Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary... Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.

She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

As I sat on the cliffs by Astwood Cove on Saturday I saw a large blue car ship five miles offshore, leaving the island and very very slowly heading South West, away to the Caribbean, or maybe to Panama and then across to the Pacific... And I thought just how strange it might be to be at sea at Christmas, with a family (of sorts) but not your own...

A spokesman for Asda said: "As far I am aware all our fish - including the sharks which we used to sell but do not sell any longer - are from a sustainable source. In terms of them being endangered, I don't know where Greenpeace are coming from."

Given that there are no common/desirable fish available from 'sustainable' sources, it's hard to tell where ASDA is coming from. Given that most of the desirable fish stocks are somewhere between overfished, extremely rare, and all but extinct, it's surprising that fish is still on the menu.

[Via Arthur's Seat]

D (High Street Diversity) = f (m,b,c) where m is a wide mix of businesses best suited to normal spending patterns; b is the availability of everyday goods; and c is the presence of a wide number of businesses selling the same kind of thing

Amidst all the celebrations after Wednesday, we shouldn't forget.

Unfortunately, it seems almost everyone has.

I don’t know what the figures look like here, or where to look for them, but I think it’s probably true that everyone multitasks more than they used to, and some of us multitask virtually all our waking hours.

In short, we are all teenagers now.

Which is all very bizarre, because the side of Princes Street that suffers from congestion is the side that cars were already banned from driving down.

But hey, since when has the council let facts get in the way of a stupid decision??

There's a good chunk of the middle class that, although certainly nice people, hard working, reliable and whatnot, are not particularly bright, creative, or too fond of original thought, nor taking risks.

This class I see being bled white over the next few decades, as their niches dry up like summer puddles.