Visionary stem cell treatments

So stem cells do it again: restoring sight to 6 of 7 subjects whose retinae had been WMD'd. What's significant here is that the applied stem cells didn't 'take' to the subject; they were sloughed off after stimulating the subject's own retinal tissues to regenerate. Presumably the applied stem cells fooled the subject's eyes into thinking they were back in the womb, and needed to grow to completion. Brilliant.
Surely a cure for death can't be too many decades away? It's just another genetic condition, after all.

From Cardinals to Wolseley

I walk past it all the time, but had never visited until last night - and this morning I've got a naughty midweek hangover to show for it. The Wolseley is a truly great restaurant, though - deliberately retro, it recreates dishes of the 30s and 40s like dover sole and tartine foie gras.
The best thing about this place is its sense of class. You can almost imagine yourself in some utopian Europe of the last century, flappers and debutantes doing the Charleston, tuxedoed men with moustaches talking seriously about empires and colonies between lengthy draws on elegant cigarettes. Airships gliding past above, the tinkling of ivories on their entertainment decks just audible. Retired colonels regaling the room with tales of tigers under billiard tables. Even the glasses and cutlery are winderfully retro, heavy crystal goblets and splines on the forks far longer than they need to be.
All in all, the Wolseley has a sense of confidence and pride that doesn't exist in many places today. Sigh....

Where a few citizens hold sway

In an election far fairer than anything involving the Bush or Blair administrations, another power-crazed ideological control structure has a new leader. But from this pic, doesn't it seem as if all the new pope's thinking is: 'YEESSSS!!! AT LAST!! AT BLOODY LAAAAASSSSST!!!!'

Memo to Blair: seven stops

Dear Tony and Gordon: the election's weeks away, and even a political groupie like me clutches his stomach every time you say what you're going to do in the next five years. As a single professional male who works hard to provide for himself - i.e. one of the people you despise most deeply - I'd like you to change tack for a moment, and tell me what you're going to stop doing. Here are some ideas.
1. Stop hating me. In other words, stop looking at single working professionals as nothing except a cash machine network for Whitehall. It's okay for you to love the unemployed single mother on the council estate, but can't you spare a thought for the people who actually build the economy instead of those sucking the life out of it?
2. Stop taxing me. The IMF has stated the need for the UK's taxes to rise whoever gets elected next month, and you can't shrug your shoulders at this - it's because of your policies. New Labour's gorging and gushing of public funds is now beyond a joke. When you throw £150m at a failed carmaker, or billions into Iraq, and propose £35bn increases elsewhere over the next five years, do you honestly think we don't realise where it's coming from? Stop thinking of new ways to spend my money, and do more with what you have.
3. Stop wrapping me in red tape. Even for my one-man business in a largely unregulated sector, I still seem to spend several days a month acting as your unpaid administrator. The paperwork and bureaucracy of running a business in the UK is no longer a minor irritation; it's a crushing, soul-destroying burden. Get rid of it.
4. Stop thinking my private life is your property. I know you believe government has a right to know everything about me, but you're wrong - and so is your ID card bill. A single national database won't stop terrorists and won't reduce admin errors; all it does is make it easier for you to keep ever-tighter tabs on me about things that are none of your business. ID cards may make things 'efficient', but so did the gas chambers.
5. Stop treating Britain as a second-class USA. America is our cousin, not our identical twin. They have a role, we have a role, and that role won't always be the same. There's no need to do what Dubya tells you to all the time, especially if it involves presenting circumstantial evidence as fact in Parliament. (Note: that's also called 'lying'.)
6. Stop creating jobs. Yes, really. The only jobs you can create - i.e. public sector - don't contribute to the economy and can't create wealth; all they create is drag. Leave job creation to the private sector.
7. Stop being greedy. If I'm building a private pension, that's a good thing; it reduces my future drain on public funds. Saying you'll tax it if it reaches £1.5m is just plain greedy, and makes the UK's pensions crisis even worse. Stop placing such limits on me when I'm providing for myself.
Of course, there are countless more stops on this line. But I think at seven, I'll follow my own advice right here.

The European Parliament's agenda for next week

Being a bit wonkish, I read a fair few EU internal policy documents for fun. The summary for the week ahead (next week) gave me a bit of a pang though. Of the 20 or so committees meeting some 121 times, an oversized proportion seem to be internally-focussed, screwing-money-out-of-the-taxpayer focussed, or not focussed at all. (My text below, based on my interpretation of an agenda from europarl.)

- 13 meetings will deal with internal budgets - including one to apparently discuss the budget for internal budget meetings.
- Economic and monetary affairs get 13 too, but all except three deal with proposed taxes and tax policy; i.e, how to screw more money out of us.
- On security and defence (a major issue I think) there are just 3 meetings, and two of them are merely 'exchange of views' (i.e. Powerpoint presentations.)
- Employment and work (8) includes a major session on whether truck drivers' permitted breaks should be increased from 12 to 13 hours.
- Environment's 12 deal mostly with tiny subjects like a rubber compound in EU tyres - one session is on 'infrastructure on spatial information', which presumably means road signs. Nutkins rejoice though: the Red Squirrel gets a session all to itself.
- Internal trade gets 7, international trade only 6. Who said the EU was inward-looking?
- Of Transport's 14, 3 are about seatbelts.
- Regional Development either has the most puffed-up airy-fairy sessions, or the biggest soaring visions, depending on your viewpoint. With titles like 'Urban Dimension in the Context of Enlargement', I'm not sure any concrete policies are likely to emerge from this Committee next week.
- Agriculture and fisheries - industries employing fewer than 1% of Europeans, yet which soak up fully half the EU's budget - get 6 sessions. Hooray!
- While Legal Affairs and Constitutional affairs get a total of 16 meetings on the schedule, two committees have no meetings whatsoever - Culture & Education, and Civil Liberties. So it seems artists, teachers, and freedom are somewhat less important than lawyers and paperwork.

The only committee with an agenda that didn't make me laugh is Energy (big issues like nuclear and ensured supply coming up). EU, I love you... but can't you talk about something other than yourselves occasionally?

Now on Blogger

Switched to Blogger today - my own plain-HTML pages have been fine since 1997, but the search and indexing smarts of something pro became too hard to resist. I'll be playing around with the CSS and importing old pages over the next few weeks... if you're looking for an old page, they're all still here, and I'll dress them up in reds before long. Thanks!