Gallimaufry & Chips

Ban Lobbying, It Has Corrupted Politics

2012-01-13T14:42:00.000Z

I recently wrote to David Cameron to advise him of a very unfair policy by a government agency. In my letter I mentioned that I had also written to that agency. Today I received a template letter from a Downing Street correspondence Admin Assistant (the lowest Civil Service grade with access to the stationery cupboard) thanking me for taking the time and trouble to write (piss off) and that my letter had been passed to the department concerned to reply (piss off as Dave ain't interested).

Just imagine the difference if I had invested in the services of a Political Lobbying Company. My letter would have been treated with care and attention and I would not be disgusted with this post-democratic corporate society.

Notice to all mainstream political parties: I will no longer place my X against the name of your rosette holder on the ballot paper. Instead, I will vote for extremist parties at random in order to give Special Branch the extra job of matching the numbered ballot papers to the marked electoral register to identify the national security threat (non-sheep) in their midst.

Diane Abbott - Again

2012-01-05T14:29:00.001Z

Back on 24 June 2010:

Today she "twitters" that white people love playing "divide and rule" , something she later apologises for after claiming weakly that her words were taken out of context (the defence allowed to alleged white racists). What is divide and rule? Does it involve offside? Shouldn't there be mandatory quotas for BME players in divide and rule teams or a talent identification programme and coaching in inner-city areas to encourage uptake? Whatever divide and rule is, I know I will be picked last :-(

Once may be an accident, but twice is on the way to an unsettling pattern of behaviour. Cab to the diversity training course for Ms Abbott?

Update 7 January 2011. Apparently, black people have difficulty hailing black cabs according to the Sage of Hackney.

Do professionals in the race industry love playing "inducing middle-class guilt"?

Robocops

2011-12-21T15:45:00.000Z

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has published a review of the Police's tactical responses to England's August Riots.

The headline idea is that arsonists could be shot dead to protect the lives of building occupants. Odd that Parliament decided off its own bat to stop capital punishment as a sentence for murder because of a few miscarriages of justice but the Police consider themselves capable of being judge, jury and executioner in the (literally) heat of the moment, without the opportunity of an appeal or petition to the Home Secretary.

If anyone deserves to be shot during a riot it is the senior police officers who allow public order to get out of hand and escalate by neglecting to swamp the miscreants with overwhelming force and speedy arrests. It is their job to organise timely reinforcements in the right places, not to attempt to establish a black-uniformed copy of the Army.

Another idea in the report is to use water cannons on rioters. Now that would be a practical solution to arson - perhaps such vehicles could be painted red for identification purposes and made available to fight ordinary fires when not needed to quell riots..

Aidan Burley MP

2011-12-19T18:38:00.001Z

The boy's a fool and yet more proof that MPs are seldom honourable in practice. His ignorance of modern history despite the vast quantity of programmes on the Nazis available via Freeview, puts him in the same league of stupidity as Charlie "I didn't realise it was the Cenotaph I was swinging from" Gilmore. FFS, proper Tories like Airey Neave, murdered by certain Friends of Tony before the twerp was born, knew what the SS was like at first hand. The SS were guilty of war crimes and all SS officers ought to have been shot out of hand by the Allies to improve German society. Yet the scum responsible for the 1940 Wormhoudt Massacre of men of 2 bn, Royal Warwickshire Regiment and others, escaped scot-free.
Oddly, Burley does not reveal the subject of his Oxford degree, though Dave Cameron's First in History didn't prevent him making a howler about Britain being "Junior Partner" to America in 1940.
I've checked Burley's 2010 General Election majority - it was 3,195. I wonder how many of the 2,786 more recent occupants of this address submitted postal votes? I bet this constituent would have liked the cut of his jib.

What A Load Of Rubbish

2011-12-19T12:30:00.001Z

Last week some Russian Navy vessels including the 65,000 tonne aircraft carrier Admiral Kutznetsov approached within 30 miles of the Scotch coastline in the Moray Firth without a by your leave to any of our 430 Admirals.
Because a Nimrod MRA4 was unavailable at nearby RAF Kinloss, due to scrapping and closure respectively, (whether an airworthy Nimrod would have been available anyway is a moot point), it was feared that an invasion was underway and so HMS York was ordered to steam up from the English Channel forthwith to see the naughty Russkies off (who could have mistaken Ross Shire on their charts for a home port) rather like HMS Cumberland's 34 hour marathon from refitting in the Falklands in order take part in the Battle of the River Plate. The naughty Russians were spotted chucking bin bags overboard but no action was taken for two reasons: the USN chucked bin Laden overboard in the Indian Ocean; the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't prosecute fly-tipping Travellers.
Why? The RAF could have sent a Typhoon to investigate and take photos, or a Hercules or the Andrew could have tasked a Merlin to circle the fleet. Or the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency could have sent one of its four ships or two Cessna 406s based at Inverness Airport for a look around.
Instead, HMS York burnt thousands of gallons of fuel unnecessarily, just so a Royal Navy ship could be sunk if the Russians decided to make Wee Eck's day and give him independence from England at last.
Why can't sensible people take charge of defence and spend other people's money prudently?

What France Is Best At

2011-12-16T13:46:00.000Z

The recent nonsense from various Froggies like Sarkozy and their central bank chairman about the British economy is as expected. They have a thousand years experience of picking fights with us and coming off worst. The Entente Cordiale came about as a result of the Fashoda Incident when les Grenouilles realised, still smarting from the speedy rout of the Franco-Prussian War that it might be better to get les Anglais help them out should Germany march west again. As for the Crimean War of 1854-6, the frogs temporarily put aside thoughts of revanche pour Waterloo to in favour of protecting their trade and prestige in the Near East.

Which brings me to this recommendation for a Chritmas read: England's Last War Against France by Colin Smith. Unsurprisingly, the French Army and Navy fought harder against the British in Dakar, Madagascar, Lebanon, Syria and Anglo-American forces in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia than they managed against les Boche in 1940.

I'll be re-reading Alastair Horne's classic To Lose A Battle for Christmas relief. I might just be able to get through the 736 pages quicker than the Panzers managed through northern France.

Ed Balls Is Worse Than Jeremy Clarkson

2011-12-01T22:27:00.001Z

Because he has offended me personally and hasn't the courtesy to apologise.

I sent an email to Edward Michael Balls, Shadow Chancellor on 12 September. The text is below:

Dear Mr Balls,

During an interview with Matthew Amroliwala today you used the phrase "that's the way to ensure there's not footdragging". and, seconds later "to make sure that we don't have footdragging".

I was born with hemiplegia which affected the left side of my body. It's meant that since I began walking, despite years of braces, casts and surgery, my left foot has dragged as I walk. My life has been made a misery due to comments made by cruel and unthinking idiots.

It's funny how people's reactions to me change when they meet me in person; one can sense them mentally knocking twenty or thirty IQ points off when I limp towards them.

Forty-six years of that leaves one with a justifiably short fuse so when an educated politician like you spouts a cliche like "footdragging" when you could use alternatives like procrastinating or shillyshallying, for example. I'm sure you are a big enough person not to kick this complaint into the long grass marked "So What?" so I await your immediate and sincere apology for the offence you have caused me and many others with a similar gait problem.

Regards,

Brian

To date I have only received an automated reply asking for my address from the office of Balls. It makes me think that the boy doesn't care unless he's paid to.

Ed Balls, you have one last chance to make amends.

Bless The Daily Mail

2011-11-25T18:58:00.001Z

I had to laugh at this story about a Derby University student who fell off a bed into a clothes horse and had to be rescued by firemen. Ignore the fact that she could have removed the airer herself if she had closed her mouth for a couple of seconds and turned her head 90 degrees, it's funny. Even funnier is the comment at 18:48 that the Daily Mail's student bashers missed.

The old Foreign Object Explanation joke familiar in many variations to anyone who's ever spoken to nurses. That and drunks appears to account for 90% of the workload in Casualty.

Will Septic Bladder Break The Ultimate Taboo?

2011-11-18T13:14:00.000Z

And admit that footballers are overpaid. Why not have a one off 98% windfall tax on players and clubs to recalibrate wages and transfer fees? There should be a limit of £100,000 per team per season for television rights as well in order that Sky and licence fees are directed to film and drama production instead.

Christmas Temporary Job

2011-11-16T21:55:00.003Z

Imagine you've just resigned after forty years in the Civil Service and don't feel like decorating the house and there's nothing to do in the garden. Loose Women isn't a possibility.

(with thanks to Leaders We Deserve blog)

Delivering the Christmas post is one option, but why not apply for an indoor job that involves sitting down instead?

