Rabbit Thought of the Day

It won’t be long now, before I can vacate my desk, jump in the car and disappear home. I have a nice bottle of French wind cooling in the fridge. Am looking forward to it, it’s been a busy but enjoyable day. I have achieved a lot despite posting a number of blogs on here.

I have booked a couple of days off at the end of the week, and am praying that the weather holds, have checked on the BBC website and it seems ok for the weekend, but you know what the weather forecasts are like, not very reliable, but what else do we have.

Britain will announce extra troops for Afghanistan later - bringing numbers to their highest level yet, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said. Defence Secretary Des Browne is due to give details to MPs at 1530 BST.

The increase would bring overall UK numbers in Afghanistan to more than 8,000 - mostly based in Helmand.

The PM, speaking at a news conference with President George Bush, said the military presence would be increased to keep up pressure on the Taleban.

The number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 reached 102 last week, when five soldiers from the Parachute Regiment were killed.

Have just seen this report on the BBC’s website, I am sure it will be of interest to us bloggers. 

More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments says a report.  Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.

In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed. More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.

Citizens have faced arrest and jail for blogging about many different topics, said the World Information Access (WIA) report. Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticised public policies and took political figures to task. The report said the rising number of arrests was testament to the "growing" political importance of blogging. It noted that arrests tended to increase during times of "political uncertainty", such as around general elections or during large scale protests.

Jail time followed arrest for many bloggers, said the report, which found that the average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months. The longest sentence found by the WIA was eight years. It acknowledged that the true number of bloggers arrested could be far higher than the total it found as, in some cases, it proved hard to verify if an arrest had taken place and on what grounds.

For instance, it said the Committee to Protect Bloggers has published information about 344 people arrested in Burma - many of whom are thought to be be bloggers - but the WIA could not verify all the reports. It also noted that many nations, perhaps as many as 30, imposed technological restrictions on what people can do online. In nations such as China this made it difficult for people to use a blog as a means of protest.

The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested. The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US

For all the football fans out there, the fixture list has just been published. The opening games on the first day of the season which is the 16-Aug haven’t thrown up any major games.

The first really big game of season is on the 13-Sep when Manchester United travel to Liverpool, although realistically the game will no doubt be moved to Sunday the 14-Sep and will be shown on Sky TV.

The time is nearly at hand when the druids meet for the summer solstice at Stonehenge, Midsummer Eve is Friday and the weather looks quite good to enable the visitors there to see the sun rise. I believe is quite a spectacle although I don’t think I will make it this year (or any year come that).

 Follow the link below, it you give you all the information you need to know.

http://www.stonehenge.co.uk/ceremony.htm

Well a few more have finally arrived in the office, even my suppliers seem to be on the ball, I have received a number of quotes from a supplier sent at 07:00 this morning, obviously am not the only one who starts early.

The head of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales has urged magistrates and judges to impose fewer custodial terms on young offenders.

In her first major interview since being appointed in February, Frances Done told BBC News she was determined to "drive the numbers down".

She wants the courts to make greater use of community penalties.  But she said there was a "risk" more teenagers could be locked up amid new government plans to tackle knife crime.

In a perfect world there would be no crime and no body would be locked away, however, we don’t live in Utopia. We do have crime, far too much of it minor offences may not deserve custodian sentences; however knife crime does require not only a custodian sentence but a long sentence.

God am in early this morning, I have even surprised myself, I came through the main door to block exactly at 06:30 and I set off from home at the same time, and I didn’t speed, I always set the cruise control to 50 and just amble along in the inside lane. The Dartford Bridge is where I normally get held up a little it was empty this morning so I got through the tolls without stopping, not bad for a Monday.

I will be booking some holiday this week; I want to take Thursday afternoon and Friday I have got the holiday available, Rosemary and I want to go to Southwold in Suffolk for the weekend.

I have never been, but Rosemary says it’s a great place to visit to we are off there for a few days!