UK for sale

Two more items of seemingly disconnected news indicate a worrying shift in the UK.

Let's start from the top. Queen Elizabeth was directed to bestow Bill Gates with an honorary knighthood in 2002, for "services to global enterprise". This knighthood came after Microsoft had been convicted of
monopolistic practices in the US. And just before the European Commission investigated Microsoft's bundling of Windows Media Player into Windows ending with €497 million ($666 million) for its breaches of EU competition law.

Bill was nominated for this honor by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who, on June 27, 2007, became the the new Prime Minister of Britain. You may not know this, but Gordon is tight with Bill, and the Labour Party is tight with Microsoft. And after 10 years of one party rule, the UK is a politically tied up Microsoft shop. Everything else that follows in relation to the iPlayer can be connected to this corrupting political association. No one in the ruling Labour party is really going to question the corruption of the BBC. I predict the outcome of the petition to Gordon Brown http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/iplayer/ that has over 12,000 signatures and calls for the iPLayer to be available to all operating systems, will be the wooly, "The BBC is committed blah blah". Meantime Microsoft has been given a monopoly for distribution of BBC programming.

Source: defectivebydesign.org

The original BBC news report is here. 

And then the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, sucks up to George Bush in a nauseatingly sycophantic way.

We should acknowledge the debt the world owes to the United States for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism

... 

This close relationship would help in the fight against nuclear proliferation, global poverty, climate change and global terrorism, Mr Brown said.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Everyone with a three digit IQ realises that it is the US that is the world's leading global terrorist.  Poverty and hunger could be solved from the US military's pocket change:

Global Priorities, 1998 (in $US billions)

Goods or Services Annual Cost in $US billions:
Basic education for everyone in the world - 6
Cosmetics in the United States - 8
Water and sanitation for everyone in the world - 9
Ice cream in Europe - 11
Reproductive health for all women in the world - 12
Perfumes in Europe and the United States - 12
Basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world - 13
Pet foods in Europe and the United States - 17
Business entertainment in Japan - 35
Cigarettes in Europe - 50
Alcoholic drinks in Europe - 105
Narcotic drugs in the world - 400
Military spending in the world - 780

Source: United Nations Development Programme: Human Development Report 1998

Climate change and nuclear proliferation are simply a matter of the willpower to shake off the chains of the military industrial complex and do away with ridiculous macho stances on national security.

We have children in power in the UK who want to be friends with the tough kid in the playground, and will prostitute our national interests to do so.