(with thanks to Mellowes Adventure and Childcare Centre, Athboy County Meath - the place to see the real Santa!)

There's plenty of Elves to help manage the queues of children for you and, if the queue gets too long, then presumably Health & Safety rules apply and you can wave them all through, promising that they'll get all the presents they want without asking if they've been good little boys and girls all year long.

Youth Unemployment In UK

2011-11-16T21:34:00.000Z

So, for the first time ever, over one million young people aged 16-24 are out of work in Britain.

Part of the cause of this is the freedom of movement for workers within the EEA. This allows people from the poorer member states of the EU etc to migrate to the richer economies where even the national minimum wage is often more than the rate for skilled workers back home. There is, of course, no reciprocity for British workers. And the UKBA and its predecessors has floundered for years over detecting and removing illegal alien workers.

Until the UK government states that its prime duty is to UK nationals and enacts legislation to allow affirmative action for Britons in job recruitment, then freeborn Britlish men and women will be playing uphill on their home turf. That is not fair and is wrong. Until there is only frictional unemployment in the UK, foreign nationals should not be given work permits.

The extremists of the free market will claim that if foreigners are willing to work for 5p and a handful of wet gravel a 36 hour day then so too should British people, otherwise they are uncompetitive and deserve to starve. That is nonsense as the race downwards defeats everyone's interests except those gits paying 50% income tax who claim they are the only hard workers (try doing a crap job without guaranteed hours, split shifts at minimum wage and then redefine hard work). Equally, extremist europhiles will claim that we are enriched by foreign workers and that British workers could go East for jobs if they had the skills and work ethic. So why do foreign workers migrate to Britain if the jobs and pay at home are great, my little cleggista?

But no party will put Britain first.

Still Think International Aid Is A Good Idea, Dave?

2011-11-14T11:33:00.000Z

India has bought 139 Mil-17 helicopters (sort of a Russian Wasteland Merlin but much cheaper) for $2.345 billion since 2008.

So why the heck is money still taken from British pensioners to pay for DfID water pumps in cow muck thick Indian villages? If you like international aid so much why don't you and Andrew Mitchell and Tarquin an Rupert and Imogen and Samantha and Uncle Tome Cobbley and all who want to build school houses in their gap years so it looks good on the CV for the investment bank job that Daddy's friend has wangled for them pay for it all yourself? It's called charity, you smug git.

That FIFA Poppy Ban

2011-11-09T17:05:00.004Z

I'm not a footie fan by any means but if Johhny Foereigner in the shape of someone called Septic Bladder, so I've heard, says that England can't do something then I take the view that we will do it. He's Swiss, a nation famed for creating a safe home for gold and art looted from the rest of Europe by the Nazis. (Advice to foreigners: If you annoy us, don't ever let us sit down and have a cup of tea before we retaliate).

Well, if he says no poppies on footie shirts (how I remember the exquisite pointlessness of standing in studded boots on a cold, wet and windy games field for the ball and a herd of players to race past every five minutes) then the UKBA should be instructed to don the marigolds every time he transits through a British airport.

(thanks to newsbiscuit.com)

He will remember us.

Update: After letters from Dave and Chopper Willy FIFA and FA have compromised on a poppy motif on a black armband. But Remembrance isn't about mourning, it's remembrance. Those Swiss bastards just don't understand anything except cuckoo clocks, triangular chocolate and hiding money for kleptocrats. The International Red Cross is the exception that proves the rule.

Greek Financial Crisis

2011-11-04T16:18:00.001Z

Stavros and chums could start by turning the lights off to save money.

Open Letter To The Archbishop of Canterbury

2011-11-02T14:49:00.000Z

Dear Rowan,

Here's the deal: I promise not to pitch my tent outside St Paul's Cathedral or in the lovely gardens of Lambeth Palace - having worked in Lambeth I understand why you need those high walls - so long as you make a few of my requests official Cof E policy. I accept that you and the Church hierachy are reasonable people who believe that everyone else behaves reasonably and fairly (something that the cynical flavours of religion know full well is a load of wibble, hence their relative successes by being nasty to opponents when necessary), which is why we both know you will be a pushover. Anyway, here's the portfolio of policies to begin with:

1   Sovereignty to be vested in the British people with government spending and legislation to be approved by binding referendums,

2    All EU Protection Money contributions to be diverted to investment in British industry and education to increase world competitiveness in preparation for EU collapse,

3    International Aid to be reduced to a sum matching private donations,

4     UK population to be capped at 55 million through labour market balancing and removal of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who have entered the UK through safe third countries.

I'm sure we've got many more ideas to make Britain better so let's keep in touch.

I'm An Anti-Capitalist Too

2011-11-02T14:26:00.001Z

I can't stand London, The Great Wen. I commuted to work there for two years and it was dirty and expensive. The root cause of nationalism and regional poverty in England is the economic and democratic deficiency caused by the recent centralisation of power in London. Return real power to the people at local government level and politicians and their apparachiks will have to earn the consent of the people instead of taking the tax cows for granted..

Cross Party Referendum Question

2011-10-24T18:37:00.001+01:00

The leaders of the three institutional government parties have responded proactively to unfair calls of democratic deficit by proposing a referendum on the above question. A new system "EZeeVote" provides pre-printed voting slips for people's convenience.

If a majority approves the proposal the entire electorate will be granted free* Lasting Powers of Attorney for their health and welfare and financial and property matters (normally £130 each) to relieve them of the burden of making difficult decisions and allow them to concentrate on football, Strictly and X-Factor. In return, the NHS will nationalise transplantable organs and coiuncils will be able to billet asylum seekers and economic migrants in householders' surplus accommodation.

*Council Tax will be increased by £52 per year for ten years .

Ice Cream Varieties

2011-10-24T18:09:00.000+01:00

Plain

Original

Vanilla

Voter's Choice: Take it or leave it.

As One Door Closes ...

2011-10-16T12:58:00.000+01:00

Third column, second row. Click to enlarge. From the classified ads pages at the back of yesterday's Times Magazine. It must be someone else.

Just a query, did any of the Doctor's friend sit in when he was a GP?

The Truth About The UK-US Special Relationship

2011-10-15T11:16:00.001+01:00

Are we the Adam Werrity in this mythical menage a deux? The Yanks call our troops "The Borrowers" as a tribute to our world class logistics systems and their senior officers roll their eyes when ours condescendingly attempted to teach them the lessons of Malaya and Northern Ireland in order to lose heroically in Iraq and Afghanistan (the Dunkirk victory effect). Recent news reports about American Secret Service Agents telling HMS Edinburgh to swing its Sea Dart and 4.5" turrets away from Ma Obama's hotel room in Cape Town have been misinterpreted as the paranoid Yanks throwing their weight around "We instructivate that you relocalise the non-friendly munitions projectoration apparatus away from the hotel e of FLOTUS, bud, huah, yeah, waah." Actually it was an ironic joke by the Yanks to see what was the most unnecessary thing they could get the Limeys to do so they could continue to claim to be Uncle Sam's Bestest Friend (Israel, actually, followed by any country that helps America's national interest for the present).
Britain should declare 24 August as its Independence Day and stop and think about our national interests next time the POTUS asks for a big jump. We could, with the last ounce of our sovereignty, reply likewise.

Which Bin Do I Put MPs In?

2011-10-14T19:03:00.001+01:00

(with thanks to Joolz, Wikipedia)

Nobody wants the remains of a two week-old Fox in their wheelie-bin. Huhnes are another tricky problem: will the binmen refuse to take them at all? When I had to get rid of a Letwin recently, I made sure to cover it completely with loads of old letters in the paper, card milk bottle and tins bin. Once it's in the back of the dustcart out of sight, job done. That's the rule with MPs, if nobody sees it there's no rule broken.

Reasons For The English Riots

2011-08-11T16:51:00.005+01:00

The England riots. Originally the BBC headlined them as UK Riots until complaints from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that they were behaving themselves forced an edit.

I don't intend to analyse the causes of the riots: Theodore Dalrymple in The Australian has nailed them already.

However, perhaps the reason why Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish thugs haven't rioted this past week may have something to do with the evil Barnett Formula which over-allocates public expenditure to those constituent parts of the UK. It costs more to provide services there because population density is lower than in England so they get more money and England gets more cramped. Scotland has consistently received a 15-20% premium per capita over England or over £1,500 per annum despite it being the third richest region of the UK! Or is it something to do with the fact that those countries all have their own self-governments and more MPs per voter in the Westminster UK Parliament?

Now, I'm the first to concede that the rioters aren't the slightest bit bothered about the democratic process- their eleven years of State child-minding (if 1/3 are illiterate and innumerate on leaving formally, and believe me I met some thick thugs at the JobCentre, they haven't had an education), but the extra tax wonga appears to have bought the peace in more fortunate parts of the UK.

