004, now in 2008 the British Government has openly announced that it wants to make that very practice lawful.

In a similar incident, Harraj Mann was reported to the British airport police for listening to a Clash record in a taxi on the way to the airport. The weasel driver was so frightened by some of the lyrics that he took them as a rallying call for a terrorist attack.

Of course it is unlikely that the police or the government will raise an eyebrow to the mindless gibberish passing for lyrical content in the majority of musical performers' work.

Ask yourself, who is more likely to be classed as the "troublemaker"? Will it be the performers who sing endlessly about money, bling and easy girls or will it be those who wish to address real issues and make their audiences think about more than the pursuit of expensive baubles and trinkets?

Sign a petition to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to get the Metropolitan Police to scrap the use of Form 696.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Scrapthe696/

Facebook Group - Stand Up To Form 696
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42439007135

www.infowars.net/articles/december2008/021208Musicians.htm

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by piratenews:
Foreign Gurka soldiers hired as killer British cops:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/02/police-gurkha-nepal-crime-offi
cer

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by piratenews:
Foreign Gurka soldiers hired as killer British cops:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/02/police-gurkha-nepal-crime-offi
cer

---

Hello,

All accounts I've heard of Gurkhas is that they are highly disciplined, effective troops. Do you have some reason to believe that these people can't be trained to serve in a police capacity?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AnthonyT:
"Don't you think it's odd that soldiers are NEVER required to speak the language of the nation they are invading?"

Hello,

I don't consider this odd. While I think we go to war far too often, if we did go to war, I wouldn't think it efficient to put all my troops through 6 months of language training before they could be mobilized against my enemies.

---

Quote:

---

Thousands of foreign prisoners freed early – with compensation

Figures released by the Conservatives show that 2,196 foreign offenders have been invited to take part in the early release scheme, called End of Custody Licence, since its introduction 15 months ago in response to prison overcrowding.

As well as walking free having served less than half of their sentence, each released prisoner is entitled to around £7 a day in compensation to make up for missing out on the state-provided food and lodging they would have received had they remained in jail.

Offenders released on End of Custody Licence receive an initial discharge payment of £46, followed by the subsistence allowance of £47.12 a week, up to a cap of £168.24.

If all those eligible received the full allowance, the taxpayer would by now have paid out £369,455 in compensation to foreign prisoners who had been released early.

The disclosure, in a written Parliamentary answer from the Ministry of Justice, follows recent pledges by Gordon Brown that foreign nationals who commit crimes in Britain "will be deported" and "will pay the price".

Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said that for every three foreign prisoners the Home Office was now removing from the UK, two more were allowed to go free and six entered the prison system.

He added: "The Government want to create the impression that they're successfully deporting foreign national criminals, but the truth is that for every three prisoners they remove, two more are released onto the streets.

"Far from paying the price as Gordon Brown promised, foreign national offenders are being rewarded by serving less than half of their jail sentence and with taxpayers' cash in their back pockets."

There are now around a thousand more foreign prisoners in British jails than in 2006 when Charles Clarke was forced to resign as Home Secretary amid accusations that the Home Office had failed to deport overseas offenders.

The number of foreigners in prison currently stands at 11,168, up 11 per cent since Mr Clarke's departure, with offenders from Vietnam and Poland accounting for more than half of the increase. There are 460 Vietnamese in UK jails along with 452 Poles.

Such is the scale of offending by foreigners that there are now three jails reserved exclusively for prisoners from overseas.

The equivalent of one more prison is taken up by offenders who have served their sentence and are awaiting deportation, at an average annual cost of £40,000 each – a total of £22 million.

The UK Border Agency sent 5,000 foreign offenders back to their country of origin, exceeding last year's total of 4,200.

They included 50 killers and attempted killers, more than 200 sex offenders and more than 1,500 convicted of drug offences.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Personally, I just clicked through to this story. Now tell me this doesn't do it for anyone who was alive and awakened in the '80s

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1101980/She-doesnt-work-m
ixes-highly-unsavoury-crowd--Pixie-Geldof-real-Boomtown-brat.html

---

Quote:

---

Big Brother CCTV to spy on pupils aged four - complete with CPS evidence kit

Shadow Children's Minister Tim Loughton is chairman of Classwatch (and in charge of paying himself with a massive tax increase).

The Big Brother-style surveillance is being marketed as a way to identify pupils disrupting lessons when teachers’ backs are turned.

Classwatch, the firm behind the system, says its devices can be set up to record everything that goes on in a classroom 24 hours a day and used to compile ‘evidence’ of wrongdoing.

The equipment is sold with Crown Prosecution Service-approved evidence bags to store material to be used in court cases.

The equipment, which includes ceiling-mounted microphones and cameras and a hard drive recorder housed in a secure cabinet, is operating in around 85 primary and secondary schools and colleges.

The systems cost around £3,000 to install in each classroom or can be leased for about £50 per classroom per month.

Classwatch director Andrew Jenkins said Classwatch had tried to guard against accusations of bringing Big Brother into schools.
‘The system can be turned on and turned off as they wish,’ he said. ‘It is a bit like a video at home. This is not Big Brother. The system is under the control of the teacher.’

Last night, Tory frontbencher Mr Loughton insisted there was no conflict between his political role and part-time job.

He said: ‘I am not the Shadow Minister for Schools, I am the Shadow Minister for Children. I don’t speak on school security.’

He declares his involvement with the firm on the MPs’ register of interests and added: ‘I have never sought to advocate this. I went through this very carefully before I got involved in it and it doesn’t conflict with anything I do.’

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1102205/Big-Brother-CCTV-spy-pupils-a
ged--complete-CPS-evidence-kit.html

---

Quote:

---

We don't want the convicts back either, Australia.

---

Quote:

---

Is this an example of a necropost? Given the entire thread was in 2008, I suspect so. Was illuminating, however, to read down a ways before I realized the date; man, Wulf, you sure do live in your own little world. Actually, I wouldn't wish you on the Brits, I have too much respect for them.

Sorry to contribute to this, I assume most will let it drop down the line...but I couldn't resist. Reading Wulf's adjective-strewn posts was too fascinating...for a bit.

---