divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/27631?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+UK+closer+to+joining+euro%2C+EU+commission+president+saysch=Politicsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Politics%2CEuropean+Union+%28News%29%2CUK+news%2CEconomic+policy%2CForeign+policyc5=Credit+Crunch%2CMiddle+East+Travel%2CPolicy+Society%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Staff+and+agenciesc7=2008_12_01c8=1126840c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=European+Unionc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FEuropean+Union" width="1" height="1" //divpThe UK is "closer" to joining the euro than ever before, according to the president of the European commission./ppJosé Manuel Barroso said some British politicians were considering signing up to the single currency in a bid to beat the effects of the global economic crisis./ppHe told French radio station RTL: "We are now closer than ever before./pp"I'm not going to break the confidentiality of certain conversations, but some British politicians have already told me, 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off.'"/ppBut Barroso admitted that the majority of people in the UK were still opposed to the idea of joining the single currency./ppA Downing Street spokesman said: "We have no comment on this. Our position on the euro is the same - it has not changed."/ppWilliam Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said it was "extraordinary" that the government was "whispering to the EU commission about joining the euro behind the British people's backs"./pp"Keeping the pound is vital for Britain's economic future," he said. "We need interest rates that are right for Britain, not the rest of Europe. There are no circumstances in which the next Conservative government will propose joining the euro.br / br /"If Labour ministers still want to get Britain into the euro they should come out and say so. We will be putting questions to the government to find out what conversations have been going on."/ppNigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party, said: "The ruling elite would love to bounce us into the euro and will grasp at any straw to do so, for it's a step on the way to their dream and our nightmare, a federal superstate./pp"We're told that some British politicians have said, 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off.' Whoever these people are we need to hunt them down and explain some simple economics to them. Membership of the euro would have meant lower interest rates in the boom, making the bubble even larger. And it would mean higher interest rates now in the bust, making the recession even deeper. The pound has fallen against both the dollar and the euro thus providing us with that fiscal boost that everyone says is so necessary, a boost which we couldn't have had if we were in the euro."/ppHe said that if Barroso wanted to consult the people who mattered in Britain he should call for a referendum on the euro and the Lisbon treaty "so that the people of Britain can tell him where to go"./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/eu"European Union/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/foreignpolicy"Foreign policy/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/fmkwvaOPYEsV9BC8ovLyIxxES3k/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/fmkwvaOPYEsV9BC8ovLyIxxES3k/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Some bit of not so bad news: Thailand’s tourism authorities have issued a list of hotels offering accommodation for stranded passengers. A special flight was arranged for Thai Muslim pilgrims to their annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Foreign governments are making extra efforts to help their citizens.

As of this writing, the airport crisis is still not over. Dozens of empty planes were allowed to leave Bangkok, but protesters still control the two major airports in Thailand.

There are three protest centers in Thailand: The two airports and the Government House. The People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the organizer of the protests, has decided to leave the Government House after a grenade blast inside the complex injured scores of protesters last Saturday. PAD will now focus in maintaining its control of the airports. Will police allow PAD members to join their comrades in the two airports?

What is the solution to the crisis? A human rights group asks Parliament to convene an emergency session. There are rumors that a court will issue a decision which would not be favorable to the ruling party.

Oak Monster's Den also heard this rumor:

“Rumors abound that tomorrow (Tuesday) the court will dissolve the current majority political party and therefore sack the PM. Then a coup will follow to mop up the mess, disperse the airport crowd. Then an interim governement. Then election. The Red Shirts aren’t going to like it but that’s the only way to solve the stand off, in my opinion.”

Tourists are able to leave the country through U-tapao airport. This is very far from Bangkok. The situation there is chaotic:

“U-tapao is packed. Traffic is backed up. Tourists are spilled all over the parking lot, lugging their luggage in from the streets. This 1960-built former U.S. airforce base during Vietnam War has only one luggage scanner. A Thai-blog reader contacted me to said that he tried to “drop in” on U-tapao and it was a total nightmare. Anyone heading out should allow themselves a LOT of time to get there and to go through the maze of lines and put up with lots of characters.”