Boy Cameron's prescription to cure and mend sick and broken Britain is partially right. However, in addition, the scumocracy needs to take a hard look at itself and stop paying lottery winning salaries to itself for a start. Parliament and local councils must adopt a 180 degree culture change and re-learn that public service is a privilege and that their function is to serve the public and not impose their whims on a citizenry by force of law.

Credit Rating: United States of Americ+

2011-08-06T10:28:00.001+01:00

I've always preferred Uncle Remus to Uncle Sam

Credit Rating Agency, Standard & Poor (not the best name for such an agency, IMHO), has downgraded US government credit rating from AAA to AA+ with a downward trend because of fears that the recently agreed deficit reducution measures are insuffient,

I blame Barack Ob+m@. I'm afraid I won't have any sympathy for the United States until they reach the state they forced Britain into in late 1940, ie bankruptcy, all gold reserves gone and foreign assets sold to American buyers at fire sale prices in order to buy second-rate munitions to keep the war going until America had rearmed itself.

They Just Don't Get It Number 3,652

2011-07-25T18:11:00.000+01:00

MPs call for energy doorstep mis-selling compensation.

Fair enough, the energy companies' practice of hiring people on commission to pressure sell their products is a bad thing because 40% who change switch to a worse tariff. The practice of customer churn does nothing for the energy market, either for suppliers or consumers. Far better for all concerned are fixed or capped tariffs for two or three years. Consumers get reasonably priced energy and price stability and suppliers get profitable long-term customers.

Within a few minutes, price comparison websites can find the best tariffs dependent on one's usage found on bills. For people without interweb access, there should be a duty for suppliers to advise them of their most appropriate tariff.

The elephant in the room in this report is the politicians refusal to see any link with those works of fiction that appera every four or five years just before general elections, party manifestos. If they were subject to the same regulations as company prospectuses, many honourable members would be serving time. Remember back in 2008 when a UKIP member sued the government for breach of contract over Brown's failure to hold a referendum on the Euro Constitution/Treaty? Counsel for the government, ie them against us, said:

"A manifesto promise is incapable of giving rise to a legally binding contract with the electorate. It is a point which is so obvious that I don't want to labour it."

A quote which manages to encapsulate the innate arrogance of both lawyers and politicians.

But if politicians could be sued for breach of contract, HM Taxpayers would pay damages to themselves: unless some way of bankrupting party donors could be devised by the courts outside of the vested interest of the politicians. That would be a good day in court.

That Anglo-French Entente Cordiale Thingy

2011-07-18T11:50:00.001+01:00

Brazil is about to build four conventional submarines and one nuclear hunter-killer in a Brazilian dockyard with French assistance.

That's the French with whom Britain has been getting ever closer defence-wise since the 1990's. The Royal Navy has no aircraft carrier in service at present and will rely on an unreliable French carrier, the Charles de Gaulle to supplement the four Typhoons at RAF Port Stanley if the Falkland Islands are threatened by Argentina again.

Brazil supports Argentina's claim to the Falklands and won't allow British government ships to dock there.

From this we must conclude:

a) France puts its interests first however much the gullible idiots who holiday there pretend otherwise. Remember Concord(e)?;

b) France will not make the Charles de Gaulle available if needed;

c) The United States will not assist Britain this time;

d) The UK cannot afford to run one or two aircraft carriers of its own to ptotect the property rights of 3,000 people who make no contribution to their own defence beyond the Falklands' TA. Taxpayers' money is there to pay for international aid (the groundnut scheme again and again and again) or the interest on money borrowed to lend to failed eurozone countries not to keep our armed forces permanently equipped at wartime levels.

e) Foreign policy and defence capability need to be realigned. If we can't afford to do it properly, we shouldn't do it. We have more horses than helicopters in the army and thus are very good at parades.

This is available to buy for about £6 million.

Fox Terrier?

2011-07-15T21:18:00.000+01:00

TERRIER® wordmark is a registered trademark of the Secretary of State for Defence. So, if you capitalise a seven letter word for a type of working dog, you know who's Army will come around for the copyright fee for its tracked armoured combat engineer vehicle costing £300 million for sixty vehicles. In-service date is now 2013.

Why does a word need to be trademarked? Did Messerschmidt build a Me Spitfire? I reckon the MoD Procurement are worried that Farrow & Ball market a paint called Terrier and instead of sending something to dig gun pits in a faraway country, 20,000 litres of emulsion will be air-dropped from a C-17. Not a terribly good idea, unless Terrier paint is blood red. That would scare the bejabers out of the natives on the ground if the lids popped off.

BAE's Director of Corporate Responsibility said in 2006 "We all have a duty of care to ensure that from cradle to grave products are being used appropriately and do not do lasting harm." When a company that makes things designed to kill people better than its competitors says that with a straight face, I give in.

F***WIT® wordmark is offered gratis to the Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox.

Greater Spotted Woodpecker

2011-07-15T17:53:00.000+01:00

I was finally able to photograph this visitor at 17:40 this afternoon. Seconds after this photo the wood pigeon jumped onto the birdbath and shooed the woodpecker away. I shall refill the fatball feeder tomorrow morning as I've seen the woodpecker on it several times. The problem is that the sparrow squadron eats like horses - four new inch. and a half fatballs on Tuesday morning were all gone by this morning. If they weren't so much fun, I'd begrudge their greediness.

BBC Journalists On 24 Hour Strike

2011-07-15T15:24:00.002+01:00

The news programmes are better today.

Stop The World I Want To Get Off!

2011-07-15T12:15:00.000+01:00

One moment the press are all pervy about Pippa Middleton allegedly not wearing knickers at her sister's wedding, the next they are hot and bothered about Brazillian knickers being a half-million (so that's how many a brazillian is) success story for M&S. I'm glad I don't buy newspapers anymore. Is the concentration on gossipy nonsense an indication of more women in editorial positions in the media or an assumption that their lip-moving "readers" are only interested in pap as the real news would scare them, make them take to the streets and .... stop buying!!!!! Aaaargh, turn the container ships around , religion, consumerism and greenism have failed, the drones are finally thinking for themselves. They will realise that those in charge are no better than them and, in many cases, much worse. Democracy rooted in debt and state violence is as tyrannical as the alternatives that have been invesnted to subjugate the majority to the will of the elites. Only when ordinary voters directly decide to, for example, borrow more money to give to the IMF to lend out to other voters thereby making the money creating elites richer,will they be free and democratic.

Swifts

2011-07-15T11:57:00.000+01:00

Not Supermarine Swifts, but Swifts.

There's no better way to spend a warm summer evening than looking up at a flight of swifts wheeling high up, chasing after flies. They soar so gracefully with wings outstretched and then suddenly flap their wings to slow down or turn quickly in order to catch a fly. Wonderful.

And high above them, white airliners scratch contrails into the welkin.

Moustrap Update

2011-07-12T10:02:00.001+01:00

Deepest Joy! It works!

The humane mousetrap that I wrote off as a mouse feeder or box for keeping real mousetraps in, worked last night . On checking it first thing this morning, I saw a little pinky-brown tail sticking out from under the left hand flap entrance.

He or she was bright-eyed and well fed and leapt out of the box to scurry into the long grass as soon as I opened it in the far Wildwood corner of our garden.

The capture is proof that woodmice read this blog as the conventional snaptraps I left out had not been even nibbled for nearly a week now.

Having rinsed out the trap in dilute Jeyes Fluid disinfectant, when dry and aired, I shall reset it with all the cunning of a carp angler (almost a much cunning as a carp) and hope to repeat the translocation success tomorrow.

Update: Another fieldmouse indeed took advantage of the free meal and subsequent awayday.

News Of The World Grassed Up Jesus

2011-07-11T17:18:00.001+01:00

Shocking revelations are emerging that Judas Iscariot was not actually to blame for Jesus being arrested by Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. Apparently, Jesus's prediction of betrayal at the Last Supper was hacked from the mobile scroll of the apostle Peter by a Pharisee working for the News of the World and was passed on to "sources close to" the same Jewish priests who had paid Judas thirty pieces of silver for the work. Allegedly, the owners of the News of the World wanted to gain influence with the Sanhedrin and become the dominant supplier of Torahs, icons and tryptichs in both the Middle East and the wider market because advertising revenue from town criers and prophets was in terminal decline .
Recent work by biblical scholars suggest that Judas actually killed himself after he discovered that his silver coins had been swapped by the apocryphal thirteenth disciple St Gordon, patron saint of mentals, for a basketful of euros and other worthless papyri.

