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Thursday 27 January 2011

Sarah McDermott | 11:41 UK time, Thursday, 27 January 2011

Here's more detail on tonight's programme:

Tonight we return to a story which we first investigated last year - devices which were sold as bomb detectors, but which cannot possibly detect explosives or anything else for that matter.

Now Newsnight has uncovered evidence that the UK government and British Army helped to market the useless "detectors" around the world.

Tim Whewell is in Egypt where anti-government protests are continuing. He has spent the day with students as they prepare for tomorrow's day of action.

Stephanie Flanders in Davos has an exclusive interview with Google's Eric Schmidt, who it was announced last week will be resigning as CEO but continuing as executive chairman. How is his role changing and where does the company face the increasing threat from Facebook and social media.

And Liz MacKean reports on the death of Ugandan gay rights campaigner David Kato. Last year Mr Kato sued a local newspaper which outed him as homosexual.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    WE IMPORT EVERYTHING ELSE

    As employment plumments, it would once have been possible to rely on the phlegmatic English temperament to minimise mayhem.

    Might it prove to be that, this time, we have imported the will and the 'fashion' now follows?

  • Comment number 2.

    how has the genie stayed in the bottle so long? Mubarak has been a disaster for the Egyptian peole since 1981, no elections, mass unemployment and doing what America says and also betraying his Palestinian neighbours. In Tunisia, at least he did a runner and gave whatever democratic forces a chance to organise. The whole of that region has all these millions of people that have, for generations been denied democracy because of dictatorships, I just pray they get some justice soon....

  • Comment number 3.

    Forget Egypt, organised fuel protests due to start here this weekend, eco-fascist Limp-Dims trying to keep the proposed rise in fuel duty in April !

    /news/uk-politics-12296633

  • Comment number 4.

    2

    usa gives eygpt billions a year to be quiet. its another part of the israel subsidy.
    democracy in eygpt won't be israel/usa friendly.

  • Comment number 5.

    Did anyone else see Andrew Neil's excellent documentary on ´óÏó´«Ã½2 last night?

    It's well worth the watch (watch Mandelson's mendacity)

    --------------------------------------------

    Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain -
    /iplayer/episode/b00y37gk/Posh_and_Posher_Why_Public_School_Boys_Run_Britain/

    'In this provocative documentary, Andrew Neil seeks to find out why politicians from all parties appear to be drawn from an ever smaller social pool - and why it matters to us all.'

  • Comment number 6.

    EVEN THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL PMs WERE OF A KIND - DELUSIONAL DRIVEN

    Wilson got up to some very strange tricks. Heath sulked when deposed. Thatcher became grand to the point of plurality. Major was deeply impressed by - Major (and signed Maastrict). Blair was messianic. Brown was Jekyll and Hyde.

    Now we are back to toffs: Dave has the all-encompassing confidence of the dangerous fool, and Nick has needy ambition that transmutes pledges into gold.

    I suggest the grammar school factor was irrelevant. ALL MPs ARE PRE-CHOSEN BY PARTIES, FOR WESTMINSTER FUNCTIONALITY. They are not chosen for humanity and competence in life, whatever education they receive.

  • Comment number 7.

    Odd day.

    A bunch of pols I wouldn't imagine could change a lightbulb without claiming for a Polish plumber on expenses, are suddenly given near free rein to claim they have detected funny noises on their phones with new found IT powers.

    This during the period Mr. Brown was servicing Nokias and practising his people skills rallying support.

    'And Iain Watson is working on big political story for us down at Westminster.'

    Wouldn't be cuts, Cuts, CUTSSSS!' would it? All you need is an angle:



    Nic must be so proud. And as for the unique funding one is obliged to chip in with... well, it's as well one has no choice but to.

    But it's good to see an old favourite return:



    'While our primary role is to report events impartially, we also draw on the experience of our correspondents and experts to interpret those events.'

    'Interpret events'? Really? Still? Guys, if it's all the same, I'd rather you didn't. At least not in a way that your manner of doing so even manages to soil what most try to avoid stepping in.





  • Comment number 8.

    I can't help speculating that the only obstacle impeding Osborne from announcing the end of the proposed April fuel duty rise are his Corporate Nazi celebrity stock market parasite puppet masters. After all the stock market parasites must be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of a wave of asset stripping of industry on a scale perhaps not seen since the end of the last RFTE in 2000. Furthermore, it would appear that the ConDem coalition is stressed by the Limp-Dims hoping to force an eco-fascist agenda, whilst many back bench Tories with more rural constituencies remain climate scam skeptic.

    With the cabinet stuffed full of alleged ex-stock market parasites or firm links to the stock market and the fact that the government is apparently content to draw the 50% tax potential on city bonuses, perhaps not really much hope of policy in the interest of the real economy most people rely on for their livelihood. As it has amply been pointed out today, paying benefits as the result of any job losses as a result of increased transport costs will probably more than wipe out the extra fuel duty taken. Perhaps if we want our economy to grow sustainably in future all politicians need to wean themselves off from the current alleged trendy eco-fascist agenda. Likewise the projected enormous artificial rises in the cost of household and industrial energy to pay for wind farms to stand idle at the time we most need them.

