Adam Curtis’s blog is always worth taking a look at from time to time:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/

Talk about tenous links, thats a crowbar, made in Scotland from girders.

Let the nightshift begin.

Government rules out including examining asbestos in school building inspections

Campaigners reacted with fury last night as it emerged a year-long survey of England’s 23,000 schools will examine every aspect of buildings – from classroom decoration to whether fire alarms and toilets are in working order – but will specifically exclude asbestos, the most serious threat of all to staff and pupils.
An internal Department for Education email, seen by The Independent on Sunday, makes it clear that pressure to include asbestos in the assessment of the state of schools, which begins in April and will be used to inform future funding, had to be resisted due to “cost implications and the fact that asbestos management should already be carried out under existing legal requirements”. The memo, dated September 2011, suggests that the survey programme “might well be able to provide some prompts and checks on that wider process, however”….

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/asbestos-new-blow-to-victims-of-a-shameful-legacy-6296347.html

Where is Seth?

Parachute regiment being trained to contain and arrest rioters in the UK.

Hundreds of soldiers from 3rd battalion The Parachute Regiment spent last week learning how to contain and arrest “rioters” in a series of exercises mirroring last summers violence.
Defence sources have confirmed that if violence were to return to British cities, especially during the Olympic Games, the Paras would be “ideally placed” to provide “short-term” support to police forces around the UK.   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9046668/UK-riots-paratroopers-are-trained-in-riot-control.html 

“Parachute regiment being trained to contain and arrest rioters in the UK”

Cause that worked so well in Derry?! (Note I am not saying the civil rights march was the same as a riot!)

OTOH Operation Motorman went extremely smoothly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Motorman

Good.  Asbestos, left alone, is 100% safe.
Only when disturbed by renovations or demolition is there any risk whatsoever.

Share price is very far from the only measure of his success.
Those who know more about business and a great deal more about banking than you, have posted that on here, together with what I thought were clear explanations as to why he’s worth £1 million if he increases the value of RBS by £1 billion…….
Many, many times.

‘Scots vote Labour for Westminster and SNP for Holyrood’ is OGH’s position on this.

I disagree fundamentally – May 2011′s elections were a game-changer.

Referendum win for SNP = whitewash for them in May 2015
Referendum wipe-out = normal service is resumed
Devomax is on the table in May 2015 = SNP whitewash.

In both SNP ‘victory’ scenarios (entirely Pyrrhic, IMO), Scots would want the most powerful possible negotiating position vis a viz Westminster and only the SNP could grant that.

Hampton’s handed his back too – entirely wrongly, IMO.

Sunil – legally they can do what they want – we live in a free country.

I was paraphrasing the biblical/KJB marriage ceremony wording: Marriage is an institution created by God…. for mutual support….raising children…. creating an earthly manifestation of the love between God and humans.

You know perfectly well what distinction I was trying to draw, Sunil!

On a personal level, my children’s situation is a daily torture – not seeing your children grow up is an irreversible event and has been called ‘a living bereavement’, which seems apt, since I can have no ‘closure’ (a term I hate), probably ever.

Meanwhile, I have only a past (and memories), and no future (and hope), which explains why I’m on here at silly o’clock having failed to sleep (yet again) – despite a productive and physical day in the garden on a wonderfully warm and sunny winter’s day.

Personally I have no problem in this million pound bonud if he has earned it!    Whether he has earned it I don’t know but certainly I would not want to make an assesment on the share price alone.

Presumably David Cameron thinks he has earned it as the major shareholder so fair enough

“You know perfectly well what distinction I was trying to draw, Sunil!”

You were trying to draw a distinction between heterosexual and gay couples, and use the potential for child-rearing as an excuse.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t work, because many heterosexual couples have no more potential for child-rearing than gay couples do.

Next excuse?

With such a blatantly loaded question, even the Queen might give it a second thought!

But that, we can be CERTAIN, will NOT be the question which is actually asked, so the poll proves only that a biased question can produce a given answer.

The next 12 months are going to be full of GB and Jubilee celebrations, in which the word’ Scotland’ will associated, like the England cricket team today (and soccer team for 47 years) with the word ‘failure’.

Again.

“With such a blatantly loaded question”

How exactly is it “loaded”, HD2?  I see John Curtice arguing that it should be “should Scotland become an independent country?”, but when I suggested PRECISELY those words the other day, someone jumped on me and said that would be “misleading”.  We can’t win!  

The proposed question is simple, direct, unambiguous, easy to understand, and neutrally-worded.

“But that, we can be CERTAIN, will NOT be the question which is actually asked”

Are you channelling Richard “My Word Is Law” Nabavi?  The political editor of BBC Scotland, Brian Taylor, said he thought that had a fair chance of being the question.

“The next 12 months are going to be full of GB and Jubilee celebrations”

The week before the last Scottish Parliament elections were dominated by Royal Wedding celebrations.  That, of course, successfully headed off a historic SNP landslide.  I take your point, HD2.

“Marriage is celebrating the future potential of the couple”

“Potential” (for child-rearing) that simply does not exist in the case of many heterosexual couples.   That was the point Sunil made, and ignoring it won’t make it go away.

When it comes to Soccer, Scotland does not need to borrow failure from England. They have had their own failure factory for longer than 47 years, the difference being that no-one expects them to do better.

“An Olympic medal would matter more to the players than any European Gold medal”

I doubt if there’s a footballer anywhere in Europe who wouldn’t give the European Championships at least ten times the importance of the rather peculiar under-23 event at the Olympics.  Can anyone even name the reigning Olympic champions (without checking Wikipedia, I mean)?

The conditions for the payment of the bonus were negotiated by the previous Government.  Presumably, the contract is binding in Law, and like the ridiculous terms of the renewable energy contracts and the unwanted Carriers, cannot be broken unilaterally without penalty.  I would point out that it is usual for share bonuses not to be exercisable for a number of years after the award, and that nowadays the markets take into account the number of such shares on the register. when striking a price for the enterprise.  Thus the immediate effect of the award will be to dilute the share price, and to benefit from the bonus Mr Hester will have had to increased the value of RBS in several year’s time.  When you consider the enormous sums involved, paying a top man a few millions to recover several hundred billions to the public exchequer, a bonus he can only collect if he is successful, is a good deal for the taxpayer.
Questions about the morality of the award should be addressed to the Sage of Kirkcaldy, who was, as least nominally, in charge of the Government when the contracts of employment of the RBS board were drawn up and agreed.

“I *think* Scotland made the 1970/74 World Cup finals – but nothing since.”

Completely wrong.  Here are the World Cups that Scotland has qualified for : 1950, 1954, 1958, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1998.

Note : Although Scotland qualified in 1950, the SFA pulled out on the rather quaint grounds that only England should “represent the UK”!

@TelePolitics: A-ha! Can Steve Coogan save Ed Miliband? http://t.co/UlxkYxJk