Bring your own Shisha

My mate Ant is leaving is job in a few weeks. I’m gonna miss him. It’s been good having him around. Particularly I’m gonna miss that cheeky grin he has, especially when he realises he screws something up. We’ve had some laughs at his expense, but that’s largely because he doesn’t realise when he’s being an idiot.

They should be interviewing for his job officially, but I think Don will get it. He’s been vying for the promo for years. But the problem I have is that I don’t want him to get it. I think it would be a colossal mistake if he got the role, but honestly I don’t think it matters what I or the rest of the country think. Gordon Brown will be the next Prime Minister. But he will probably only last the rest of this term the way things are going. Now THAT has to be a record. Even John ‘I like Currie’ Major managed to get elected after Maggie left.

To do the right thing, there should be a General Election as soon as he is made Labour Party leader., But let’s be honest, this guys been after this job for so long, he’ll get it and then probably cancel the 2012 elections due to a ‘State of Emergency’.

Go on Gordy..prove me wrong and call a general election. Ha, there’s more chance of a WMD landing at number 10 in 45 MINUTES!!!!

 Oh and as I sit in Frankfurt Airport waiting for the plane, I’ve realised that Illy make the best coffee!

Well actually if I had a goat, I doubt I would give it to Starbucks as they would most likely slaughter it, roast it and make overpriced ciabatta or panini sandwiches. Whereas I could easily use it as a lawnmower…

But talking about overpriced, a programme on BBC World which aired last night talked about the actual cost of the Venti, skinny, triple shot latte with a sugar-free vanilla shot no foam that you could order at S’bux.

Here come the figures:

1 kilo of Coffee cherries earns the picker (if on a co-operative farm) around $2.25.

1 kilo yields around 75 cups of coffee

In an average coffee shop in London, a medium latte will cost around $4. That is ONE CUP.

In terms of a markup that is around 16 times!

Ok, I will admit that it can’t be 100% profit, but if an averag farmer (not in a co-operative) only get $0.33 per kilo, then there are some serious balance issues. For now, I will stick to my bottle of tap water, flavoured with a (fairtrade) Orange.

A long time since I put finger to keyboard to put something up here, but I had to comment on something…

5 criminals have now been convicted of what seems to have been a major plot. I was sat in a hotel room last night watching the footage on CNN of Omar Khyam looking over his bags of Ammonium Sulphate, and I am kinda convinced that this dude was upto no good.

So Islamist Terrorism has been foiled again by the Security services. Of course there were some failings, and a little closer examination could have potentially prevented the 7 July 2005 attacks in London.

But on the flipside, an interesting report found its way into my inbox. It is a report from Europol (European Police Office) who are supposed to be the glue that holds all the European Police and Security Services together, allowing for greater cooperation.

To paraphrase some of this report in pictures:

And then we have the number of arrests in Europe by types of Terrorism:

Quoting Kristoffer Larsson:

“There were 498 incidents in eleven EU countries last year labelled as “terrorist attacks.” The Basque separatist group ETA did best (136 terrorist attacks) and was responsible for the only deadly attack, killing two in Madrid. The remaining 497 fortunately cost no human lives.

You can read the full report here.