The morning catch-up: Google remoovle and Tory Paxo

Seen around the internet by our curio-collector-in-chief

John Rentoul
Friday 27 June 2014 04:20 EDT
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A Google search removal request displayed on the screen of a smart phone
A Google search removal request displayed on the screen of a smart phone (PA)

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1. Gap between rich and poor: new Office for National Statistics figures for household income 2012-13 suggest a slightly wider gap than the year before. David Cameron will have to stop claiming that incomes are more equal than at any time since 1986. But, contrary to what "everyone knows", inequality has not increased under the coalition government. The trend shows a sharp increase in inequality under Margaret Thatcher, but it has been broadly unchanged since.

The higher the Gini coefficient, the more unequal the distribution.

2. Unwelcome New Thing of the Day: Google has started to add this notice to the bottom of searches for most names: "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe." Search for your own name (in quotation marks) and see. It is a response to that terrible European Court of Justice ruling about the "right to be forgotten", which is contrary to freedom of expression and utterly ineffective for anyone who knows what a proxy server is.

3. Jeremy Paxman admits: "I am a one-nation Tory." Via Political Scrapbook.

4. The one supplement to The Independent's superb coverage of the phone hacking trial I would recommend is this on Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, by Flip Chart Rick.

5. Thanks again to Chris Heaton-Harris, with a fine return to tennis form:

A tennis ball walks into a bar. The barman says: “Have you been served?”

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