The Wonderful World Of Beckham

2011-07-11T13:41:00.000+01:00

They are callinf their newly arrived daughter Harper Seven. Odd, because she was born at five to eight.

Let's try to understand this. Harper may be in homage to Harper Lee who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird. But that's a book. Highly unlikely. Seven? That was David Beckham's shirt number when he played for Manchester United and Ingerrlund. Will the next Beckham child be Truman Seeanay?

A Question About The News Of The World Journalists

2011-07-10T11:25:00.000+01:00

Firstly, I am one-seventh as concerned about their redundancy as I am for the 1,400 skilled engineering workers at Bombardier in Derby who will lose their jobs. But Wapping is in London and journalists have a high opinion of their insular little trade so the coverage overkill was to be expected.

The question that remains unanswered is this: of the two hundred hacks at the News of the World yesterday, only about three were there when the alleged phone hacking took place. Now, one went to prison, one went to work at No10 then resigned, and one has returned from holiday to run the whole business. So what happened to the possibly 197 other journalists? Did some know what was going on and, to quote David Jacobs "Where are they now?"

Is phone hacking continuing? Are private detectives still being paid to get information by any means possible? Why do amateur bloggers have to provide professional journalists with so many uncredited leads?

If journalists consider themselves a profession, then they must undergo deep and lengthy self-investigation to rediscover the reason why they do their jobs and to whom and what they owe loyalty. They will never produce anything as enduring as a railway carriage, but, properly done, their work may last longer than the next recycling collection.

Quote Of The Day

2011-07-10T11:07:00.002+01:00

"Publish and be damned!"

Attributed to the Duke of Wellington when Harriet Wilson threatened to publish her autobiography and the letters he wrote to her.

More backbone than brylcreme in him, Dave. And all the other vain politicos wanting publicity are just as bad as you. Look, you are Her Majesty's Prime Minister and they are ginger scribblers and bullies who buy passports of convenience.

What I want is a press that scares government and big business and whose idea of in-depth investigative reporting isn't reading to the end of the press notice. If I want to learn about the doings of instantslebs the Beeb is good enough for that. An Entertainment Correspondent, FFS?

Taking Stock

2011-07-06T23:15:00.010+01:00

So let's tot all this up.

Over half our honourable members and noble lords were fiddling the parliamentary allowances system.

The News of the Screws was involved in stitutional phone hacking of just about everyone and Piss Moron was sacked for publishing fake torture photos. The other papers print press notices and Cheryl Cole.

Global warming means colder winters and higher fuel bills to pay for it.

The Metropolitan Police is having another go at investigating the phone-hacking thingy. Perhaps they will ask for a Mulligan to go over "Cash for Dishonours" again.

Dave the PM says anyone who disagrees with £12 billion foreign aid is hard-hearted yet contracted pensions and care for the elderly in England can't be afforded out of taxation because we are living longer than is convenient for the Mrs Jellabys who only care about people they met on their gap year hols.

Phillip Hammond Transport Minister gives an order to the Hun thereby losing Derby 1,400 skilled jobs and blames the tender terms on the previous government. Grow a pair! Re-advertise the contract you twerp.

IDS plans to offshore DWP jobs to Bangalore to help indians called Fred practice their Hindglish on jobless British people with high blood pressure.

And I'm still angry about bailing out the bankers, going to war in Iraq on the basis of lies and flogging gold off dirt cheap.

Who the f**k are the grown-ups who left these tossers in charge of us? That's right, it's you and me.

Time for a People's Revolution. I want Peter Finch to say:

Isn't John Frost better than every politician around today?

MoD Loses Track Of £6.3 billion Assets

2011-07-05T19:51:00.002+01:00

It's not lost, they are just "temporarily unsure of the exact position", a distinction anyone who has ever studied navigation appreciates.

The are two reasons for the discrepancy:

1 No major losses recently like Atlantic Conveyor in 1982 or COD Donnington the following year to blame missing kit on.

2 Camouflaging so much equipment. It stands to reason that it will get lost. Compare the two photos below:

Prince William P2 In Canadian Forces' Sea King Ditching Training

2011-07-04T19:17:00.000+01:00

The Royal Canadian Navy acquired 41 Sikorsky CH-124 Sea Kings (as they became in 1968) in 1963 and due to government dithering the 28 survivors are still in service today with 12 Wing Air Command based at Shearwater. Thanks to the sterling efforts of ground engineers putting in 30 manhours of servicing for every flying hour, the old girls are still flying. Despite this, 40% of sorties are cancelled. To mitigate the risks involved in ditching due to engine failure (there's an awful lot of water in Canada), every year crews are trained how to ditch safely on the freshwater Morris Lake (to minimise corrosion). All gaps in the airframe are sealed with tape to prevent water ingress during the practice flights.

This is how it's done.

The BBC report of Prince William's ditching practice. That's him in the lefthand seat, helicopter captains sit on the right because that's how Igor Sikorsky originally laid out the cockpit of the WS-300 nearly seventy years ago.

Nicholas "Ginger" Witchell, the BBC Royal Reporter and Nessie expert, claimed that the Canadians were the only organisation to do Search and Rescue by alighting on the water. Presumably, the cabin door is opened to allow waves to roll in and capsize the aircraft. Nick, Nick, Nick, if the Sea King ends up in the drink, its crew need to be winched up by another helicopter. You may have got mixed up with the old Sikorsky Pelican operated by the US Coastguard that would land on came water if absolutely necessary.

The good news is that the CH-148 Cyclone will replace the Sea Kingas the Canadian Forces shipboard helicopter ( ie its equivalent of the FAA's Lynx and Merlin) in the near future. It's a pity that the Royal SAR pilot wasn't allowed a flight in a Canadian Forces CH-149 Cormorant aka AW101 Merlin. But given the undecided PFI or not PFI question of the RAF/FAA/MCA's own SAR Sea King/S-92/AW139 replacement scheduled for 2016 - Eurocopter EC225 or Sikorsky S-92 but not the AW101 Merlin, allowing the Duke of Cambridge to fly in a contending aircraft was probably vetoed for political reasons.

Mousetraps

2011-07-03T13:15:00.000+01:00

We keep the garden bird food tubs in the shed and a couple of weeks ago the lid of the seed tub wasn't tightly resealed after refilling the bird feeders. This evidently tempted a harvest or wood mouse in through the ventilation gap between the walls and roof for a snack. My position on mice is: in the garden, "Hello Mickey" , but in the shed, garage or house "Exterminate". The garden covers a much larger area than the house and the back of the borders are virtually undisturbed from year to year. That's fair. Mice are nice to look at but they are incontinent, leave droppings, their hair smudges walls when they brush past (and mice like to stay close to walls) and they carry a nasty flu-like virus. So wear rubber gloves and disinfect surfaces well if handling them.

So to battle with my rodent foe. A rule of thumb is if one is caught there are two about, if two are caught in two days there's four etc. So I decided to invest in a humane mouse trap that could catch up to ten at a time. The PoW squeakers could then be released in a nature reserve a mile away or quickly neck-stretched.*

Here's the galvanised metal humane trap with clear plastic panel on the lid and ample ventilation holes. There are two entrances and mice walk up a pivoted flap into the bait area. When they put their feet on the flap to leave its outside end pushes up pushing up a metal door which prevents exit. The trap resets itself.

(Yes the shed is carpeted for insulation and also has net curtains for security)

Unfortunately, the mice didn't read the instructions or perhaps we have very clever mice in Coventry. Result is night after night of trap empty of bait and mice. It works with some mice but not others according to the reviews on Amazon. I will use it as a storage tin for my new traps.

So I bought three proper mouse traps from Ebay. Baited with slivers of fig roll (to stick well on the bait spike) they have caught two mice in one night. I secure them on old ice cream carton lids so they don't spring around when triggered and also because it's easier to place them without accidently setting them off. I shall continue setting them out in the shed against the wall along the mouse run until I have two free nights without catching anything. I'll be glad of that because I don't like killing them even when necessary.

Don't read below if you don't want to know how to humanely despatch a mouse.

*To do that, quietly calmly quickly pick the mouse up by its tail with one gloved hand and gently grasp the mouse's head with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand, simultaneously pulling down and twisting slightly. The mouse's back legs will judder momentarily but it's already dead. Double-plastic bag it in and bin it straight away.

