Sunday Roundup

Whatever happened to the Jetfoil?

The Cu na Mara was eventually bought by a shipping broker who sold it on to the Sado Steam Ship Company Ltd. In 1986, it was re-named the Ginga (Milky Way) and still sails the calmer waters between Niigata and the Sado Islands of Japan to this day.

Nick Cohen on Cameron's recycling policies:

Nor should it be a surprise that a son of the corporate aristocracy is the editor of the Ecologist. The children of what we once called the ruling class have always dominated the green movement. Lord Melchett used to run Greenpeace and Sir Jonathon Porritt Bt., ran Friends of the Earth. The father of George Monbiot, Britain's leading anti-globalisation campaigner, is Sir Raymond Monbiot CBE, the deputy chairman of the Conservative party and an executive who made the family's fortune working for Campbell's global canned-soup empire.

You'll already know about Prince Charles's mother.

Ireland, 2016:

And he had to reverse the party's position and back construction of the first Irish nuclear plant. Of course, the ESB built it on the French coast near Brest and sent the electricity back over an interconnector, which suited everyone. That managed to provide Ireland with a measure of energy security when the rest of the developed world was in dire straits, keeping it attractive to multinationals as a stable, secure place to do business . . . and made the Greens an electoral powerhouse.

[...]

There on the platform in front of the GPO, the delegates had assembled for the highlight of the day's events. The signing. Not of a treaty for Irish unity, as some had predicted and paid a heavy political price for being wrong about.

Instead, the promise of the only thing that everyone could agree on. The need for a bigger stadium to replace Croke Park.

The sad passing of former UK Sports minister (and fellow West Hammer) "Lord Stratford" aka Tony Banks:

Banks stood down from parliament at the last election after representing the east London constituency of Newham North West, latterly renamed West Ham, since 1983. His wit, candour and accomplished sniping made him one of the most colourful MPs in the house. He baited Nicholas Soames, the Conservative MP, as “a one-man food mountain”, called William Hague, the former Tory leader, a “foetus” and Terry Dicks, former Tory MP, a “pig’s bladder on a stick ”.

Asked to comment on football hooliganism abroad after allegations of police brutality, he once said: “Personally I wish the police had truncheoned the English fans to death, but I can’t really say that on the record.” He retired in typical style, describing constituents’ problems as “tedious in the extreme”.

Hunter S. Thompson's widow founds magazine:

"We have some good writers already," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Times for its Tuesday editions. Satirist and political commentator P.J. O'Rourke plans a profile of her husband based on interviews in 1987 and 1997, she said.

Anita Thompson continues to work on a book she calls "Hunter's Wisdom," a collection of witticisms, aphorisms and other expressions from Hunter S. Thompson's bibliography of 14 books, along with her personal notes.

Rod Liddle on Galloway...

We must assume George has concluded that, much as many on the left had long suspected, there is no parliamentary road to socialism. His voting record since taking up his seat last May puts him 634th out of the 645 MPs. He has managed to table all of four written questions and spoken in a grand total of four debates. Only in one area of parliamentary procedure has he displayed much in the way of intense, consuming, political energy — that of collecting his incidental expenses provision, for which he was our 13th most enthusiastic MP in 2003-4.

...and the Lib Dems:

As coups against a leader go, this was some way short of von Stauffenberg’s bomb beneath the table. It began a couple of weeks ago with a bunch of unnamed senior Lib Dems deciding to write a chastening letter to Kennedy and then — on careful reflection, in true Lib Dem fashion — deciding not to send it. But they let the press know that they might have sent it.

Technorati tags: Galloway, Jetfoil, Hunter Thompson, Charles Kennedy.