Short Independent article on Paris's bike rental scheme.

"To hire a vélib', you have to buy, with a credit card, a subscription which costs €29 (£23) a year, €5 a week, or €1 a day. Each rental is free for the first half hour. The second half hour costs €1. The fee then rises steeply.

Each of the vélibs is used about seven times a day. The average journey time is 18 minutes. In other words, most vélib' journeys are free, apart from the subscription. You take a bike from one rack and leave it at another, anywhere in the city, so long as there is a space."

Also of interest: car drivers have killed 3 riders while complaining about the increased number of cyclists and the loss of car parking spaces.

But what's the headline? "3000 bikes stolen" (that's out of 16,000).

The process of decommissioning Britain's nuclear power stations could cost "significantly" more than the £73bn budgeted for the work and no new nuclear plants should be built unless private-sector operators can meet the future cost of decommissioning, according to an influential Commons committee.

The stark warning from the Commons public account committee comes on the eve of the government announcing its preferred bidder for the £7.5bn clean-up of the highly- toxic Sellafield nuclear site, and at a time when Gordon Brown is committed to invest in a new generation of nuclear power stations as part of the national energy mix.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the public accounts committee, said in a report that the cost of decommissioning work over the next five years had already risen "steeply".
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The report stated: "Uncertainty around costs far into the future is understandable, but uncertainty over the escalating costs of work due to be carried out imminently is difficult to justify."

Full story

Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. It's a microwave weapon that puts voices in peoples' heads.

And it's real.

"The device – dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) – exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds."

After Wendy Alexander, now it's Nicol Stephen that's resigned. Described by the BBC as a Nice Guy, his most notable achievement was making the sleazy opportunistic decision to approve the M74 Extension against the verdict of a Public Inquiry whilst Transport Minister. This got him the Lib Dem leadership and then the Deputy First Ministership. Now, apparently unable to handle this, he wants to "spend more time with his family". (Presumably not in a house in the Southside of Glasgow, bit noisy there and not much fresh air, bad for young children.)

Unless of course, the closeness of his resignation to Wendy A's is more than a coincidence. Let's wait for the Sunday papers...

Useful catalogue of the range of assaults on womens' rights that are apparent today from the Guardian. Includes the unbelievably depressing statistic that the "rape conviction rate in Britain has plummeted from 33% in the 70s to just 5.7% today" and puts it in the context of the 100s of "cry rape" stories seen in the news.

[Be good to get a report on Indymedia directly from someone there! Herald story is below]

Protestors campaigning against the introduction of ID cards were held by police yesterday following an alleged disturbance at an event staged by Home Office Minister Meg Hillier.

Nine people were arrested for alleged breach of the peace offences at the event at a hotel in central Edinburgh, police said. The incident happened at a meeting for representatives of businesses and service providers, including local authorities and charities, a Westminster spokesman said.

Among those arrested was Geraint Bevan, NO2ID Scotland co-ordinator, who had earlier accused the Home Office of refusing to listen to the public on the issue. He said that the ID database will result in "a massive erosion of privacy for individuals".
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He claimed campaigners and "ordinary members of the public" were not allowed to attend the meeting and that it was not a genuine public consultation.

Full story

The stupidity and insensitivity of the Home Office when it comes to asylum issues isn't really news anymore, but Jacqui Smith's latest apparent remarks deserve some sort of prize.

"Iran safe for 'discreet' gays.

Mark "son of Maggie" Thatcher not only funds coup attempts in Africa but he's 3 months behind in rent on one of his homes in Spain, according to the Independent.

No it's not earth-shattering stuff but lets give debit where debit's due...

David David (Tory Shadow home secretary) has resigned as an MP in order to force a bye-election which he will fight on the the issue of 42 day detention and erosion of civil liberties.

What alternative planet am I living on? This guy isn't just a Tory, he was the great hope of the Tory right.

I read the full text of his statement on the BBC. I'm not sure I can fault anything! I could almost have written the damn thing. After outlining how bad the whole 42 days thing is (and the fact that it won't stop there unless it's stopped) he goes on to connect the dots:

A CCTV camera for every 14 citiziens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with 1000s of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it.

We have witnessed an assault on jury trials - that balwark against bad law and its arbitrary use by the state. Short cuts with our justice system that make our system neither firm not fair.

And the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws that stifle legitimate debate - while those who incite violence get off Scot free.

This cannot go on, it must be stopped. And for that reason, I feel that today it's incumbent on me to take a stand.

...

I will fight it, I will argue this by-election, against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government.

I never thought anything would persuade me to vote Tory under any circumstances. But if I lived in that constituency (I don't) then I really think I would vote for him (this time, not at a general election).