1) Nuclear review 'was misleading'
2) Chavez threat to seize food shops

In the news: This is the matter of energy, in which our beloved and thoughtful big brother Tony Blair informed us of the decisions he was going to make for us regarding energy. Namely that increasing our use of nuclear energy is the best way of downscaling industry's attack on the atmosphere. The reason it's in the news is because Greenpeace paid a little too much attention to the democratic charade. By spotting that the documentation of the consultation process was a worthless stage-prop, they got the high court to tell Tony off for his "seriously flawed" procedure, and to do it again.

The response to this is great, because Tony says, "this won't affect the policy at all". What this means is, he already knows the outcome of the repeat consultations that haven't happened yet. Bearing this in mind, along with the "misleading" original consultation, you could be forgiven for concluding that the consultation is a meaningless process.

To sum up, as one official puts it: "What it really says is that the government has been shown up as fundamentally deceitful". A pretty familiar concept, so lets move on.

In fact the only reason I started this post was for a tiny thing, but I got carried away prefacing it: "If we don't replace the existing nuclear power stations then firstly … and secondly … we are going to be dependent on very uncertain supplies of energy and that would be bad for business and bad for the consumer." I only picked up on it because I am weird and thought it was odd that he identified those that would be affected be uncertain supplies of energy as "business" and "consumer".

Those are not terms that the following guy would use. Hugo Chavez is a governor (president of Venezuela) with different political ideas. I pick on this article (link 2, up top) because I like the way that his social democratic ideas are depicted. I don't claim to know much about this stuff, and not any more on this news story than I read on BBC, but I am still going to give my opinion (hey, it's the internet).

This story starts with the headline "Chavez threat to seize food shops" and follows with the lead-in of "Hugo Chavez has threatened to nationalise stores that sell meat above a government-set price". This comes off as oppressive stuff - What leader could rightly be doing things like "threaten" and "seize" to quaint and humble 'food shops'.

Reading on, anyway, the gist appears to be this: The president of Venezuela is telling supermarkets that if they do not stop manipulating prices for their illicit gain - Chavez: "If they insist on violating the interests of the people, the constitution and laws" (mainly by restricting the flow of goods to drive up prices) - then he will turn them into national institutions of a kind that sells staple foods at lower prices to people in poor areas.

The presentation of the article makes this activity sound aggressive and authoritarian (what a headline).

Alternative meme: Private institutions like supermarkets are accountable to shareholders (the richer the better). The goal of supermarkets is to make money (by profitably selling food). If you think the food is a bit nasty (for eg), then, f off and go somewhere else. You cannot vote for a new boss of Tesco. On the other hand national institutions, like the NHS, are accountable to the public. The NHS only exists to provide everyone with health services. If you don't like the service then the institution has failed and the government is accountable to you.

The fact that government does not act in that way is another thing altogether - I will not ramble any more, that's more than enough ramble for one sitting.

Picture update: The big one is an idea that I won't be taking any further. It's for the theme "weightless" on Sijun Forums, and I think I'll try something else for it.