nick’s (n)-line life

This year’s local elections are now wrapped up and the results are as follows:

Councils
Councillors

Party

Net +/-
Total
Net +/-
Total

Conservative

12
67
250
1568

Labour

-18
24
-254
1064

Liberal Democrat

1
13
18
781

Residents Association

0
0
-8
21

Green

0
0
14
20

British National Party

0
0
13
13

Liberal

0
0
-1
9

Independent (…) Health Concern

0
0
1
5

SALT

0
0
0
3

UK Independence Party

0
0
0
1

Others

 0
0
-33
94

No Overall Control

 5
59
-
-

The real winners were the Conservatives, with the Lib Dems holding their own, and labour falling flat on its face. The BBC have published a  very useful Interactive election [...]

Discussion of the OFT report declaring bank charges illegal linked with personal recent experiences of the charges and possible legal claims against the banks.

Looks like a lot has been going on in Singapore this week:
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore’s government dissolved parliament on Thursday and called an election for May 6, a poll that will be the first real test of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s leadership. [ Via SingaBloodyPore ]
As a country approaches a general election one [...]

This post has been written in the form of a response to a post which appeared in An American in South East Asia.
I have tried to avoid going over old points, as far as possible, and to make sure that I focus on the criticism of my post rather than going over the substantive issues [...]

Having noticed a very pro-XiaXue post on Casanova For Hire and the very funny comments that asiapundit makes regarding good English. I thought I’d throw out some thoughts on these idiot XiaXue-haters, these, for example.

XiaXue is rude and crude, and while she can’t really write good journalism to save her life, she is very funny! [...]

Swedish anti-piracy group, Antipiratbyrån has been disciplined for breaching data protection rules by linking IP addresses to individuals and passing this information on to prosecuting agencies. This follows the questionable use of an informant last year.
This is a disgrace. The hypocrisy of saying “piracy is wrong but abuse of data is fine” is clear. In [...]

… and now, for the first entry in my “Rants” category! :)
Blogging is a great media… almost complete freedom to say what you think… unfortunately what some people think, or at least profess to think, is a cartload of bull excrement.
I cite the following as an example:

“Because the Asian glottis is [...]