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Why don't you interview EDF's Head of PR
Andrew Brown - a former Ö÷²¥´óÐã and C4 man
+ brother of Prime Minister Gordon Brown?

"What could we do to mark the end of a week of speculation about the futures of Brown, Miliband and Labour?"

Why not interview:

1) Michael Foot?
2) Tony Benn?
3) Shirley Williams?

Or:

Track down for comment:
1) John Reid?
2) John Reid?
3) John Reid?*

* that's John Reid the ex-Communist who didn't write '10 Days That Shook Brown's
World' but now chairs Celtic Football club
in the East End of Glasgow (in Scotland?)

Looking forward to the seatbelts story too.
Will there be footage of Barbara Castle and her young research assistant Jack Straw??

I also see that Saab were the first people to introduce seatbelts as standard in 1958?

ps if you need a Saab Convertible to help illustrate this item Kirsty Wark left hers on
the top floor of the Museum of Scotland !!!
NB: the meter seems to be showing red??!

On nuclear is Gordon going to volunteer his constituency for nuclear waste storage? How much of a vote loser will nuclear waste be down the line?

On Labour leadership is the key question
"If the New Labour project is dead and smelling, will Labour go back to its socialist roots or move to ultra-Blairism?". Whether Brown stays or somebody else comes in that is the issue in my crazed world.

On seat belts how about the inevitable Saville "Clunk-click". Is that not still a landmark campaign in the media?

Scottish referendum implications and preparations for post 2010.

I thought the extraditions thing last night was OK. I would like to have heard a Brit politician challenged to confirm that they were making sure British airspace was not used for renditions flights.

MOSTLY SELF HARMING

Your comment on arguments against seatbelts in the 70s and 80s should inform an investigation of the British psyche and its response to nuclear power, China Olympics and Brown/Miliband/Labour.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has a revised entry under 'Earth' that reads: 'mostly harmless'. I predict that the next revision will read: 'mostly self-harming'.

While we, here, address 'angels on pin-head' issues, as listed above, the mental health of planet earth declines; as its 'agencies of hurt' become ever more diverse and devilish; from TV to battery-house schooling and money-madness.

The widely shared view that school and commerce will be the salvation of mankind is quite simply wrong, and the evidence is all around. Compounded with the fiction that we are all, potentially, high minded cerebral humans, rather than thinly disguised apes (confused by language) it will ensure the continued rush to Ever Greater Misery.

You can file the above under: 'What Else'.

Mark Urban asks some fundamental questions about the trials of leaders today.
Why not start the exploration?

Also, for a later time, look at the assumptions about what "humanitarian law" is and who subscribes to it.

Further to #4 Gordon Brown would need the approval of the Scottish Government
- and that will not be forthcoming as we
have decided not to go down a nuclear
power route in this country, but rather
to focus on renewables and clean coal
as well as improved energy efficiencies.

EDF is also having problems with leaks in their French nuclear reactors ..................:

All this everlasting bitching about China might persuade me to look forward to 2012. The world's press will have an opportunity to shine a spotlight onto the worst aspects of life in the UK. Our laws to curtail freedom of speech should be high on the list. Our worthless media delivering up a diet of questionable PR handouts and mendacious press briefings . A pixilated journalist might be persuaded to spill the beans about government strong arm tactics for manipulating the news . There's endless scope for highlighting the contrasts between bloated over-remunerated politicians/bureaucrats and the undereducated, malnourished underclass.
There's always the possibility that foreign journalists in 2012 will be decent people who might consider it ill-mannered to abuse the hospitality extended by their hosts but in the next few weeks I'm sure British journalists will show them how to behave like pigs.

usa unemployment rate rising to 4 year high.

EDF - which shareholders spiked the deal that HMG was willing to accept?


In 18 months Chi-X has captured 20% of the FTSE 100 stocks trading and forced the LSE to cut prices.


Bush cuts CIA wings with security reshuffle.

Guardian prints internet april fool joke about Met Police plan to force photographers wishing to take photos in central London to apply for monthly passes, to wear dayglo yellow jackets, and to be RFID-chipped as news.

Heres something that might be on someones new in tray on monday morning. In an elephant tramples the mayors roses kind of way Google launched Knol. Now the owner of Knol.com wants a million for the domain. Visits to Knol have rocketed. PR Result. Everyone now knows the name. Must be worth a million. If not how can you get the owner to laugh about it?

george not guilty of dando killing.
Lord Archer writes in his prison diaries no one inside even the wardens thought he did it. So who did?

"A top US scientist suspected of anthrax attacks in 2001 has apparently killed himself just as he was about to be charged, a newspaper reported." on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website.

I assume from the reports that he IS presumed to have been working alone.

Its astonishing that a terrorist act on US ground by a US citizen took so long to sort out.

