Archive for July 2004

Congratulations to the winners of Privacy International’s UK Big Brother Awards 2004:

Most Invasive Company: British Gas
Worst Public Servant: Minister for Children, Margaret Hodge
Most Appalling Project: NHS National Programme for IT
Most Heinous Government Organisation: The Office of National Statistics
David Blunkett Lifetime Menace Award: US VISIT Programme

Home Secretary David Blunkett, the Home Office and the National Identity [...]

MailFrontier have put together a little test to see if you can spot Phishing emails (scams where scumbags try to trick you into revealing your account details). There are ten different emails from banks, ebay, paypal etc. and you have to decide whether each one is dodgy or genuine. I managed to get 8 out [...]

Even better than the real thing: HM Department of Vague Paranoia’s Preparing for Emergencies.
In an effort to worry the public and convince them to vote for us again next year, and because George Bush asked us to, this website includes the common sense advice found in the Preparing for Emergencies booklet, and information on [...]

Ooh! Look up there! It’s the new location for World of Badger: http://www.worldofbadger.co.uk. It’s taken me a week to get round to implementing Rob’s birthday pressie, but it should all work now. I’ve set up redirects from the old URL, but please try to update your bookmarks and links if you get the chance. And [...]

It’s impossible to be grumpy having just heard William Shatner’s cover of Pulp’s Common People. The man’s musical genius will be revealed on his new album which comes out on October 4th. Although generally lauded for his version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, my favourite to date has to be the video I’ve [...]

In order to prevent this site attracting any more nutters, any comments containing r*visi*nist n*zi crap will be deleted without exception. All poster’s IP addresses are recorded, so I’m more than happy to report abusive visitors to their ISPs, and block them from this site. Of course friendly and interesting comments are more than welcome [...]

Right, I’m on the verge of closing the comments facility at World of Badger. Please excuse any repetition , but I’m currently pissed, in both the UK and US vernacular sense, and thinking that this comment business is more hassle than it’s worth. Initially I left all my previous posts open for comments, but the [...]

Come on spooks, the Democratic Underground is beating the pants off you in terms of referrals to this site! You may have got all the intel wrong about Iraq and been taken in by Ahmed Chalabi, but here’s your chance to save some face — let’s see you up there in my top referers list!
Mind [...]

After all the fivolous posts of late, and partly inspired by the visits to World of Badger from the NSA, I thought I should probably post some more important stuff, specifically a few interesting articles I’ve read about the situation in Iraq.

Wonder if this post will set off alarm bells in Echelon…? Just glancing at my visitor stats and I saw that I’ve had a couple of people arriving here from a link at http://k0nsl.nsa.gov/, which belongs to the US National Security Agency! Why is the NSA linking to me? Do I write so much [...]

As I’m finally starting to recover from my birthday celebrations, I ought to post something about weekend. It all started on Friday night, when we concentrated on trying to find the most hangover-inducing combination of drinks known to man. I think we came close — Simon’s choice of Polish vodka being particularly inspired — but [...]

ditto

Via Urban 75’s boards comes this rather unusual toilet, designed with the shy exhibitionist in mind.