EOn Maths - A Cunning Plan

2011-06-30T16:51:00.004+01:00

I handle my parents' energy bills for them because they are not interweb savvy and the best deals are only available online. I take and upload monthly readings and search quarterly on price comparison websites for the best overall supplier using the previous twelve months consumption figures.
At the start of June this year, their current tariff, EOn dual fuel FixOnline v6, was coming to an end and massive price increases were predicted. A fixed or capped deal was the best option. So I found that the EON Age UKdual fuel fix offered the best value.
The latest quarterly bill pinged online on 25 June. As a result of the slightly higher price per unit and the end of the 19.8% online discount (someone put the decimal point in the wrong place there!), the annual estimated bill for the next year increased to about £1,200. So one would expect that the monthly direct debit would be about £100 or even less, given that the latest bill was only £.69 in debit and the next quarter would be another credit-builder. Autumn-Winter debits, Spring-Summer credits, result balance.
However, according to EOn, the monthly direct debit amount would increase to £115 from 2 August. When I did "Ten A Day" mental arithmetic before lessons started at school aged seven, 12 x 115 was 1,380.(Look no fingers!). Therefore my parents would pay an extra £180 that would be refunded after the next Annual Review.
As I don't agree to forced loans at nil interest, I phone EON Customer Service to suggest a compromise amount of £95. In previous years, EOn have been very customer focused and have agreed more sensible direct debit amounts where necessary. Not so today: a "zero tolerance" scheme of no compromise had been put in place a month earlier. If the computer said No or £115, that was the only answer. That's the way to motivate high calibre staff in the call centre. Apparently, the increase was for my parents' benefit so they wouldn't get into large amounts of debit in winter. I explained that the idea of quarterly direct debits was to spread the cost over the year so that at the end of twelve months the account would be in balance. Not so, according to the EON rep who informed me that EOn wanted to set the direct debit so that the high demand quarters were always in balance. A bit like a quarterly bill then, you pay for what is actually consumed.

I asked if I could speak to somebody who could make a decision to overrule the computer. That was impossible; there were three options: accept the increase, change to higher price quarterly billing or find another supplier. ie Take It Or Leave It as they say in the adverts. There's no such thing as customer loyalty in a market (this is the price) where churn or turnover of old and new customers is priced in.
Given no choice I accepted the revised direct debit with the proviso that I would demand immediate repayment of monthly balances after I uploaded meter readings. And then I checked the small print on the bill:

Now, I changed the tariff to Age UK Dual Fuel Fixed on 13 June 2011 and it turns out that the next Annual Review date is April 2012. So the number of months left is just about ten. That explains the crooked direct debit maths. £1,200 / 10ish = £115.
I bet there is a cunning finance acoountant scumoid rodent in EOn who was licking his lips when he came up with that plan to increase EON's cashflow and ensure that the two coldest quarters are paid off pdq. As I said to the EON minion, Heads you win, Tails I lose. Of course, the fact that my parents have bought electricity from EOn since it was Powergen and EMEB before privatisation counts for naught. Computer says new tariff started 13 June 2011 so calculations must start from then.

Update Saturday 2 July 2011: Reader, I transferred the dual fuel contract this morning to EDF Fixed to April 2014. My parents ought to save another £50 per year. Just keep checking your annual consumption figures (on every bill now) into USwitch every week to see if a better tariff turns up.

Update Wednesday 6 July 2011: Possible cartel behaviour to be investigated by Ofgem.

What's This Bird?

2011-06-30T13:45:00.001+01:00

This was spotted in the birdbath this morning. Is it a juvenile Missel Thrush? I'm puzzled by the creamy white band from head to breast.

This Chinook I spotted near my house on 9 June is easy to recognise in comparison.

The Bliar's Address Book Hacked

2011-06-25T15:36:00.000+01:00

Might be interesting to know God's phone number. Daily Telegraph article.

We Can But Dream - Nimrod

2011-06-25T10:07:00.000+01:00

I'm not going to rehash the Nimrod MRA4 saga except to say that the aircraft was flawed (but repairable, given an additional few layers of £50 notes epoxyed to the aiframes) and its lifetime costs unrealistic - which company would tool-up to support only nine aircraft for forty years and not think kerrr-chingggg!

The opportunity ought to have been taken in the 1990's to design and build an entirely new, purpose-designed aircraft for the roles required. If Portillo, the Defence Minister wot signed the contract, had taken an interest in aircraft instead of choo-choos, he would have known that every scheme cooked up by Air Force and manufacturers the world over to "modify" an existing type in order to save money, doesn't. Redesign leads to retooling leads to a creeping realisation that for an extra x lbs of airframe, y capabaility is possible. And of course, x lb airframe costs £ z000. The end result is about 95% different but which will still become obsolete at about the same time the manufacturer's order book tapers off.

My dream would have been to start with a clean sheet of paper or monitor screen. Add to that the requirements of the roles such as: full-spectrum sensor suite, long range, capacious weapons bay, roomy cabin for sensor operators and we have the beginnings of an aircraft.

But why bother with the conventional fuselage, wing and tail layout? Wouldn't a blended wing body design offer more room, greater structural strength, less drag? Imagine the Avro Vulcan or Armstrong Whitworth AW52 and bring them sixty years up to date as something like the Boeing X-48.

Look at the internal volume offered by a blended wing aircraft:

(With acknowledgement to Flight International)

Plenty of space for even the Nimrod's famous old 48'6" long weapons bay ( because the underfuselage trough fairing fitted to streamline the nose mounted search radar to the rotation point where the rear fuselage tapers upwards was long enough, that's why) that usually carried two sets of Lindholme ASR gear and sometimes a mail pannier. How often Nimrods actually carried nine Stingray torpedoes and twenty-four Mark XI depth charges is moot and as they were only certified to carry four thousand-pounders during Operation Corporate, I wonder what the maximum 20,000lb payload would consist of. As a long range bomber, the new aircraft could also accommodate Storm Shadows and Paveways internally with AAMs on external pylons for self defence.

One additional advantage of the BWB design would be that each crew member could be provided with an ejection seat with exit through roof hatches.

The aircraft structure would be composite and the engines, radars, ESM and avionics would be as per Nimrod MRA4.

A Cunning Financial Plan

2011-06-23T16:11:00.000+01:00

Nickie Clegg is parading a brilliant idea about the taxpayers' £64 billion stake in RBS and Lloyds Group banks. Basically, everyone on the electoral roll would get "free" shares that they could sell and get the difference between the selling price less stockbroker's commission and fixed floor prices which would be remitted to HMG. They could buy Liberal Democrat memberships or Spanish cucumber farms.

Popular Nickie (12%) said, "Psychologically it is immensely important that the British people feel they have not just been overlooked and ignored.

"Their money has been used to the tune of billions to keep the British banking system on a life-support machine and they have absolutely no say at all in what happens when normality is restored.

"I think, in a sense, as a society we are condemned to take an interest in our banking system."

Did I write brilliant idea? Sorry, I meant absolutely sterling crap! There's 46 million people on the electoral roll, many dead or living in Bangladesh or Nigeria. A computer system would have to be set up (there's £10 billion gone to IT contractors) to administer everything : it would become a quasi- national ID. 90% of the shares would be given to people who would prefer lager, fags or mobile top-ups. The "financial investment community" would be able to buy up the shares very cheaply from such folk with the offer of glittery things. Just like how our friendly Russion billionaires became billionaires.

A word in your shell-like, Nickie, the British people feel they have not just been overlooked and ignored because LibDem tossers like you are in a "government" dedicated to pissing our hard-earned cash away on the EU and foreign aid. We know that Labour spent too much and that cuts are necessary but the cuts proposed are of things that we the electorate think are worthwhile. Public libraries, armed forces not limited to "boots on the ground". We don't want to pay windmill taxes on our electricity and gas.

I suggest that the taxpayers' shareholdings in the banks are converted into a national endowment to fund the stupid Department for International Development. All dividends will be paid directly to it up to a capped limit of 0.7% of GDP. The Treasury will not need to borrow more money every year for DfID's budget and the foreign aid leeches will learn how their 4x4s are paid for.

Daily Mail Subs Having A Laugh?

2011-06-21T20:44:00.001+01:00

Note the headline for the second story: Bags of support (!)

snigger, snort. I'm sure it was inadvertent.

International Aid Isn't Rocket Science

2011-06-16T12:33:00.004+01:00

I thought the UK only gave aid to two developing countries with space programmes, India and Pakistan. It turns out that that millionaire Andrew Mitchell MP's Department for International Development gives £250 million per year to Nigeria. Nigeria spends about £25 million per annum on its space agency, NASRDA, part of the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology (and soon to be Innovation). NASRDA was established in 1999 by Act of Parliament. In 2001 Nigeria adopted a National Space Policy.