    In short Repeal The 2008 Climate Change Act Now !

  • Comment number 9.

    british army have people skilled in marketing? hahaha. yeh right. just look at the constant disaster over procurement and the failure of the officer class over torture and bullying.

  • Comment number 10.

    MARKETING SKILLS (#9)

    But they do 'sell' the idea that adventurer-mercenaries are hero-saviours, to some of Britains 'best educated'.

  • Comment number 11.

    Could This go big time ?

  • Comment number 12.

    5

    i always thought drug dealing and crime were the 'politics' of the poor and uneducated and the route people chose for money and wealth. listen to 1xtra where songs praise crime all the time? As someone who has had to deal with 13 14 year olds the majority have a 'gangsta model' they seek to imitate and praise as the height of their aspiration.For many gangsta is their highest idea of the mind. Where did they get that idea from? organised crime has ballooned since 1997 taking some 40 billion a year. a shadow taxation of a shadow government that we never voted for?

    Andrew left out the major keystone behind the system of privilege and patronage. the role gamers who call themselves monarchists. which is even more exclusive than his eton and ppe class?

  • Comment number 13.

    10

    the army rumour service website soon gives an idea of what the military is like. Crude, rude and populated by romantics who have watched zulu too many times that the ruperts [officers] might call 'rough diamonds' in their apartheid language sort of way.

  • Comment number 14.

    12 Jaunty...look no further than cinema and stuff like Grange Hill and Eastenders and Hollyoaks for our young people`s cultural role models.....and if only poor old Mary Whitehouse and Enoch Powell had not been destroyed by our liberal intelligensia (?)........we might have been spared it all.

  • Comment number 15.

    Here we go again, our (Inter)National Health Service



    So we are paying for the health of people from at least a hundred countries? WHY?

  • Comment number 16.

    Disappointed that the bomb detector was not described as what it really is, a dousing rod.
    Whether dousing works is a completely different topic, but for what 10 or 15 minutes of programme to not included anything to do with the fundamental principals of the device.

  • Comment number 17.

    Your PFI man on his hols

  • Comment number 18.

    Am I allowed to post this?

  • Comment number 19.

    BUT THERE IS ONE ADVANTAGE (#15)

    Johnnie Foreigner will be able to consult his GP by email! (Well - just so long as we have not bombed his electricity supply.)

    I think I see what Tony meant, when he said: "The rules of the game are changing". Yer darned toot'n Tone!

  • Comment number 20.

    A REFRESHING POST - 'MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH' (#16)

    I wonder how many, posting here, will register your validity a_way.

    Anyone searching professional bore-hole drillers, on the web, will find dowsing referred to as part of the service.

    But if Susan Watts were to report on it, I have no doubt we would hear 'consensus science' declare it fails in proper trials.

    Sort of emblematic of our lost connection with the Earth!

  • Comment number 21.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 22.

    Ecolizzy asked:
    "So we are paying for the health of people from at least a hundred countries? WHY? "

    Because it makes us feel good, we are liberal and we are mad...literally mad.

    A country is defined by its borders, its language and its culture. When you come from the spoilt elite and/or live in leafy towns with newsagents that actually have the Guardian, those things like Borders don't exist. They live in a happy clappy one world rainbow nation - but usually from a distance - and listen to Billy Bragg tunes on their MP3 players. These folk have not even experienced a slap...let alone a mugging or queued for hours in an A and E departments in one of our fine City hospitals.

    But when they have a sniff of it...oooh watch how they drop their Libbby ways, do a 180 and go all nationalistic. They do still display that madness mind you though. Which is why I always say...Liberalism is a mental illness, even if one happens to turn. Incapable of any genuine work, they get vocal on any issue that will have them. Some end up working in charity shops or hanging around libraries or becoming a Liberal Democrat MP. You'll have seen them. They have a despondent look about themselves. If it wasn't for the money and house they inherited or the funds they helped themselves to, well, then the state would have to look after them. Oh and some are into journalism...the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is full of them also...go ask Sissons. And how he got away with his brain intact after years of been around that madness has to be a modern day mystery comparable only to something like the Bermuda triangle. Maybe he'll right a book about it one day eh.

  • Comment number 23.

    22..Kev...you have it in one...the whole "liberal" edifice of Americoenglish sneering smarty-pants materialistic "we know best" Britain needs a good kick in it`s enormous smug "bottom".

    I`ve just come away from a debate(?)with the Americans and Israelis on a thread in Mark Mardell`s blog and I would be grateful if you would look at it...and savage me with some criticism because I am sick of talking to myself!

