marsman

Referred to as a Canary trap...

Royal MAil was profitable, still got sold off. The same with the Land Registry which they are trying to flog now.

If you ask people, many of them will tell you that they thought RM was both losing money and failing, and that at least we got some money out of it. They tend to forget that RM was profitable and indeed that the Government took over their pension liabilities (so RM is still a public liability to an extent) to make it more attractive to buyers. Then they under-priced it (because they overstated the risk from unions amongst other things..). Madness really, and something that should utterly undermine the Tories economic credibility, but apparently not..

Any idea about the level of coverage police killings get in the UK? Are there a lot of stories that go untold?

I'm not involved in this project but thought I'd chime in:

It's important to note that the UK has a very different structure when it comes to policing and oversight is centralised, so comprehensive statistics are available from an independent body (the IPCC) - You can see that here for 2013/14. You will note from that the fairly broad definitions and that it includes deaths from direct police contact and deaths afterwards that may be related to police contact. That is very different from the level of reporting in the US.

I don't think anyone has seriously called the numbers into question (although there was some discussion about deaths in custody a while ago) and I would assume any discrepancies would be a fairly major scandal for the IPCC and any forces involved..

I assume a Simla accounting in the US would be problematic given the number and types of police forces all with their own organisational structures and jurisdictions (federal/state/county etc..).

I'm actually more concerned with why so many nouns are capitalised for no reason, like Citizen, Rites, Nativity and Government.

I have to say I tend to find it useful when there are indicators like that, handy heads up (like a handwritten letter in green ink..).

I clearly missed this AMA, but hey what the hell.

I lived and worked in Germany for many years, one of the things that still sticks with me is the air raid siren tests. I never did anything like duck and cover, and there were no real indications about what you'd do if the war started (probably because it'd be short, and there wouldn't be much to do...) but the sound is and remains bone chilling.

The fact that we haven't done nearly enough to reduce nuclear weapons and proliferation should be seen as a major failure for your generation and mine, and this one if there isn't some serious progress. But I do wonder if the lack of a visible nuclear threat has removed the impetus and drive toward disarmament.

I think I'll have to get a copy of the book..