Loose cannons

Negligible difference

"There would be little difference for businesses between a Labour and Tory government, says Richard Branson. Asked which party would be better for business, the Virgin tycoon said: 'Arguably, it doesn't matter.' He told the BBC Gordon Brown had been a brilliant chancellor, but said Labour had continued Tory policies. 'The difference between having a Labour government for business to having a Tory government has been fairly negligible', he told [BBC TV's] Newsnight." — BBC News, April 15.

Papal traditionalists not what they used to be

"As this talk about [Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger] being the Pope's rottweiler ... as if he's some grand inquisitor and that we're going to be burning heretics in St Peter's Square and garrotting them in the basilica, I think all of that is very, very wide of the mark." — Melbourne auxiliary bishop Mark Coleridge, April 20.

That's 'democracy', US-style

"When the Taliban opposed the [opium] poppy everyone obeyed the Taliban. But with this government a warlord can grow the poppy but a poor man cannot." — Afghan farmer Abdul Wali, quoted by London Telegraph, April 21.

Can't guess why

"Insect experts are at odds over plans to name three newly-discovered species of slime-mould beetle after US President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The guardians of animal nomenclature fear the slimy monikers may be a godsend for satirists, New Scientist reports." — ABC News Online, April 21.

From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005.

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From GLW issue 624