• Get ready to feel a bit ragey if you read this article about the Catholic Church‘s opposition to the Government’s plans to extend marriage to include the gays. The best arguments those who oppose the move can come up with are: it will “redefine reality” (up will become down, left will become right, gravity will work to repel us from the Earth, etc!) and “Think about that children!” Yes, we should deny the rights of a part of our population to get married because it might make a few teachers and parents uncomfortable for a lesson or two if they chose to take their poor children out of those lessons that would discuss what at least some of those children will someday see as very important information. Perfect response to the issue. Telegraph
• Feel better about it by reading Rev. Richard Coles article today in the Independent.
• Vladimir Putin totally won the Russian election to become president for the 3rd time, after spending 4 years as the Prime Minister, which just wasn’t a position with enough power for him. Some people are questioning the win, but he totally won, fair and square. BBC
• Hey rich people, they might not take away your child benefit after all, as many Tory’s (rich people) opposed the measure.  Daily Mail
• Roman Abramovich can’t stop firing people (or throwing his toys out of the pram as this article tells it). He fired Andre Villas-Boas after Chelsea lost (again) yesterday. Harsh. Independent 

• Be sure to take a bit of time to read Google’s new privacy policy which goes into effect today. So basically, now, when you search for something like, oh I don’t know, Keyboard Cat or something, you will get more targeted ads for keyboards and cats, which you will ignore and probably never even look at, when you search on other Google platforms, like the search engine.  This change in policy is making some people in Europe very upset, and they are going to investigate whether it violates some obscure European law or another.  BBC
• The Government has dropped that part of their work-scheme plan that says people will lose their benefits if they don’t show up for their slave labour because a bunch of the major businesses involved in the scheme threatened to withdraw.   It remains to be seen whether they will do the same on the NHS plans. Guardian
• Davy Jones of The Monkees is dead.  He suffered a heart attack at the age of 66. Such sad news. I loved that show when I was a kid.  Remember the Simpson’s episode when they flashback to Marge as a little girl on the bus and she has a Monkee’s lunch box and the other kids make fun of her because “they don’t even play their own instruments”?  Yeah, that was an awesome episode. Telegraph Also, here is a video of the opening and end credits of the show, in case you have never seen it.

• James Murdoch has stepped down as executive chairman of News International after a few more of the latest round of ‘revelations’ about hacking and corruption. Independent

Image via: Techtangerine

• Unite just really seems to want everyone to really really hate and resent them and everyone else in a union in this country.  Len McClusky says that unions would be justified in targeting the Olympics due to government attacks on public sector pensions and whatnot.  This is a terrible idea, a terrible threat, and one which will not endear you to anyone in this country.  How embarrassing would that be for Britain? Everyone will hate you forever Len McClusky. Guardian
• A commission of senior NHS managers, charities and some other people have put out a report pointing out that in the UK, we have a problem with discrimination against old people. Soon, care workers will not be able to just call anyone “dear” or “chuck” without permission. These will become our new slurs.  Telegraph
• Chris Grayling will meet with companies today to try to manage the damage to his unemployment slave labour scheme caused by people calling it an unemployment slave labour scheme.  BBC
• Mitt Romney actually won his home state of Michigan, but not by much. He also won Arizona. How is it possible that this thing is still going on? Independent

• It is highly unlikely that I, or anyone else probably, will be taking a cruise on ship that starts with the word Costa anytime soon ever. This time, the Costa Allegra was found drifting around the Indian Ocean following an engine room fire. It is now being towed to the Seychelles. It sees that no one was hurt, thank God for that. Telegraph
  

  *Note: This is from the film Titanic, not the Costa Allegra

• The Government must have been really disappointed by the tax they collected this year, as they are taking the step of enacting retroactive legislation in order to collect from Barclay’s bank, who engaged in some tax avoidance scheming worth about half a billion pounds. BBC
• I didn’t even realize that the Occupy London folks were still hanging out around St. Paul’s (I don’t get out much), but it seems that they have now been evicted.  I never really understood why they chose St. Paul’s as the place to occupy. It’s a freaking church. Your point was lost long ago people, sorry. I’m sure they will float around like a Costa cruise ship until they find somewhere else to occupy. Daily Mail
• Standard & Poor’s downgraded Greece to SD or Selective Default after the country added some clauses to their bonds which force bondholders to take part in the country’s debt restructuring.  Guess what though, nobody cares.  Seriously, this story was like, hidden way down on the bottom of the Guardian.  The market doesn’t care,  I don’t care, you don’t care, no one cares. We would like to just put our fingers in our ears and carry on with worrying about the real threat to all of our collective well being: cruise ships.  Guardian
• In other not-surprising news, The Sun’s executives “spun a web of corruption across British public life,” making a bunch of payments to corrupt officials in order to get, not stories in the public interest, but salacious gossip.  Well, yeah, when has The Sun ever published a story in the public interest? Independent