WUFOOB … (Jan – Mar 2016)

Sugar tax will raise money for primary school sports (but only if it doesn’t work)

Wired, Wednesday 16th March 2016
A sugar tax will be levied on makers of sugary soft drinks, chancellor George Osborne has announced. The money raised by the new tax will be used to improve sport in schools. The so-called sugar tax, announced in the chancellor’s latest budget, is expected to raise £520 million in its first year, but that number will fall over time as sugar levels are reduced by producers. If producers change their behaviour, they’ll pay less tax.

UK ‘safer in EU’, ex-defence chiefs say

BBC News, Wednesday 24th February 2016
The UK is safer in the EU and better able to meet global threats, including so-called Islamic State, ex-defence chiefs say. In a letter supporting the REMAIN campaign, 13 of the UK’s most senior military figures said being in the EU enabled the UK to better work with European countries on security issues.

The EU’s tentacles reach into every aspect of our lives

Telegraph, Monday 22nd February 2016
Boris Johnson – “We are seeing a slow and invisible process of legal colonisation, as the EU infiltrates just about every area of public policy. At a time when Brussels should be devolving power, it is hauling more and more towards the centre, and there is no way that Britain can be unaffected. The most valuable British export and the one for which we are most famous is the one that is now increasingly in question: parliamentary democracy – the way the people express their power.”

Horses can recognise human anger

The Guardian, Wednesday 10th February 2016
A new study shows horses can recognise human emotion. Psychologists have shown for the first time that horses are able to distinguish between positive and negative human facial expressions. “The reaction to angry facial expressions was particularly clear – there was a quicker increase in their heart rate, and the horses moved their heads to look at the angry faces with their left eye,” said Amy Smith, a doctoral student in Sussex University’s mammal vocal communication and cognition research group.

David Cameron’s EU deal will fail to stop the flow of migration to Britain

The Sun, Wednesday 3rd February 2016
David Cameron has been mocked by MPs for serving them ‘thin gruel’ as an EU renegotiation deal. In his statement to the House of Commons earlier today the Prime Minister tried to entice them to thinking the deal on the table is a great one for Britain. But it didn’t take them long to attack him for falling short on what they say he had promised to achieve. The “watered down” deal will do nothing to control the flow of migration to Britain from the EU.

Litvinenko poisoned by tea laced with polonium

Express, Friday 22nd January 2016
Over a cup of tea at a discreet London hotel, exiled Russian spy and part-time MI6 consultant Alexander Litvinenko was slowly sipping the poison that would kill him. Chatting happily with him just yards from the US Embassy in Mayfair on November 1, 2006, were his two alleged assassins – Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun. The murder weapon was polonium-210, a radioactive substance so potent a single gram can kill 10 million people.

CNN, Wednesday 6th January 2016
Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, has come under fire for advising women to stay “an arm’s length” from male strangers after alleged sexual assaults and muggings during New Year’s Eve festivities in the German city. Some of the perpetrators of the sex attacks claimed they were Syrian refugees, with one telling police “you have to treat me kindly! Mrs Merkel invited me”, according to a leaked report.

North Korea H-bomb claims met by scepticism

BBC News, Wednesday 6th January 2016
International scepticism and condemnation have greeted North Korea’s claim to have successfully carried out an underground hydrogen bomb test. More powerful and advanced than atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs use fusion rather than fission to create a blast. Bruce Bennett, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was among those casting doubts on Pyongyang’s test: “The bang they should have gotten would have been ten times greater than what they’re claiming. So Kim Jong-un is either lying, saying they did a hydrogen test when they didn’t, they just used a little bit more efficient fission weapon – or the hydrogen part of the test really didn’t work very well or the fission part didn’t work very well.”