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View virtually any RSS enabled photo feed (flickr, picasaweb etc) in full screen 3d and fly through your photos

Swarmplayer

Trial the next generation of p2p video

That’s it really - click and explore!

Tags: tech stuff
Categories: tech stuff
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Did you know….

According to The Times of India:

WASHINGTON: India, with the world’s largest population of poor people living on less than a dollar a day, also paradoxically created millionaires at the fastest pace in the world in 2007 even though the world grew such “high net worth individuals (HNWIs)” at the slowest pace in four years.

Growing them at a blistering pace of 22.7 per cent, India added another 23,000 more millionaires in 2007 to its 2006 tally of 100,000 millionaires measured in dollars, according to an annual Merrill Lynch Cap Gemini report that weighs such financial information for its wealth and asset management purposes

According to OneIndia:

With the explosion of India’s wealthy middle class and air travel growth, there has been a three fold increase in the number of Indian tourists holidaying in Britain over the past ten years.

And the venues, which are responsible for the large turnout, are the Hindu temple in Neasden, Selfridges in Oxford Street and the confectionery section of Fortnum & Mason.

Such is the influx that tourist chiefs now view India as the most important developing market over the next decade ‘ and a strong reason to redefine the shape of British tourism.

Elliott Frisby, a spokesman for VisitBritain, said that the number of Indian visitors had grown by about 170 per cent between 1993 and 2007. ‘In ten years’ time, if the growth rates stay the same, this could be one of our biggest markets,’ Times Online quoted Frisby, as saying.

They’re even so rich that…

India’s taxman is bringing the country’s super-rich down to earth – by seizing their private jets. At least ten luxury aircraft have been impounded by Indian customs officers in the past fortnight and hundreds more are being scrutinised.

Mukesh Ambani, the mogul behind Reliance Industries, India’s largest private company, was among the first to suffer the ignominy of having his wings clipped when officials impounded two of his executive jets.

The brace of seized aircraft included a £30 million Airbus A-319, allegedly bought by Mr Ambani as a birthday present for his wife. Customs officials claim that the jet was imported into India under a scheme that offers tax breaks for aircraft used to ferry ticket-bearing passengers and that Mr Ambani owes import duties of £12 million because it was used exclusively for private trips.

Not forgetting that India gained 19 dollar billionaires last year. It now has 54 – more than Japan for the first time. It has 123,000 dollar millionaires and their ranks are growing faster than anywhere else in the world.

Well, isn’t that great. When you call a helpline, it’s in India. When you buy something, if it hasn’t come from China, it’s probably from India. I’m really happy for them.

Back home, we have crumbling hospitals and economy, sexually transmitted diseases growing at the fastest rate ever; herpes, syphilis, AIDS, chlamydia - it’s all going up, with overworked clinics and no budget for an education campaign. We are taxed to death - and then after death too.

Funding for cancer comes from charitable donations, as do many things.

So where’s the tax going? Well, apart from Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy to know that…

Gordon Brown has announced a new package of development aid for India, worth £825m over the next three years.

Oh well, at least it won’t be squandered. Yeah, right.

BurningOurMoney has more on this regarding the corrupt CDC:

DfID’s dubious investment quango CDC will be familiar to BOM readers, and now it’s been probed by BBC R4’s File On Four.

Their Aid to Africa post reminds us that

The UK currently spends £1.25bn ANNUALLY in direct aid to Africa, and at least the same again in debt write-offs

And let’s not forget:

very large chunks of the £5bn pa we taxpayers now spend on aid is totally wasted, going mainly to support the international aid industry.

Now, doesn’t that make you feel better next time Gordon starts grubbing around your pocket again?

Categories: Politics
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Youtube’s #4 most subscribed user worldwide (#1 in the comedian category) has released another biting, pithy and educated blast of sense into a mad world:

It seems quite a few people agree with him, too. The video has been out for 6 hours at time of writing, and already it is:

#1 - Most Discussed (Today)
#1 - Top Favorites (Today)
#1 - Top Rated (Today)
#2 - Top Rated (This Week)

Tags: patcondell,religion,youtube
Categories: religion
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Apparently, Police-recorded crime in England and Wales fell 9% in the 12 months to March.