The Agency is headquartered on Airport Road, Abuja and started with 15 post-graduate students sent in 2001 to Surrey Satellite Technology in Guildford for two years for training. In 2004 a contract was signed with China for the construction and launching of the £230 million NigComSat1 which sadly failed in late 2008. Still, a replacement NigComSat1R will be lauched from Russia later this year. In addition, NigeriaSat1 was launched in 2003 and will be replaced by NigeriaSat2 this year. Going into orbit at the same time is NigeriaSat-X, the first satellite designed and built by Nigerian scientists supervised by SSTL.

The BBC is in favour of the Nigerian Space Programme, of course.

£25 million per year in a country where 100 million people live on £1 a day. The actual budget proposed for 2011 is Naira 6, 383,991,333 and currently one gets about N250 to £1. How one finds the actual amount is almost a space journey in itself. Here's the budget for 2011. At first glance it appears that only about £7 million is allocated to NASRDA Abuja until one realises that there are six other branches as well. And then NIGCOMSAT Ltd is also part of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. They're trying to cooperate.

The UK spends about £220 million per year on our space programme headquartered in Swindon. Nigeria hopes to put a Nigerian astronaut in orbit in 2015. So is this one that The Register reported was stuck on Soyuz for fourteen years waiting for a return flight is a 419 scam?

One other thing that puzzles me: Why doesn't NASRDA have a interwebsite except this one? This one doesn't open.

A Myth Nailed

2011-06-13T20:45:00.002+01:00

There was a 1942 Anglo-American Agreement that made the UK concentrate on producing military aircraft during the war while the US was able to continue building Douglas DC-3s, Douglas DC-4s and Lockheed Constellations and thereby dominate the postwar civil aviation industry.

Actually, an agreement was signed between General Arnold Chief of the USAAC and Air Chief Marshal Portal, Chief of the Air Staff on 13 January 1942 which allocated that year's American aircraft production of various categories between the two countries. This was repeated throughout the war by the Munitions Assignments Committee (Air) of the combined Munitions Assignments Board set up as a result of the Arcadia or First Washington Conference in Washington between 22 December 1941 and 14 January 1942.

The RAF opted to obtain specialised transport aircraft from America because nothing was available from the British aircraft industry. DC-2s ,3s and Lockheed 14 and 18s operated by British Airways and KLM, for example,had proved their superiority over contemporary British models before the war. The production lines for the Bristol Bombay and Handley-Page Harrow bomber transports had closed as they were interim types ordered to train new entrants to the expanding aircraft industry. De Havilland types were unsuited for anything except training and communications work. Former Imperial Airways types such as Short Empire flying boats, HP42s and A W Ensigns were as inadequate for military use as they had been for competitive airline operation, something highlighted by the 1938 Cadman Committee. A result of that Committee was the Fairey FC1 four-engined medium range landplane theprototype of which was never completed due to the war and poor workmanship. As the war progressed, obsolescent bombers like the Whitley, Wellington, Stirling and Albemarle were converted as stop-gap paratroop carriers and transports to make up for the shortage of DC-3/C-47 Dakotas.

Unfortunately, the realism of the Arnold-Portal Agreement only lasted until 23 December 1942 when the Brabazon Committee on post war civil aviation in the Empire was set up. As a result of its work specifications for no less than seven different aircraft types were issued to an industry with little experience of civil aircraft. Only the Vickers Viscount and de Havilland Dove were production successes. If only the Labour government had taken the opportunity in 1946 to nationalise and rationalise the aircraft and aero-engine industry which had been artificially expanded by wartime military contracts then the £tens of millions wasted on subsidies and dead-end development could have been concentrated on scarce dollars for DC-4s and Connies to equip BOAC with competitive types and more design and development funding for a smaller range of new types - just imagine if Avro and Handley-Page had been able to assist de Havillands with tthe Comet.

Photo thanks RuthAS

And more evidence for there being no Anglo-American agreement to prevent Britain building transport aircraft was the Avro York which first flew in July 1942 and was only produced in limited quantities to allow Avro to concentrate on building Lancasters (the best examples of which were constructed under sub-contract by Armstong Whitworth).

That Martin Bell Poem

2011-06-13T19:49:00.001+01:00

Indifferent to the people's warning,
The parties headed for a fall,
Tory, Labour and Lib Dem,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them,
But miss them not at all.

UK To Pay £15 million to Spain For German Cucumber Error

2011-06-07T18:00:00.000+01:00

Reason for leaving the EU number 2011: German food scientists claim the e-Coli could be due to Spanish cucumbers so Spanish vegetable market collapses. EU proposes £134 million compensation package to Spain, payable from EU funds not just Germany.As the UK contributes over 10% of the EU budget, that's Gute Nacht Wien to the equivalent of about 15 hours worth of international aid spending. It's only borrowed money after all.

Royal Marines On Standby To Evacuate Stranded British Civilians From Yemen

2011-06-07T10:25:00.000+01:00

Like it says on the tin, Per Mare, Per Terram.

Well, there's another Arab "country" gone down the pan because there is no such thing as a gold watch and retirement pension for Muslim leaders. They're either killed, exiled, jailed or, if they're really lucky, they die in office.

But what are British citizens still doing in that dreadful place after all the warnings? The UK did the best thing in 1967 by leaving the glorified coal bunker to its own tribal rivalries after avenging the murders by rogue South Arabian Army and local police of British soldiers on 20 June. Rogue local police, eh? Do our leaders ever learn?

Why don't we implement a new policy whereby we accept that British residents of the next Aidistan or Iedistan or wherever went there of their own free will and instead of sending in the Royal Marines or Royal Air Force to get them back to Tory-run Britain, the Department for International Development takes the lead in extracting the aid-workers, oil-drillers and daft wives of waiters. Sir John Major thinks international aid spending should make us proud so let's see how the offer of a women's chicken marketing cooperative fare againt qat crazed loons with AKMs and RPGs.

Non-Party Elections

2011-06-05T20:15:00.000+01:00

I believe in universal suffrage, one person, one vote.

The advantage of universal suffrage is the wisdom of crowds which can produce a smarter answer than the smartest members of the crowds. In theory, by including roadsweepers and picker-packers (although ,f course, obs are not a foolproof indication of intelligence), a better House of Commons would be elected than if only picked by PPE graduates, lawyers, doctors and rocket scientists.

In practice elections are marred by the tribal politics of political parties. People don't necessarily vote acording to their values and beliefs but because they dislike a particular party. In addition, people's opinions don't necessarily fit perfectly into the policy pigeonholes of parties. It is quite possible for someone to be interventionist on foreign affairs and conservative on tax. Finally, political parties can promise one thing in their election manifestos but are under no obligation to fulfill their promise in power.

Instead, I propose that voters do not vote for candidates or parties at elections but express their opinions on a test paper like this one, for example. The actual questions would be prepared after consultation by the Eectoral Cmmission. Candidates, who could belong to political parties would take the same text.

The test paper ballot forms could be read electronical like multiple choice exam papers, probably with the same equipment for economy. The winning candidates would be those whose orientation most closely matched the overall orientations of their constituencies. This would encourage prospective parliamentary candidates to really get to know their constituents and tailor their message to them. Say constituency A favours policy X: a candidate for party 1 would have to amend their party's policy Y to increase their chance of winning the seat. Other candidates for other seats might find policy Z was the most popular. They could sit in the House of Commons according to their parties, but of course they would have to take into account their electors' opinions if they wanted to be re-elected. The pernicious power of the Party Whips would be weakened.

Referism- Multiple or Weighted Votes

2011-06-04T18:39:00.000+01:00

I've posted before about Referism, Richard North's excellent idea to return power to the individual from the politicians. I'm in favour of it but .... today's post proposes a system of weighted votes intended to balance out the wishes of those who benefit from government expenditure in favour of those who pay most in.

Dr North proposes that voters would have up to ten votes, depending on their marital status, children, payment of income tax, business ownership, education, voluntary work, age etc. Presumably, this would ensure that proponents of big government, tax and spend, progressive taxation as a tool for economic redistribution would be dwarfed by small businessmen and women eager to pare away every last penny of public expenditure to the minimum. Unfortunately, I can think of at least a dozen people off the top of my head who would qualify for ten votes who depend solely on contract work from the Civil Service for their livelihoods. I, on the other hand, in my present circumstances, would be stuck with one vote. And I consider that government spending ought to be reduced and spent more wisely.

Better than giving extra votes is a requirement that prospective voters are able to demonstrate a basic understanding of public finances and the concept of difficult choices. A quick, thirty question multiple choice paper marked by computer would soon separate fiscal realists from Cameroon "I'm borrowing money for foreign aid 'cos of Sir Bob" on the one hand and "free market" capitalist skinflints who object to paying for streetlights they don't actually use on the other. The questions would be set at a commonsense level that anyone who kept abreast of current affairs could pass without preparation, but training courses in English, Welsh and BSL only plus internet pages would be available for those uncertain to brush up their civics. Better decisions are made when better information is available.