Portable toilet in U-Tapao airport. See the crowded room inside the airport. Photos from Falling Into You

What is the situation inside the airport blockade? Apparently, passports are no longer needed to enter the airport. Individuals only need to bring a yellow scarf (the color of protest) or a PAD clapper (see video below this article). There was an American tourist who spoke in the PAD program.

Protesters are preparing for a final showdown with the police. They claim they will use human shields to block the police. Bangkok Pundit reports:

“I should note that there is a large number of children at the rallies. What responsible parent would bring their children to a rally knowing there is a possibility of violence? Money is certainly one reason.”

Pro-government rallies are also being held in central Bangkok. Red is the chosen color of government supporters. ~Meaw & More~ visited the pro-government rally and observes:

1. Music, was not as good as PAD
2. I have not seen anyone offered anyone’s money in return. We have been offered a meal in plastic bag, which was not bad, some red banner.

Note
1. The crowd as we saw today are, according to external appearance and some chat, mainly Bangkokians middle class. Some even bother to dress as Santa.
2. Foreign photographers and journalists did not wear bullet proof vests like at PAD.

PAD is vilified by almost everybody outside Thailand. Here is a different opinion on PAD:

“I can say that in all my visits to the PAD rallies, they are not a mob but a predominantly peaceful and respectful group that wants to see a new dimension in Thai politics. While visiting red shirt rallies, while most were genuine, I was approached twice by thugs carrying machetes and steel pipes threatening to beat me if I take pictures.”

An Englishman reminds media to review the kind of democracy which exists in Thailand:

“Just don’t be too hasty to pass judgement on the PAD when the Western media states they are against democracy, because, Thailand's democracy works differently to ours.”

The Prime Minister is trapped in northeast Thailand. Frogblog Thaidings witnessed a government rally in that part of the country”

“Spend a few hours in their presence and you soon end up with a completely different impression. These are people that are genuinely worried about the possibility of their democratic right to vote being taken away.

“They are disgusted by PAD's antics in Bangkok, and the occupation of the airports there in particular. They appreciate the damage being done both to Thailand's reputation and to its economy. Many of them live in borderline poverty, so the slightest set-back can leave them struggling to survive on a day-to-day basis. They feel insulted and degraded by the suggestion that they are simply too stupid and lacking in education to vote for the right reasons.”

He was referring to the proposal of PAD to modify the method of choosing the country’s leaders since they think the poor do not vote wisely during elections.

Photo from Frogblogger

The airport crisis in Thailand is affecting other countries too. A tourist decided to enter Thailand by traveling from Singapore by land. Bangkok Dazed adds:

“Obviously the Bangkok Airport situation is affecting other countries in the region as well. If any tourists want to travel to Myanmar, for example, the Bangkok airport is the main gateway. Over in Siem Reap, Cambodia, several of my friends have sent e-mails this week; concerned about my safety in Bangkok, and also worried about a dropoff in tourism over there. My friend Rong works at the airport in Siem Reap and tells me there hasn’t been much to do all week.”

