*Wodewose

TORY gains in last week's UK local elections – colossal as they were in terms of vote share – said nothing about belief in David Cameron’s party, but everything about loss of belief in Gordon Brown’s.
It’s ironic that after waiting so many years, not always patiently, for his turn at the tiller Brown should now be letting it slip from his hands so easily. And of course it’s not all his fault – far from it.
When ministers talk about international winds of change beyond their control, they are speaking the truth.
There’s precious little any British government can do about economic tidal waves created by events in America or China.
Not enough they can do about the global warming that may bring literal tidal waves and far greater economic chaos in the years ahead.
More trivially, Brown may also be suffering from simple voter boredom with Labour rule.
With the crucial exception of its support for nuclear power, which was merely confirming an existing bad policy, I think Brown’s government has in fact been a big improvement on Tony Blair’s. Not that that’s saying much.
Will Cameron’s be better than either? Only if you believe Pink Floyd’s escaped blimp was in fact a flying pig.
Still, if historical precedent is anything to go by, Cameron can start preparing for power now.
So it’s about time he started coming up with some real policies beyond seeming to be a jolly good bloke.


IT wasn’t what you might expect from the head of Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office, but DCI Mike Neville has finally looked into his CCTV screen and seen the blindingly obvious.
“Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images. It’s been an utter fiasco,” he said.
Well, that’s one long over-due admission. And here’s another: Some police officers do not want to look through CCTV images “because it’s hard work”.
Not to mention, I should think, mind-numbingly boring. And, in the vast majority of cases, utterly pointless.

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I've never favourited so many works by one deviant in one visit as I did when stumbling on *ISMAILEREN's amazing gallery. He doesn't have as good a camera as most of us dA snappers, but his jaw-dropping subjects and his deeply intelligent and humane attitude make his array of images of Afghanistan and its people a must-see - one of the few collections on here I'd describe as important. I shall be writing about him at greater length at some point. In the meantime, consider the pics I've picked out here, go see the rest for yourselves - and tell him I sent you.




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The ~Forefathers gallery celebrates the photography of my father and grandfather from 1910 to 1992 and is administered jointly by me and my brother *coshipi



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