Some snippets which have been sitting on the desk for a while.. worthy of commen, but eclectic in their application to the larger Puzzle..
Now.. the details of a settlement in principle which has been worked out between Royal Mail and the TUC have yet to be announced.. but it would appear that deliveries should be back to normal, conservatively speaking, by mid next week..
But it begs the question.. why goes the government allow such costly disruptions to our national infrastructure, when a simple solution is directly at hand? What did the government gain from this?
Perhaps indeed, it is the support it felt was needed, to limit the powers of the Unions.. the movement upon which Labour itself was founded.. without it seeming to be a direct attack on workers rights..
Might be interesting to see whether or not Gordon uses his gifted time in office to bring in legislation that would pre-empt much of that which we might have seen if the Tories were in power..

Now Condaleesa's not having the best of times in Russia..
With Putin merely changing hats, so to speak, the US is well aware that while their own political movers and shakers will be changing when George steps down, the Russian's have a plan in motion that will re-establish that country as one of the superpowers..
Condaleesa didn't have much success in selling the new American surveillance systems planned for eastern Europe.. and while the Poles and the Ukrainians are hot for the American business, Vlad has no intention to stop short of reminding them they were once part of the USSR.. and European gas and oil come from Russian suppliers..
Now however.. Condaleesa's announced that she'd like words with leading Russian activists.. those in favour of a closer relationship with the West.. that she had an interest in their view of 'human rights and democracy' in Russia..
An interesting possibility.. that the US might support the growth of a movement in Russia that's diametrically opposed to that Vlad's leading his country towards..
How much would Vlad put up with..?

Now.. an interesting note from a couple of days ago..
Both Alistair Darling and George Osborne, the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor respectively, made it quite clear during the introduction of the pre-budget report earlier this week, that commitments to Foreign Aid would be met.. That we would not default on our international pledges to help the starving masses..
Yet..
A report on armed conflict in Africa has shown that the cost to the continent's development over a 15-year period was nearly $300billion.. £146billion..
The research was undertaken by a number of non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam..
It says the cost of conflict was equal to the amount of money received in aid during the same period..
This is the first time analysts have calculated the overall effects of armed violence on development... at least according to the UN Agency..
And that's tripe.
There have been dozens of studies and analyses on the actual beneficial effects of our donations.. each of them pointing to corrupt government officials.. political manipulation in the distribution of the aid materials and cash.. profligate waste through lack of distribution infrastructures..
And some of these studies are over 30 years old, with exactly the same problems highlighted.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a significant amount of money out of our national economy, to help those who's lives have, or are in the process of being, destroyed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with our making what amounts to an investment in countries which have potential.. in people who both want and need at least the basics for human survival..
But it is absolutely pointless to continue to pour money into the pockets of those already wealthy, at the expense of those who's lives remain hopeless.
Would it not make more sense to demand that along with the cash, comes administrators.. contractors.. materials the likes of plumbing and lumber.. agriculturalists.. who would themselves be responsible for the expenditure of the total amount promised in foreign aid.
And would it not then be the responsibility of the various governments who's people are being dragged into the present, to protect these aid workers from groups the likes of the Janjamacoute.. would it not be a matter for the ANF..?
Would seem to make more sense.. and while it would undoubtably cause a huge uproar from countries in receipt of such aid..
What face we would gain as a society, from China..
Recall the initial statement in this particular comment.. We have paid for the weapons.. not crops..
Surely it's a case of 'fool me once..'

And just as a matter of interest.. Google the name of this blog..
Google powered more than half of all search requests carried out around the world in August..
A global study by analysts comScore revealed that more than 61 billion searches were performed by more than 750 million users in the month.. that users performed more than 37 billion searches via Google, more than all the other major search engines combined..
Yahoo was the second most used engine, followed by Baidu, the Chinese language search engine.
Creatures of habit.. are we?