I was browsing the Africa section of the BBC News website today catching up on the declining fortune of everyone’s favourite dictator when I spotted this story.

It seems that pirates off the coast of Somalia have boarded a luxury French yacht and taken the thirty crew hostage.

Well, what a surprise.  It only happened 25 times last year after all and Somalia vies for the top spot with Nigeria in the international pirate attack league table.

Here’s some free advice for the monetary-endowed but mentally-challenged ladies and gentlemen of substance and leisure.  If you’re looking for sun and fun on your million pound yacht, don’t sail along the coast of Somalia.  They don’t have wooden legs, drink rum and sing yo ho ho before amusingly falling over the side of their ship allowing you to escape with a chest full of jewels.  Those types of pirates are make believe.  The type of pirates you get off the coast of Somalia are real.  They do unamusing things like shoot people and steal their million pound yachts.

Honestly, I wonder if the people behind the Darwin Awards have been keeping an eye on this.  There’s got to be some contenders for the 2008 awards already.

Technorati Tags: Somalia, Pirates

Kosovo has hardly been mentioned since it’s declaration of independence but what’s actually going on there?

The BBC says that Russia is sending medical and food aid to Kosovan Serbs at the request of the Serbian government. Are Kosovan Serbs are in need of aid or are the Russians and Serbs playing a game, trying to make people think that the dastardly Kosovans are abusing the Serbian population?

It was reported that the riots in ethnic Serb majority areas of Kosovo were orchestrated – have they caused so much damage and disruption that they’re running out of food and supplies? Or are the ethnic Albanian Kosovan majority oppressing the ethnic Serbs?

It’s all very strange – I can’t find anything on the news websites to indicate there’s a problem there. I suspect a propaganda machine is winding up over Kosovo.

Technorati Tags: Kosovo, Serbia, Russia

The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission has announced that Mugabe’s Zanu PF has lost its majority in the Zimbabwean Parliament.

200 out of 207 seats have been declared with 94 going to Zanu PF, 1 to an independent and 105 to opposition parties.

This doesn’t answer the important question – whether Morgan Tsvangirai has won more than 50% of the presidential vote to avoid a run-off and (more importantly) whether Mugabe will give up power.

My money is on Mugabe taking emergency powers, purging parliament and declaring the election void.  Either that or having Tsvangirai charged with electoral fraud and getting one of his pet judges to rule that it would be unconstitutional for Tsvangirai to be president with a conviction for electoral fraud.

Technorati Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe

All the results of Saturday’s elections in Zimbabwe have still not been announced but it looks encouraging.

According to results already released and exit polls, the opposition MDC has beaten Zanu-PF.  But not by enough meaning that a run-off between Morgan Tsvangirai and Rubert Mugabe is inevitable.

MDC reckon they’ve taken 60% of the vote and Mugabe has only taken 30% and that the delays in announcing the results are so that the Zimbabwean government can rig the result.  Which is quite likely actually because there have been reports of people disappearing off the electoral register and loyal police officers intimidating voters inside polling stations.

I don’t think MDC will have taken such a large share of the vote but I think they will have won the election and with enough votes to avoid a run-off.  Whether Mugabe manages to rig the vote enough to secure a run-off remains to be seen but don’t be surprised if they’re going through this again before the end of April.

Technorati Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai

Dr Crippen is a bit (belatedly) upset that the Taxpayers Alliance have criticised the Chief Executive of Kent County Council’s £229,999 salary.

It turns out that Peter Gilroy is a former nurse which, it would appear, perfectly justifies a taxpayer-funded salary that most of us mere mortals can only dream of.  Kent County Council have increased their Council Tax by 3.9% this year and that’s before parish, police, fire and NHS precepts have been added on.

The Queen has cancelled her diamond wedding anniversary party this year because she thought that such extravagance was insensitive in light of the financial difficulties of the population, it’s a shame local authority Chief Exec’s don’t have the same sense of empathy with the people who pay their wages.

I don’t understand how anyone can justify paying the Chief Executive of a local authority more than the Prime Minister, even if said Prime Minister is a vacuous little shit and a part time MP.  I can’t speak for residents of Kent but I know that the current and previous Chief Executives of Telford & Wrekin have been contemptable Liebour stooges who treated residents like inconvenient piggy banks and elected councillors like obstructions to the advance of their empire.  The previous incumbent at Telford & Wrekin, Micheal “The Traitor” Frater, rubbed everyone up the wrong way in Telford, was almost universally despised in the borough and then trotted off to Nottingham where he’s been given the order of the boot after less than two years because he did exactly the same there.  He’s one of the highest paid Chief Executives in the country and he’s shit.

Regardless of the history of a Chief Executive – whether they were a successful businessman, the Pope’s foot rubber or a bloody dustman – the taxpayer should not be expected to pay the kind of salary you’d expect to see the Chief Executive of a large corporation to be earning.

I think perhaps the problem is that local councils are increasingly being run as a business rather than a service.  They don’t have residents any more, they have “customers”.  They rarely provide services themselves, they contract them out to private (often foreign-owned) companies.  Telford & Wrekin actually set up their own private company using taxpayers money to contract their own work out to themselves and then sold it to a Spanish company!  Then there are the “regeneration partnerships” set up with unelected regional quangos and “the business community”.

Local government is a public service, supposedly an instrument of democratic government; it is not the private sector and those working in local government should be doing it because they’re interested in public service, not three figure salaries.

Technorati Tags: Local Government, Snouts in Troughs