How convenient, and right before a tricky by-election too. Well done, Labour. You must be really proud.

Especially of statistics like these:

1. Five people every week are stabbed to death as knife crime has risen by a third since Labour came to power.

2. The figures showed big increases in the numbers of men and women stabbed, with male victims jumping from 139 to 185 and female victims up from 58 to 73 over the three year period.

3. Almost 34,000 people were admitted to hospital in England as a direct result of violence in the year 2005/2006. Ten times that number attended Accident and Emergency, the study shows. This compares with 25,700 admissions in the year 2002/2003.

4. Separate figures have also showed that the number of people prosecuted for possessing knives had increased by 72 per cent from 4,489 in 1997, the year Labour came to power, to 7,699 in 2006.

Interesting then that the government’s annual crime report for 2007-2008 “reveals” the longest recorded period of falling crime - down 48% from 1995. And yet, inconveniently, last month Sir Ian Blair, Britain’s most senior policeman, criticised official crime statistics saying that people had “almost no faith” in them.

Damn right we don’t! Did you know that every time someone is cautioned, it’s put down as a solved crime?!

Do you know why violent crime appears to have gone down? Because they took things like gun crime and knife crime off into their own separate categories!
And if crime is down, why are the prisons full?

More comment from Nunoncastors.

Tags: crime,Politics
Categories: Politics
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In March 2007, Channel 4 screened a fake/hoax documentary (fokumentary?) called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

And a lot of people fell for it. Unfortunately, some of the more, shall we put it “cerebrally challenged” saw fit to embarrass themselves into using it as an argument.

In the style of Obie from Family Guy: “Well, uh….there’s uhhhh…this man I uhhh…know from the pub and …uhh.. he saw this uhhhh…documentary on … uhhhh … channel ummmm four …. uuuuhhhh … vote Republican!”.

UPDATE: 25th July - Marcus Brigstocke from The Now Show comments on the judgement (more at the bottom of the post)

Well, you get the idea. Anyhoo, they had their asses whipped by the regulator!

From The Times:

A Channel 4 documentary that argued that global warning was a fraud is to be criticised by the media regulator.

On Monday Ofcom is expected to publish a long-awaited report that upholds claims by some of the scientists who appeared in the programme last year that they were misrepresented.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired in March last year, has been accused of downplaying the threat in the public mind. It sparked an outcry among environmentalists and many campaigners argue that the programme has contributed to people believing that the threat is not real.

It is understood that complaints by Carl Wunsch, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be upheld

It misrepresented evidence about the threat of global warming and that it rehashed discredited arguments and skewed data and charts to make its arguments stand up. In the closing moments of the program a voiceover from the climate change sceptic Fred Singer claimed that the Chief Scientist of the UK had said that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the planet would be in the Antarctic and that “humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic”.

Sir David has never made such a statement. It is thought that Mr Singer confused the comments with those made by the scientist James Lovelock, who infuriated many colleagues in the science community when he publicly questioned global warming.

From The Guardian:

The detail of the ruling is expected to criticise Channel 4 over some aspects of the controversial programme, made by the director Martin Durkin.

The programme was criticised by scientists, who claimed it fundamentally misrepresented the evidence about global warming, that it rehashed discredited old arguments and manipulated data and charts to make its case.

I heard Durkin being interviewed once - what a complete cock! When they put one argument to him, he threw his toys out of the pram and started being abusive.

Here’s the mp3version:

And here it is on Youtube - but I disagree with him about China, though. China is by far the greatest threat and will overtake the USA as the world’s worst polluter (by country and capita) within a year or two.

More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/04/comment.comment

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/swindlewatch-07/

http://www.desmogblog.com/the-great-global-warming-swindle

http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.com/2007/03/ok-now-im-cross.html

Tags: green,marcus-brigstocke,mp3,the-now-show
Categories: Uncategorized
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