We would therefore retain the one-person-one-vote system demanded by the Chartists that works simply enough. Adopting a multiple or weighted vote system would be too difficult for local authorities to administer (my annual registration form for the electoral roll was received but not inputted onto the system a few years ago, causing me to lose my right to vote in the Council election that year despite my circumstances being the same as the previous year when I was on the roll) and to open to gerrymandering, fraud and fixing. As Josef Stalin said "It's not how many votes that counts, it's who counts the votes."

No S**t, Sherlock!

2011-06-03T20:02:00.001+01:00

According to the Daily Mail today:

"Sacked banker with 'bomb' strapped to his leg who sparked three-hour high street siege "had some kind of grudge""

No flowers and chocolate. Simples.

What next? "Hikers advised not to follow bears with loo rolls and newspapers in woods "for at least five minutes"?"

Q & A

2011-06-03T13:29:00.000+01:00

Q: Is e-Coli a computer virus and can I catch it off the internet?

A: No and No. Wash your hands with soap and water.

Q: I've read that 70% of the patients infected with the new strain of e-Coli are female. Why was it initially assumed that cucumbers were the cause?

A: I blame Dr Google for the theory. Search for women and vegetables. Not at work though. Wash your hands with soap and water. And apply strong mind bleach.

Referism - FIFA

2011-05-31T18:34:00.001+01:00

The current shennanigans involving the World Cups for 2018 and 2022 and its presidential election may not appear to have much to do with Referism.

There are 208 football federations belonging to FIFA and a majority of 75% of them is necessary to change the agenda, postpone the election and prevent the current President, Joseph S. Blatter from enjoying a walkover or whatever the footballing equivalent is. Not much chance therefore of the subscription-paying federations having any influence.

However, it appears that several "tier 1" sponsors such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates and Visa are expressing their concern at bribery allegations and the damage that the affair may be causing them because brand association is a two-way street. As these concerns have voluntary and folding votes in the matter, ie £ hundreds of millions in sponsorship annually, it will be interesting if a backroom deal is concocted by the Gnomes of Zurich to give the former President of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders a golden parachute after a decent (long enough for people to forget why, so three months) interval. Just think how many people will have made the decision in those companies to voice their concern, probably well under a hundred, yet they can multiply the power of their views to exceed those of millions of footie fans.

The point is that the ability to freely withhold money equals real power that no amount of "votes" can equal. £ and $ are the oxygen of business and government . Thus we individuals must seize from Parliament the right to authorise the Supply Process which opens the tap of public spending. We are no threat while the people who borrow money to give away abroad can gaol us for refusing to pay. Only when they can have their pay stopped if we choose will they listen.

Click on Referism for more information.

Lord Taylor of Warwick

2011-05-31T14:01:00.000+01:00

12 months in jail, ie three months inside, for £11k fiddled. Will he lose his peerage or will he go back to claiming £300 per day? The precedent of Lord Kagan in 1980 who went back to the Lords within six months of completing a ten month sentence, bodes ill. At least the Representation of the People Act 1983 disqualifies Members of House of Commons jailed for 12 months or longer. The Life Peerages Act 1958 assumes that peers are honest, decent people. As a consequence, the only way to strip a peer of his title is by passing an act of attainder (last done in 1917 against lords fighting for the Hun).

World Food Prices: Oh Dear, Auntie Beeb

2011-05-31T10:40:00.000+01:00

Today the BBC went into full Cameron mode with a report of an Oxfam Report on doubling food prices by 2030. Half of the increase will be due to climate change. We're doomed and it's the West's fault so we can pay to sort it out, thank goodness. Give them your ****ing money as the Rt Hon Member for Witney said.

I couldn't find the report on the Oxfam website (why don't they introduce a paywall?) so checked the BBC's sister organ, the Guardian. Aha! The report will be published on Wednesday. Reading it, deep down I found this paragraph:

"A devastating combination of factors – climate change, depleting natural resources, a global scramble for land and water, the rush to turn food into biofuels, a growing global population, and changing diets – have created the conditions for an increase in deep poverty."

Sorry, I had to embolden that phrase hidden in plain sight. A growing global population as the UN predicts that population will grow by an average of 0.77% per year. World population could be between 7.4 - 8.6 billion by 2030. The European share of global population is on a declining trend to less than 6%.

So why won't the BBC mention the one or two billion extra mouths? Is it because it doesn't fit in with their agenda that "everything is the West's fault and we can pay and I saw real poverty in the three months I went to El Salvador to help build a school before going up to Oxbridge" ? As the Left/Greens discovered with climate change it's easy to make reasonable, comfortable westerners feel guilty and pick up the bill. They know that most money spent down south goes west as endemic corruption takes everyone's share and not much to encourage more donations gets done. Besides, the development- media complex is a booming industry with ambitions to overtake the military-industrial one.

Move Along - Nothing To See

2011-05-30T12:26:00.000+01:00

Buried deep in the vaults of the BBC's news website is this report of a demonstration by a crowd of 200 militant Sikhs outside the Sikh Cultural Centre next door to the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Singh Sabha in Dudley who were objecting to meat and alcohol being served at a private party inside. It began peacefully, then the usual minority threw bricks, etc at the police and stormed the building causing criminal damage.

The Chief Inspector in charge of the police operation said,

"I would urge those responsible for the violence to hand themselves in to their local police station immediately or face officers arresting them at home in the very near future."

I am sure they will.

In 2004 this happened to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre after a misguided attempt to tick the diversity and inclusion boxes and encourage members of ethnic minorities to go to the theatre.

It appears that if certain groups are not listed as aggressive threats by the MSM their activities are reported quietly on the inside pages, but virtually anything by extremist Muslim groups (such as the Luton parade disruption by a couple of dozen weirdies) triggers a three minute hate by the Pavlov's dogs of the media/ocrity.

Let's have some balanced reporting because without acknowledging problems they can never be solved.

Referism - The Consolidated Fund Account Standing Services

2011-05-28T19:34:00.014+01:00

Dr Richard North at EUReferendum has recently been developing a new political philosophy for individuals to gain control of government for their benefit instead of the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats. It works on the basis that nothing can be done without money and proposes that an annual referendum is held on government spending. Hence Referism. It's a great idea for real democracy.

As old-school civil servants like me learnt, the government uses a device known as the Supply Procedure to seek authority from Parliament for its spending each year. (Here's the detailed explanation of how government seeks annual approval for its expenditure plans from Parliament). The running and resource costs of each department are set out in a Consolidated Fund Bill in December which releases funds from the Consolidated Funds Account at the Bank of England and two Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bills passed in March and July which apportion funds between departments. The Consolidated Fund Bill authorises the Vote on Account of 45% of the present year's spending for the next financial year before what is termed the Main Estimates are confirmed in the July Consolidated Fund (Apportionment) Bill which becomes the Appropriation Act No.2. Here is the Appropriation Act 2011 passed in March. They are all passed on the nod after select committee scrutiny, which means that even MPs and the bishops & barons (who give assent) don't have a say. It's rare to even have a debate on the three Estimates Days. It's a tribal, whipped arrangement. Referism would mean that the electorate would vote on the July Apportionment Act No.2 to confirm it. There would need to be some legislative and financial rejigging to include the winter and spring supplementary estimates and the statement of excesses for the previous year.

More pernicious to democracy than the Appropriation Acts is the Consolidated Fund Account Standing Services. These are charges which are exempted from any need to be voted annually by Parliament because it has, by statute, permanently authorised the payments. They include, for example,

"the salaries of members of the judiciary, expenses of holding general elections, United Kingdom contributions to the budget of the European Communities, Standing Service payments for political and public salaries and pensions include Speakers, Opposition Leaders, Whips and the offices of high ranking officials, which include the Comptroller and Auditor General, Parliamentary Ombudsman and Information Commissioner."

Note how much trouble and influence the above have recently caused. Why shouldn't they be subject to the same voter control as other heads of expenditure? The resolution of judicial independence with accountability will have to be an annex to the 953 page report.

Please accept my apologies for endlessly editing this post because every time I read it over I found it necessary to recheck facts and redraft for clarity such is the apparent complexity of the process and the vagueness of wikipedia. It's as if the Whitehall and Westminster closed shop doesn't want outsiders to know what's going on behind the smoke and mirrors and jargon. And then I came across this admirably clear House of Commons Library briefing paper prepared for our MPs.

