A certain topic has been dominating headlines and infuriating lefties yesterday, today and probably will for the next generation or so. However I won't be talking about it directly, because I think the more interesting topic is what exactly the government is currently scrambling to put out under the radar while people are either avoiding the press or religiously reading the special pull-out sections of waffle.
As my hastily put-together montage shows (and special mention to the Scotsman here - what were you guys thinking when your constituency is even less interested than the rest of us?) there's not a lot of room being made for headlines such as Cameron's humiliating acknowledgement that he knows bog all about the internet, warnings of a new European crisis, or Miliband's ride on union decoupling and shift towards direct CBI funding (sorry, 'modernising').
But there's a lot else going on under the hood today, so what do folks reckon should be on our collective radar? What should have been today's front pages? A few from me which have been reported but bumped back for the other thing, in no particular order...
Egypt circles closer still to civil war
Osborne sets out his grand plan to sort out the rent situation by help people who already have the money to buy a house to er, buy a house, while excluding poor people.
Goldman Sachs is caught out allegedly manipulating global metal prices and thus potentially screwing around with the entire world economy for the sake of its own bottom line. Again.
Brazil's set on fire, and not on the dance floor, as the costs of the "humble" Pope's visit come to light.
You know the "big four" oligopoly of accounting firms that have been behind most of the dodgy tax stuff big companies have been doing? Well, the watchdog report that came out yesterday means that er, they'll have to "tender" their auditing services now. Which I'm sure will have them quaking in their boots and entirely snuff out any hint of impropriety.
The government has finally admitted that maybe Atos isn't doing the bang-up job it should be over disability assessment. If you want a depressing read, look at the statistics the DWP let slip just a few hours ago. Of particular note, apparently they've been getting bored of constantly being thrashed in court and the percentage of "fit for work" decisions being overturned has fallen from 41% to 30%, while the number of people being certified as fit for work has dropped from 67% to 48% over the last four years (pages 9-10).
And finally, check out this little corker, a fantastically smarmy confirmation of the deal being done to allow the brutal junta at the heart of Kazakhstan's politics to spend their ill-gotten riches on things such as training their thugs using British expertise, a formally-regulated arms trade (so much better than unofficial small arms deals, which always looks terrible) and a bunch of massive infrastructure projects that if Nazarbayev wasn't so eminently co-operative with Western priorities would have been barred years ago.
Comments
Ohoho - looks like the DWP's
Ohoho - looks like the DWP's just released its raw census output data on workless benefit claimants
history is like a fiction
history is like a fiction book or a novel. I cannot imagine how people become rebellious for a little gain, how they get greedier.