Haven't had a chance to look at Newsnight for some time but a web search suggests you didn't comment on Merrill Lynch's disposal early this week of a huge tranch of toxic CDOs by lending a distressed debt fund 75% of the heavily discounted purchase price. Smoke and mirrors I fancy and surely worth investigation.

Also implications for bank write-downs - National Bank of Australia writing down an inferior tranch of CDOs to 10% as a result, Barclay's share price taking a spin down as well etc.

Paul Mason as your Business correspondent did do a piece on ML back in 2003 on their 'junk' investment advice scandal so a head start there.

How about an entire edition devoted to an in-depth report on the banking scene (but perhaps you have already)? I recall Jeremy Paxman recently referring (I assume ironically) to bankers as 'our new masters'. Time to reappraise?

Also the problem of rising home foreclosures needs attention. What best to do if anything?

Incidentally your archive web pages don't give the date year. Annoying!

What should be done on Building Nuclear power stations ?, or on selling to the french firm that increased household bills by how much? without ANY government intervention. could we not in reality be subsidising french householders?
most of whom would probably go and burn down EDF offices if such a hike was introduced accross the water.

GOSSIPNIGHT

Barrie (#5) "While we, here, address 'angels on pin-head' issues, as listed above, the mental health of planet earth declines.....The widely shared view that school and commerce will be the salvation of mankind is quite simply wrong, and the evidence is all around."

Agreed, but as I've said several times into this ever moving 'bucket', Newsnight never picks up on the evidence but chooses to run with what are, as you rightly suggest, relatively banal, ephemeral gossip instead.

MISSIONARY POSITION

Hey JJ - good t' see ya.
I wonder if Newsnight have a mission statement? One not written in Birtspeak - that is.

Hello Newsnight. Do you have a mission statement? Is it to be innovative? Think the unthinkable? Do that most worth doing?Boldly go where no public broadcasting has gone before? Any chance of a peek?

Standing by . . .

EU: COAL, STEEL, OIL, GAS AND NUCLEAR

"The government's nuclear plans have been dealt a blow by the stalling of a deal to sell most of Britain's nuclear power stations to the French firm EDF. What should we do on this?" NN leader

"The French firm buying BE would have meant "a massive concentration of power in the electricity sector in the hands of EDF", he said. "They'd have had over a quarter of all electricity generation and the competition effect would've been very serious." EDF, which is 85% owned by the French government, is the biggest nuclear power generator in the world."



Call me a cynic, but here we have an essentially French nationalised company trying to acquire British Energy which the British government has a 35% stake in, but (temporarily?) backing off to get a better deal?

Once, the roots of the EU project lay in the stealthy post-war pan-European integration of coal and steel. Today it's oil, gas and nuclear power. So, not only do we have open borders changing the identity of the dysgenic UK population for ever, but whatever nationalised industries were once core to our means of production are now being sold off to further the EU project.

IS BRITAIN BARMY?

What motivates those at the top of UK governance to serially, and irreversibly, relinquish control? There are no EU 'Ks' or 'Big Ps'.

Taken at a psychological level, does this look like a self-destructive personality?
In an individual, wouldn't we be looking for the influence on the psyche in question, of early life experience?

Are there any 'Mental Health of Nations' gurus out there?

Barrie (#18)

Good morning Barrie. In answer to your question "What motivates..." I'd suggest that it is not self destructive behaviour but that they are being manipulated by commerce and it just looks like self destruction.

Dangerous ground to enter but we really should be trying to smoke out those responsible for dismantling our country and culture.

NewFazer (#19) Do they really need smoking out? It seems to me that they're rather proud of what they're doing and that they think they've been given a mandate to do precisely what they want. Mr Miliband effortlessly/arrogantly makes this clear.

For years, it seems to me, the 'New-Left' SI has manoevered 'Trotskyites' into place and yet most buy the 'centre left' rhetoric having swallowed Blair's innocuous 'Third Way' NewSpeak. But look to whom they vilify at their website. It's all the Stalinist states is it not? This is why I say Trotskyites and Free-Marketeers make such good bedfellows.

The fly in the ointment is that people's inequalities are not uniformly distributed, but Gaussian and somehow, we're breeding more and more 'useful idiots' - for whom?

JJ (#20)

I have this naive notion that if we were to parade in public those responsible (possibly tarred and feathered and with placards round their necks) then the people would recognise them for what they are and reject them.

You may well have their numbers but some of us on the Clapham omnibus might not have. Why do the people stand idly by while these miscreants systematically destroy their way of life?

REWARD CIRCUITS

Anyone still here? Thanks for guidance, BUT.
In the absence of Ps and Ks, what is turning on the reward circuits in the brains of these people? Are they just excited by the ability to say: 'I did that'? Like the lads who chuck trolleys in the river? Or is it money? If the latter, surely it can be 'followed'? (I have to say I can well imagine 'W' Major being turned on by Maastrict triumph; after all, we know what else turned him on - oh yes.)