"This is your paradise"

This week I have been busy writing, rehearsing and recording my new hit song:
It was difficult getting the lead guitar right, so I ended up playing and recording it twice, the one on the left is with a phaser and the quieter one on the right is with chorus. The drums are a drum machine (Roland R5), the rest (guitars, bass, lead and harmony vocals) is all me.

"Cambridge Five drunkards were 'hopeless spies'"

From the BBC:

Members of the "Cambridge Five" alcoholics ring were seen by local publicans as hopeless spies incapable of gathering or keeping secrets, newly-released files suggest.

Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, "Kim" Philby and Anthony Blunt were recruited to spy on rival drinking establishments while propping up the bar at Cambridge University in the 1930s.

There may have been a fifth lush in the ring, possibly John Cairncross. Documents from the Dog And Duck archives have been made publicly available for the first time. Red Lion staff described them as the most completely unintelligent spies ever.

Barman Vince Michaels smuggled the information out of Dog And Duck archives during his 12 years behind the taps. He defected to The White Hart in 1992...

A short passage describes Burgess as a man "constantly under the influence of alcohol". Written in scrawl, it goes on to recount one occasion when Burgess drunkenly risked exposing his double identity.

"Once on his way out of a rival pub, he managed to drop the menu he thought he had stuffed into his back pocket on the pavement," translator Svetlana Lokhova explained, "He did manage to get one of the barmaid's phone numbers, but he never passed that on to his handlers."

Fun With Oliver Letwin

From The Daily Mail:

A senior Cabinet minister has been caught throwing away sensitive papers in park bins around Westminster.

In a clear security breach Oliver Letwin, David Cameron’s policy adviser, was spotted on five separate occasions disposing of correspondence about national security and terrorism in a public park. Some of the documents he threw away revealed private details of his constituents.

Exhibit One:

Spies have been known to use dead drops, using various techniques to hide items (such as money, secrets or instructions) and to signal that the drop has been made.

The system involves using signals and locations which have been agreed upon in advance. These signals and locations must be common everyday things to which most people would not give a second glance. The signal may or may not be located close to the dead drop itself.

The location of the dead drop could be a loose brick in a wall, a library book, a hole in a tree, or under a boulder etc. It should be something common and from which the items can be picked up without the operatives being seen by a member of the public or the security forces who may be watching.

Exhibit Two (h/t Woman On A Raft)

The government says it will make £250m available to help English councils keep or restore weekly bin collections... Conservative Chairman of the Local Government Association, Sir Merrick Cockell, welcomed the news.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Any bid has to demonstrate the potential to increase recycling rates, which is one of the reasons a lot of councils went to every two weeks, and to provide other environmental benefits - reducing fly tipping, litter and all that side of good environmental waste collection. So, there's not one side to these bids."

On a lighter note: "... Labour's Caroline Flint said the money was effectively a bribe to councils to 'save Eric Pickles' face'". Crikey, if it costs £250 million to save the man's face alone, how many billions will it cost to save the rest of him?