The article in the Observer about Cameron’s overtures to the Lib-Dummies is wrapped around an animated advertisement for the ‘NESPRESSO movie with GEORGE CLOONEY’, which seems to fit the context perfectly.

The party also known as the ‘Tories without their kicking boots on’, is being courted by the leader of the Eternal Enemy™ in his latest attempt at political window-dressing.

Cameron today attempts to reach out to both Clegg and Huhne by offering to co-operate on the key areas of devolving power and the environment.

Devolving the environment? That will be a neat trick. Just as a predecessor declared there is no such thing as society and set about making the assertion reality, the latest Tory strategy–which shies away from taxation as a means of encouraging behavioural change, as this would have a direct impact on their constituency–professes a vague reliance on individual responsibility. Presumably, the more people are unemployed, the less opportunity they have to produce greenhouse gases.

Tommy Sheridan, the man who destroyed the SSP, has been arrested in Edinburgh and is being questioned by police in connection with perjury allegations.

Nine officers from Lothian and Borders police have detained the politician’s wife Gail at the house in the Cardonald area of Glasgow while they carry out a search of the property, it was confirmed by his lawyer.

…..

The 43-year-old was approached by police as he left talk107 radio station in Edinburgh, where he presents a show.

Victor Serge wrote:

All those who approached him know that he was disinterested and conceived of his whole existence only as part of a great historic task, which was not his alone, but that of the movement of the socialist masses conscious of the perils and possibilities of our period.

Not Tommy …

Via BBC Scotland News

Update: Sheridan has now been charged.

The labour advocacy group Mafiwasta describes itself as a bunch of liberal do-gooders sticking [our] noses into other people’s business. That notwithstanding, the group is campaigning for the rights of expatriate workers in the United Arab Emirates, where trade unions are illegal and security forces round up and imprison protesters. Some right wing commentators, impressed by  the obscene wealth enjoyed by a minority at the expense of the workers on whose backs the economic ‘miracle’ is built, commend this approach to industrial relations as exemplifying ‘reconciliation rather than confrontation’, and hold up the UAE as the model for future development in the region. The Mafiwasta/Human Rights for Change Complaint to the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association, detailing the extent of human rights abuses in the UAE can be found here:

Exploitation of these workers, ranging from non-payment of wages to physical abuse, is not simply commonplace or widespread; as this document will show, it is systematic. The UAE’s labour laws are wholly biased in employers’ favour, and the mechanisms used to enforce the laws are completely ineffective. The government agency in charge, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, has neither the ability nor the willingness to execute its brief. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the government as a whole, far from acting to protect workers, is an active participant in the abuse, profiting directly from a system which keeps a large migrant workforce in conditions of bondage.

This system of exploitation is underpinned by the denial of the most basic of human rights - the right to freely associate and to bargain collectively. Described as being “among the founding principles of the ILO”, the UAE has not signed core ILO Conventions No. 87 and 98 on Freedom of Association. According to the ILO, Conventions No. 87 and 98 form part of the most fundamental international labour law requirements.

Thanks: Barbara Meinhoff and Will in the comments.