Routine post

Sorry, no pictures today. I had a visit from Prins Gunasekara, but didn't think of it at the time. He was gloomy about the prospects for peace in Sri Lanka, and with good reason. Although the EU has just proscribed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a terrorist organisation, it will have no effect because they were already proscribed in every individual member state. Human Rights Watch has just published a report on LTTE fundraising in Canada and the UK, claiming that extortion of money from the diaspora is endemic, but no LTTE agent has been prosecuted inder S 15 of the Terrorism Act 2000 as far as I know. Since 9/11, there have been only 23 convictions under any of the provisions of the Act; the statistics aren't further broken down, so one can't tell how many were for S 15 offences, and of these, how many were related to the LTTE. I have asked the Home Office for this information, but I suspect the answer is zero.

I beat JW 2-1 at ping pong today, so the cumulative score to date since the operation is 4-3 in JW's favour.