Reuters Purchased

The Reuters news service has been purchased by a Canadian firm, Thomson Corp. The deal is worth about $17.2 billion. The boards of both companies are recommending the "merger" take place (it isn't a merger, of course. It's a straight purchase. Corporation-speak calls these mergers to make it sound better in the media. The true test is who is on the new board and who's managers stay on and who's leave.) Interestingly, the focus appears to be Reuters business reporting infrastructure - the rest of the news gathering is simply a throw-in to the deal.

The takeover, pitched at 12.8 billion euros or 17.2 billion dollars, would elevate Thomson-Reuters above industry leader Bloomberg into first place and also hand Thomson ownership of Reuters' non-financial news and photo agency.

The news follows a recent 5.0-billion-dollar bid by News Corp., controlled by media titan Rupert Murdoch, for Reuters' US rival Dow Jones Co., which publishes the Wall Street Journal.

"The boards of Thomson and Reuters announce that they have today (Tuesday) agreed to combine the two groups," the pair revealed in a joint statement which said they would both recommend the transaction to shareholders.

The new company, to be called Thomson-Reuters, would be listed on the London and Toronto stock exchanges and headed by Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer. Thomson Corp. chairman David Thomson would keep his role.

Reuters, based in London, was essentially a general news agency serving mainly media around the world until the 1970s when it became a pioneer in the provision of real-time financial data to trading screens.

Thomson's bid has won the crucial backing of the Reuters Founders Share Company which controls a "golden share" allowing it to block any takeover to defend the Reuters Trust Principles of editorial independence.

The two companies said there was "a natural fit and compelling logic in creating a global leader in electronic information services, trading systems and news."

The tie-up would combine Thomson's strong presence in the United States with Reuters' penetration of markets for trading, financial and business information in Britain and continental Europe.

This kind of sheds a new light on the sudden offer Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. made for Dow Jones, of course.

Cucumber Slices, Tick Boxes And Ultimate Failure

I posted yesterday about some of the insane things the British police are treating as crimes. Assault with a slice of cucumber, cream puffs tossed at buses, that sort of thing. The police themselves are pretty well disgusted with the things they are being forced to report as crimes in order to meet performance quotas the bureaucrats have come up with. Today, Melanie Phillips discusses those inane, pointless and ultimately harmful "targets" along with a number of other sectors that have also bee the victim of bureaucratic tick box mentality.

People who wonder why the police are not doing more to prevent crime and arrest criminals might rub their eyes at claims made yesterday by the Police Federation.

It would seem that one reason why there never seems to be a police officer around when you are being mugged or your house is being burgled is that our police service has turned itself into a stage for the theatre of the absurd.

It has simply turned the concepts of crime and order on their heads.

Incidents which ten years ago would have led to a word of advice are now landing thousands of people with criminal records.

Ludicrously, such incidents listed by the Federation include a man who was cautioned for being "in possession of an egg with intent to throw"; a child who was arrested for lobbing a slice of cucumber at another child; and a woman who was arrested on her wedding day for criminal damage to a car park barrier when her foot slipped on the accelerator.

Then there is the case reported today of the boy who collected £700 for Comic Relief but failed to hand in the money.

Because it had been collected from 542 different people, Home Office rules stipulate that this counts as 542 crimes solved - which the police force dutifully logged……

…….This is all because the Government decided that the way to force the public services to deliver better results was to set performance targets that they had to meet.

This would publicly separate the efficient public service sheep from the backsliding goats -and most important of all, would enable the Government to boast to the public of actual improvements in service that had been achieved.

But it hasn't worked like that at all. Instead, it has produced a tick-box mentality which has grossly distorted priorities and driven the public services off the rails altogether.

In the health service, hospitals were given targets, for example, for the reduction of waiting lists.

This was enforced with single-minded ruthlessness; civil servants would phone hospital managers and scream at them if these targets had not been met.

The result was that the managers took the easiest option.

Patients whose conditions were fastest to treat took priority over those whose conditions were more serious but would take longer to treat - some of whom disappeared off such lists altogether.

Waiting list numbers accordingly went down, targets were met - and suffering hugely increased.

Meanwhile, the real problem of the NHS - that it was bust - was never addressed. It was masked instead by bogus performance figures which falsely proclaimed that things were getting better, even as the service sank into bankruptcy and chaos.

