Sloooow

Pity the poor blogger during a slow news week. I should be enjoying the respite from speeches by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld on how splendidly the war in Iraq is going, but I find myself desperately looking for blog fodder in stories such as the theft of a cinnamon bun that looks like Mother Teresa


and contemplating the decline of upper-class education in Britain. A Greek magazine, reporting on claims by several Pakistanis to have been violently interrogated by MI6 in Greece after the July 7 London bombings, named MI6’s head of station in Greece. The Blair government ordered the British press not to report his name (he was hastily ordered home), despite the fact that anyone who reads Greek can, presumably, get if off the web. Someone once said that in order to be an English gentleman it was not necessary to know Greek (ok, it might have been Latin), but it was necessary to have forgotten it. I guess the days have passed when it was necessary to know Latin and Greek to administer the Raj.

(Update: Nicholas Langman.)

Russia and Ukraine seem to be on the brink of war over Russian attempts to raise the price it charges Ukraine for natural gas. Ukraine says if it does, they’ll increase the fees they charge Russia for use of the warm-water port of Sebastopol, and Russia responding that if that happens, it will no longer recognize the existing border. So that’s pretty exciting, isn’t it? Sigh. Let’s see that bun again.