    The thread is about Obama and the space race...and the points I would particularly like criticised are the ones about Israel and maybe 169 sums it up?(Forgive the glotalling!)

  • Comment number 24.

    Is this what tony planned? I thought he was a catholic

  • Comment number 25.

    Women losing their way?





    Is this because they are told endlessly to get out to work, make money for the economy, don't have babies there are too many people in the world, the decline of english people, it all makes sense to me now!

    Total manipulation by politicians!

    What do we do about it?

  • Comment number 26.

    :o) Ecolizzy @ #18 - thanks for the posting the interview with Nigel Farage. He's the only one who really does speak sense and tells it like it is. The likelyhood of British patients going into the EU for treatment is so low compared to non-British EU nationals coming to the UK. He's right - anyone who lives in London/SE will have even greater waiting lists/waiting times in A&E than ever before... and it's so easy for anyone to just get off the ferry at Dover and into a hospital........aaarrrrggghhh

  • Comment number 27.

    Ecolizzy...stop believing in Blair as a fallen messiah and think of the Blairs as our Marcos regime...complete with the same religious underpinnings!

  • Comment number 28.

    THE APE IS INSTINCTIVE, THE APE+ PERVERSE (#25)

    We are The Ape Confused By Language - a 'synapse too far'.

    Consider the apes of the world, they delay not, neither do they mess-up in the procreation field.

    We are perverse - so perverse that we have clutched perversity to our bosom. (A replacement child?)

    We are mad, literally mad. (#22) A nod to Kev.

    Give to the Ape that which is the Ape's; only then will Ape+ cease to be mad and be viable, going forward.

    IT'S WHAT NATURE WOULD DO.


  • Comment number 29.

    BLAIR: THE POPE OF INTERFAITH (#24)

    Surely Tony is beyond Papery? Jesus came for ALL. Gentiles are 'the rest', so Tony is ahead on points.

    (Lizzy - I think Tony needed an address, to apply for a Heavenly Credit Card, so he used the Vatican; much as Dr Kelly gave the address of Mai Pederson. . .)

    PERVERSE AND FOOLISH OFT WE STRAY

  • Comment number 30.

    HAVE MUSLIMS MIGRATED TO CORROSIVE HELL? (#25)

    Lizzy asks: What do we do about it?

    Maybe we should bring to the attention of these 'people of culture' just what they have done to themselves. Whilst their presence might cause all the irreversible changes in the 'British experience' (going forward) changes that we fear, SURE AS UNFERTILISED EGGS IS UNFERTILISED EGGS, our all-pervasive corrosiveness will bring THEM down to our level.

    Those whom various aspects of the one god have joined together, let wise man put asunder. Alternatively: pretend its all OK and wait. . .


  • Comment number 31.

    The Medieval Apartheid Language

    the MP said

    . a uniformed representative of the Queen...

    that's the problem. are the military there to defend the privileges of monarchists or the rights of all the british people?

    monarchism is on the same level of false belief as dowsing. so its apt if the 'uniformed representatives of the Queen' were selling dowsing rods to johnny foreigner? what next? magic beans? amulets that are 'big medicine'?

    Is the DTI defence of export licences that it generates a lot of money?

  • Comment number 32.

    Barrie, a little picture for yer.



    well its a chimp but it'll do. There's a lot that can be written about that picture baz.

    Roger! your wanted on the phone..its the funnyfarm again.

  • Comment number 33.

    MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH (##31)

    Hey Jaunty - first rule of writing - write about what you know (yeah, I know it really relates to novels).

    I would guess none of the stuff sold was any use, in this instance, but don't lump dowsing with fictional stuff. People earn their living by dowsing - it passes the Mammon test.

    Before you ask - I CAN'T DO IT.

  • Comment number 34.

    MONARCHY AND MILITARY, LIVE TOGETHER IN PERFECT HARMONY (#31)

    They are born, marry, celebrate, acclaim and die to guns, planes, marches and salutes.

    While the PC brigade expurgate Enid Blyton and insist daddy* be portrayed at the sink, while his unisex partner goes out to work, in children’s books, the GLORY of naked aggressiveness (especially applied to Johnnie Foreigner, who is clearly inferior, BUT ONLY IN HIS HOMELAND, goes unaddressed.

    * Is 'daddy' still a permitted term? Or is it beyond 'fair' definition?

    WE MUST BE MAD - LITERALLY MAD.

  • Comment number 35.

    33

    i better ley line down then.

    which cricket selector used to choose the english cricket team on the basis of astrology?

    what was all that about witch doctors in politics?





  • Comment number 36.

    THAT WASN'T EVEN A NEAT SIDESTEP (#33)

    Is it open season for moving goal posts Jaunty? Thats my second experience in a few days. I admit to being odd - but I'm not daft. Even Tony didn't claim he had dowsed his dossier.

    I wonder if you CAN dowse for lies . . .

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