(Still think socialized medicine is a good idea?) The list goes on. Education is another area where targets and tick box mentality has driven the system to failure. The entire socialized, centrally planned system is collapsing - a slow motion repeat of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Communism light works not a whit better than full-bore Communism. There is a lowest common denominator approach inherent in such schemes. That approach always leads to the lowest possible results as mediocrity becomes the norm - in fact, the requirement - for public service.

Bam! A Cigar Upside The Head

Fred Thompson lays a cigar upside Michael Moore's head - in a figurative sense of course. In reply to Moore's self-aggrandizing challenge to debate about health care and Cuba, Thompson verbally lays Moore out and schools him - all delivered perfectly. Timing, voice, gestures, words, cigar - Thompson is devastating here. Without saying a single word that could be construed as an insult, Thompson manages to convey his exact opinion of Moore and Moore's choice of friends. An absolute must watch.

(This delivery is exactly why politicians are scared of him entering the race. And if they aren't, they are very, very badly advised. No other candidate - from either party - can make a delivery like that.)

Ed Morrisey has the background on the Cuban filmmaker that Thompson mentions.

UPDATE: It gets better: "He (Thompson) turned it around in under two hours, and he did it off the top of his head essentially in one take." Any candidate who is not afraid of Thompson coming in is dead from the neck up.

UPDATE: Already up and running on YouTube (and views are climbing rapidly - the comments are very interesting). Bob Krumm has a really good roundup of some other reactions to this. It's pretty much unanimous - Thompson hit one out of the park here - and anyone who isn't afraid of him coming in is not playing with a full deck. He's that good - and that media savvy.

Disgusting Display

AllahPundit, Bob Owens, Weasel Zippers and Newsbuckit are all tracking the various comments and blog posts coming from the left over the death of Jerry Falwell. They range from disgusting to truly unhinged. These are the folks Harry Reid panders to. These are the crowd Nancy Pelosi plays to. Very nice. There's an old saying about the company you keep. There's also one about dogs and fleas.

UPDATE: Jammie Wearing Fool managed to track down the post that Huffington Post commenters are using to comment about Falwell (HuffPo closed comments on the post about Falwell, knowing full well what kinds of people make up their audience). It's pretty ugly, even for HuffPo. (I hope he took screen shots - HuffPo makes embarrassing things disappear when they get caught.) He also notes at least one lefty site that is pleading with readers not to open the sewage sluices - it isn't working, though.

Instant Karma

Wow. Talk about a case of instant Karma. 20-year old Mandy Deschambeault was hitchhiking. An elderly man picked here up. For some reason, he got out of the car for a moment. So she decided to steal the car.

And promptly lost control, hit a stand of trees and died.

The crash happened near the town of Hawkesbury — about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Ottawa — after the man stopped to pick up 20-year-old Mandy Deschambeault.

"The male driver proceeded to step out of his vehicle momentarily at which point the female jumped in the driver seat, stealing the male person's car," local police said in a statement Monday.

"She proceeded to lose control of the … car, crossing the other lane hitting trees. The female was ejected from the vehicle and found to be without vital signs."

Deschambeault was pronounced dead in hospital.

That was a short criminal career.

Jerry Falwell Dead At 73

Television evangelist and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell has died suddenly. He was found unresponsive in his office at Liberty University and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive late Tuesday morning and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."

Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said the evangelist had a heart rhythm abnormality.

“….An Aspect Of Withdrawal That Hasn’t Been Properly Considered.”

The words of Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the British MI6 discussing the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Well, it has been considered by some, Sir Richard. But not by the politicians who are more interested in partisan politics than in US security. Dearlove's words were spoken after another analyst said that a withdrawal would bring about a "terrorist Disneyland" in Iraq.

Rohan Gunaratna told a security conference at Lloyd's of London insurance market that Iraq, like Afghanistan in the 1990s, would become a "terrorist Disneyland" where al Qaeda could build up its strength unchallenged.

If U.S., British and other coalition troops withdrew from Iraq in the next year, he said, "certainly the scale of attacks that would be mounted inside Iraq, and using Iraq as a launching pad to strike other Western countries — countries in Europe, North America - would become such that after two or three years, the U.S. forces will have to go back to Iraq."

The Singapore-based academic and writer said the epicenter of international terrorism had already switched from Afghanistan to Iraq. "In many ways, the terrorist threat has now shifted 1,500 miles closer to Europe."

"…after two or three years, the U.S. forces will have to go back to Iraq." By leaving abruptly, a bloodbath would ensue - then we'd end up going back again anyway. But the next time will be even more hamstrung because of an ugly, shortsighted precedent set when the Congress usurped war powers the constitution does not grant them.