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/28tunnels.600.jpg" width="650" height="346" style="display:block;float:none;" /Last Sunday we were writing about a href="http://gizmodo.com/5097008/new-york-city-water-nightmare-is-an-underwater-gadget-lovers-dream"amazing underground diving rigs/a in the heart of New York City. It seems only fair that we jump across the pond this Sunday and write about a mile-long super secret deltunnel/del lair below London that's currently for sale, don't you think? Asking price: A cool $7.4 million. It sounds a bit much for an empty stretch of nothingness deep below the British streets, but wait until you hear about the history. Oh, the emhistory/em!/p pThis tunnel is actually one of eight built by the British government during World War 2 as a network of bomb shelters to protect citizens from the German blitz. They could hold 8,000 people and were designed to function for five weeks without any assistance from the outside world. This "protection" even included "a bar and two canteens, not in use, and a billiard room, not to mention functioning water and electricity supplies," reports the New York Times./p pHowever, after their completion, the tunnels were held aside to serve as secret bases of operations for soldiers. They were never used as shelters. Instead, they served as a temporary base for D-Day troops; one even became the European HQ for U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later, in 1944, the tunnels became bastions of counterintelligence, as members of the secret service used them to coordinate resistance movements in Nazi-controlled countries. The tunnels, once filled with Normandy invaders, were decked out with spy gear, telephones and teleprinters./p pToday, though, the tunnels are empty, and waiting for some rich playboy real estate tycoon to swoop in and buy them up. Won't you take up that standard, and invite us poor gadget-loving folk to a few parties below the busy London streets? Please? [a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/business/worldbusiness/28tunnel.html?_r=2"New york Times/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2958cd1cf763fa0a60974ef9b76d6074p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2958cd1cf763fa0a60974ef9b76d6074p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2958cd1cf763fa0a60974ef9b76d6074" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=RMztBqpE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ynov6Wer"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=COUYox9z"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=COUYox9z" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=WEnfbtAO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=WEnfbtAO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/BTuMtilHsAU" height="1" width="1"/

This is probably an album showing them coming back to form again. I know they were f*****g great in lightning and puppets, but what do you expect after 20 years!!! Load/reload, and st anger were musically alright, its just i dint like it. But magnetic has some awsome riffs.
Iv had LOADS of time to listen to the album and my favourites are All Nightmare Long, Judas Kiss, and My apocolypse. Which are your favourites, post them here.

India demands to know who the terrorists are and most of all, why the security forces failed to prevent them pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/rVsVGI5V5bRvi8lH2ka_FACVtk4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/rVsVGI5V5bRvi8lH2ka_FACVtk4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hybrids/" rel="tag"Hybrids/Alternative/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/green/" rel="tag"Green/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/chrysler/" rel="tag"Chrysler, LLC./a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/ford/" rel="tag"Ford/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/gm/" rel="tag"GM/a/pa href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081127/AUTO01/811270395/1148/AUTO01"img hspace="4" border="0" vspace="4" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/nardelli_congress_bubble.jpg" alt="" //abr /br /Remember the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/26/detroit-supplier-organizing-march-of-green-vehicles-to-washingto/"growing movement/a to caravan a few hundred of Detroit's most fuel efficient vehicles to the automaker's next meeting with Congress? Not happening. Interestingly, it wasn't for lack of support. In fact, it was just the opposite. So many people had voiced their support and announced their intentions to join in that the event's organizers just weren't able to keep up. Talk about a logistical nightmare. br /br /Organizers have not given up on the idea completely, launching a new website called a href="http://theengineofdemocracy.com/"TheEngineofDemocracy.com/a that's supposed to drum up support for Detroit and fuel efficient cars in general. Along with an outpouring of support via the interwebs, a list of 51 people from various suppliers, dealership workers and Union officials will accompany the CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to Washington - one from each state plus one from the capital itself - to prove that the loss of the American auto industry would affect everyone. At this point, we think it's a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/19/motown-ceos-fly-private-jets-to-capitol-hill-beg-fest/"safe to say/a that Wagoner, Mulally and Nardelli will be, ya know, emdriving/em to the proceedings.br /br /[Source: a href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081127/AUTO01/811270395/1148/AUTO01"The Detroit News/a Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/29/detroit-to-dc-caravan-cancelled/"Detroit to DC caravan cancelled/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:22:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081127/AUTO01/811270395/1148/AUTO01Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/29/detroit-to-dc-caravan-cancelled/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1385811/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/29/detroit-to-dc-caravan-cancelled/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/VxYxuZZONnXli3-QvrvXd2WmsU4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/VxYxuZZONnXli3-QvrvXd2WmsU4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=n1Rat1Pm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=n1Rat1Pm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=ScdJFDjM"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=ScdJFDjM" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/uevoduYE2gw" height="1" width="1"/