Daily Brief

There's indecent, and then there's flat out obscene; Janet Jackson's naked breast on network television is one thing, but defiling Churchill the cartoon bulldog? That's just offensive.

According to the U.K.'s Daily Star (not the arbiter of newsworthy reporting, we admit), a "furor" has erupted over a recent TV ad for Churchill Insurance, in which the company's beloved cartoon dog appears to utter the word "f***" at the end of his signature catchphrase, "Ohhh yes!"

See how the tables have turned! The typically soft-on-indecency Brits get bent out of shape about expletives, while their rather more puritanical...

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More misery for BP

Things keep getting worse for BP’s Russian venture, which is now one of the world’s major oil producers. Today the company said it would reluctantly pull its remaining seconded staff out of the country after a prolonged row about work permits. This is merely the latest in a long string of disputes that the AAR consortium of four Russian billionaires which co-owns TNK-BP has raised with its British partners, which also includes trying to get rid of chief executive Robert Dudley. Until recently, BP seemed to have done all the right things in Russia – paying plenty...

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An apology to the British public

I'd like to apologise to the British people for my abject lack of faith in the populace. I thought a decade of easy lending had left us unable to cut back, and destined to just borrow more and more to fund our lavish lifestyles.

But it appears we are heeding the warnings that things are getting tough, and frugility is the order of the day. The British Bankers Association has had a lot of press this morning because there are not a lot of new mortgages being given out. But the less...

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Risk and Relative Risk

Jeremey Leggett has yet another piece at The Guardian about how awful the risks of radioactive contamination are from the use of nuclear power.

I've pointed out here before that the emissions from nuclear stations are actually smaller than those from coal fired (there's uranium and thorium in that coal that gets spread across the countryside).

But one comment on today's piece made me smile:

The most dangerous threat in power generation these days is probably people falling off ladders as they clean solar panels.

I'm not sure that is in fact true: I'm sure coal kills many....

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