Already Dismal Ratings For Congress Get Worse

Gallup is reporting that the approval rating for Congress is even lower than it was last month - and is now significantly worse than the rating for the president.

PRINCETON, NJ — A new Gallup Poll finds continued low levels of public support for both Congress and President George W. Bush. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of Congress, down slightly from last month's reading (33%) and this year's high point of 37%, while Bush's approval rating is holding steady at 33%. Both the ratings of Congress and the president are slightly lower than their respective 2007 averages. Approval ratings of Congress are higher among Democrats than Republicans, while Bush's ratings are much higher among Republicans.

Congress almost always has low approval ratings, of course. But it is significant that only 37% of self-identified Democrats approve of Congress. The numbers among independents is really appalling, 24%. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I suspect these numbers spell disaster for those members of Congress who are chasing their party nomination for president in 2008. Regardless of who gets nominated, they will need significant support from non-affiliated voters to win the general election. That those independent voters think Congress is doing a terrible job doesn't bode well. People aren't likely to give a promotion to someone doing a lousy job.

D For Demented

Jonah Goldberg, writing in the Los Angeles Times, takes a look at the bizarre polling results Rasmussen reported a few days ago that indicate that a majority of Democrats believe George W. Bush had something to do with 9/11 - either advance knowledge or the outright conspiracy theories of the truthers.

MOST FAIR-MINDED readers will no doubt take me at my word when I say that a majority of Democrats in this country are out of their gourds.

But, on the off chance that a few cynics won't take my word for it, I offer you data. Rasmussen Reports, the public opinion outfit, recently asked voters whether President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The findings? Well, here's how the research firm put it: "Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know and 26% are not sure."

So, 1 in 3 Democrats believe that Bush was in on it somehow, and a majority of Democrats either believe that Bush knew about the attacks in advance or can't quite make up their minds.

There are only three ways to respond to this finding: It's absolutely true, in which case the paranoid style of American liberalism has reached a fevered crescendo. Or, option B, it's not true and we can stop paying attention to these kinds of polls. Or there's option C — it's a little of both.

My vote is for C. But before we get there, we should work through the ramifications of A and B.

You should read the demolition Goldberg performs on the A and B options. His conclusion, that the poll results are somewhat wrong and misleading, do not let the more insane elements off the hook, however. There is still a significant problem for the Democrats with so many people believing the "Rosie O'Donnell wing" of the party. The non-affiliated voters are looking at these kinds of insane opinions driving the Democrats and have got to be wondering how long they have been off their meds.

3 Bedrooms, 2 Baths, Nice View, Free Corpse

It would appear that Spain fell short in its attempt to catch Germany in the indoor body gardening contest over in Europe. Their entry was only dead for six years. But the bank that repossessed the house sold the dwelling along with everything in it - including the body of the previous owner.

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish bank repossessed a house and put it up for auction complete with the mummified body of the former owner who had missed her mortgage payments, newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday.

The corpse, preserved by salty air in the seaside town of Roses after an apparent death by natural causes, was discovered by Jorge Giro, who entered the house for the first time on Saturday after buying it at the auction, El Pais said.

Neighbors remembered the woman as being in ill health, but apparently nobody cared enough to look into why she hadn't been seen in so long. The owner stopped making payments about six years ago.

Whine Country

A new study just out reports that French workers are the world's biggest whiners. But don't go high-fiving right away - the US is right up there.

Britons come second to their Gallic cousins in the moaning stakes, followed by Sweden, the United States and Australia. Japanese workers have the lowest morale, but don't complain so much.

The lowest levels of whining were found in the Netherlands, Thailand and Ireland, according to the study by the FDS research group.

"It is interesting to note that after France, Britain and Sweden, the world's biggest workplace whingers are Americans, despite their having by far the highest levels of income," said FDS chief Charlotte Cornish.

"Compare them to Thai workers: while real levels of income are more than eight times higher in the States, more workers in the US feel their pay is a problem than in Thailand," she added.

The study, entitled "What Workers Want, A Worldwide Study of Attitudes to Work and Work-Life Balance", draws on data from 14,000 employees in 23 countries.

They were notably asked about their satisfaction with issues including pay levels and their work-life balance, as well as average working hours.

Part of the reason for some of the dissatisfaction is very likely due to a media which continuously accentuates the negative. That coupled with certain politicians and organizations who love to invoke class warfare at every turn. The authors of the study point out that these world-class, whining, French workers may spell trouble for Nicolas Sarkozy if he tries to change things in France. See: there goes that media thing again.