Round Down Not Round Pound

2011-05-21T00:17:00.001+01:00

Bossy or "Big Society" Ministers are planning to announce a forced charity giving scheme called Round Pound. If a shop receipt or restaurant bill ends in 99p or 95p, an extra 5p or 1p will be added and this will go to charity. You will of course be able to decline and thereby mark yourself out in public as an uncaring skinflint.

A word to the wise, Westminster Village Idiots, charity has to be voluntary otherwise it is mugging with guilt. The last time something like this was done they called it Winterhilfswerk. It wasn't popular.

Inflation is currently at least 4.5%. Non-MPs are worried about their jobs. Most people don't want to waste borrowed money on international aid let alone increase it by a third. If government wants people give more of their income to charity then they should be allowed to keep more of it from the taxman. A start towards that goal could be achieved by rounding off total salaries for ministers as below:

Prime Minister                                       £125k
Cabinet Minister                                    £100k
Minister of State                                     £ 90k
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State   £ 70k

(not including accommodation and travel perks).

Of course, they could choose to keep their present salaries, but then I would deduct the difference and use it to pay down the national debt.

Daily Mail Headlines To Which The Answer Is Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

2011-05-18T17:36:00.000+01:00

Britain could have "crushed Germany within three years" if RAF had not REJECTED inventor's plans for world's first jet fighter.

Let's suppose the RAF had a jet engine powered fighter in 1939/40. It would be unable to use the basic French airfields that were unsuitable for the Spitfire. Bumpy grass fields are equally bad for foreign object ingestion into intakes as for manoeuvring with a narrow track undercarriage. Neither would there be an effective radar plus command and control, ie Dowding System, of managing the fighters. If decent runways had been available they would still have had to fly patrols, using up fuel more quickly than even Spitfires and Hurricanes and, more importantly, engine hours. The range of the Gloster Meteor Mk III of 1944 was about 500 miles, or say 40 minutes endurance with 5 minutes of combat. In addition, the Battle of France was a land campaign so the airfields and super secret jet fighters would have been overrun and captured by the German Panzers. So Germany would have got the advanced technology. As Stalin said "Quantity has its own quality".

What use would jet fighters have been combatting the u-boats? How many minutes would a jet engine last in the abrasive atmosphere of the Western Desert with all that sand? Wouldn't jet fighters have been just as poorly commanded in the Malayan Campaign as their piston engined counterparts, even if they could cope with the heat and humidity? Yet more advanced technology would have been captured, this time by Japanese soldiers on bicycles.

What Britain needed was a decent tank with HE as well as AP ammunition, a long range escort fighter, Hurricane and Spitfire fighter-bombers, plenty of anti-submarine frigates, the navigational ability to locate a target four hundred miles away without getting lost even in daylight (Bomber Command complacently entered the war without any radar or radio research to improve on dead-reckoning). A Very Long Range maritime patrol aircraft would have been useful. But no single weapon could have wonder the war on its own. Ultra intelligence was probably the only asset that certainly shortened the war. Otherwise, it was the willingness of the Soviets to lose millions of people fighting a war of intensive and extensive attrition with Germany on the Eastern Front that won the Great Patriotic and World Wars.

The bare truth is that Sir Frank Whittle's idea was off the edge of the envelope. People were justifiably wary of punting public funds around the time of the depression when money was tight on something that nine times out of ten wouldn't work properly. We have the advantage of hindsight, the easy knowledge that suck, squeeze, bang, blow is so simple that it must work. Most of the private sector was sceptical as well.

Imagine if the Air Ministry had picked Whittle's idea up and accorded it super-priority. Which British aero-engine company would have had the capability and capacity to develop the jet engine any quicker? Bristols were having trouble with their sleeve-valve Perseus, Taurus and Hercules engines and couldn't manage to put the Centaurus into production until the end of the war, despite it being slated for entry in 1941 aircraft. Rolls-Royce had to abandon the Vulture and Peregrine in order to concentrate on the Merlin and Griffon. Napiers ( bought by English Electric in 1942) spent most of the rest war trying to make their Sabre reliable, but they never fully cured the problems and high maintenance workload. Hence the RAF ditched Sabre-engined aircraft as soon as possible after the war ended.

Reading the Daily Mail readers' comments the blame is due entirely to civil servants and politicians. If only private enterprise had been allowed free rein... Actually Rolls-Royce and Rover (yes, the car company!) wanted free rein in order to get the technology and squash Whittle's Power Jets company. They achieved this in 1944 when Whittle naively suggested that all jet engine development should be nationalised for the war effort. (Whittle, like many geniuses, had a blind spot in the practical application of his intellect and was a socialist - yet was never nabbed by the Communist spies when he was up at Cambridge doing his Tripos in the thirties - he was married). He put the idea to Sir Stafford Cripps (Kay Burley's old regiment) who agreed that only Power Jets should be nationalised - thereby securing all the useful knowledge and much cheaper than buying out the vastly bigger Rolls-Royce and Bristols as well. Whittle stopped being a socialist after that, although it was also a master class in capitalism.

But the one uncorrected howler in the Daily Mail article that raised my blood pressure is the assertion that the AVA (Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt) or Aerodynamic Research Establishment at Goettingen (aerofoil sections?) was the German equivalent of Boeing. Er, they manufacture aircraft. The closest equivalent to the AVA is the Royal Aeronautical Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough or NACA at Hampton, VA.

I've given up reading the Daily Mail's aircraft articles until they appoint an aviation correspondent. Someone like the late Sqn Ldr Bill Waterton who knows the difference between a pitot tube and a jet pipe. Knowledge of Kenny Katatonia or whoever is not required.

Gadaffi's Not Playing Cricket

2011-05-16T13:29:00.000+01:00

This headline caught my eye: Libya:ICC prosecutor seeks warrant for Gadaffi. Match-fixing? His bowling action (is Tripoli a variation on the googly?)

The ICC? No, the ICC but the ICC. That ICC.

Isn't it time for renaming to avoid Panda Wrestling?

I Want Another Referendum, Mr Clegg

2011-05-08T19:04:00.000+01:00

The LibDems drivel on about "localism" (which presumably means more power for LibDem councillors). I suggest that they could regain some of their "credibility" by pressing for a referendum on European Union membership. Most voters around today didn't have the chance to vote in the 1975 referendum and none of the "Big Three" partes offer a choice. If the benefits of EU membership are as clear as its supporters allege, then the Yes Campaign ought to win and the argument would be settled for another generation. However, Nicky, please accept that other people have a different opinion to you and they might win the referendum. But that's democracy without AV.

OBL's Last Words?

2011-05-07T20:16:00.001+01:00

(With thanks to James Thurber, 1894-1961)

Super-Injunction

2011-05-05T19:10:00.001+01:00

Blogging has been interrupted or delayed because of:

The Royal Wedding - lovely, let's have more of them

Osama Bin Laden - found, shot and hidden. I've never trusted Pakistan so I wasn't surprised that he was discovered up the road from the "Pakistani Sandhurst". He'd have been just as safe near the English Sandhurst unless he pissed off his neighbours or the Council Building Control with his building design. And why did Mr Evil, scion of the biggest Saudi Arabian construction company, apparently base the design on a Second World War RAF airfield watch office (control tower etc)without the Crittall-type windows? He obviously didn't employ an architect (they have them in Pakistan) as the quality of finish was abysmal - that rendering would never have got past Thud. Did OBL have a liking for 1950's British war films? Did he relax by donning RAF battledress DSO, DFC ribbons (whistle attached to left collar), jamming a briar in the corner of his mouth and spending hours looking at the far horizon waiting for Ginger 's overdue crate to lumber over the airfield boundary for a crash landing? As Muzzies aren't keen on dogs, he wouldn't have a black Lab so ditch the Bomber Command re-enactment idea.
One thing that Obama and the Americans got wrong was not getting the story right and sticking to it before blurting out and changing details. It reminds me of the raid to rescue the kidnapped Scottish aid worker from the Taliban. First of all a terrorist detonated his vest next to her and then it transpired that an inexperienced rescuer lobbed an unauthorised grenade. Obama should have said "We came, we killed him and you're next Colin, if you don't piss off out off Tripoli sharpish. Any questions? No? Good".

The lovely weather - excellent for getting out in the garden and catching up on jobs I'd been putting off.

The lovely weather - excellent opportunity for staying indoors and decorating. Why does moving furniture and books etc out and back in take almost as time as preparing the surfaces and painting (which can only be done accurately with my tongue sticking out, so I've discovered)?

Sciatica - at least as much trouble as Libya. However, with proactive ibruprofen (according to instructions), hot and cold packs and stretches to exercise my piriformis muscle, the intermittent pain and numbness is receding. At its worst I felt that If I could botox that sciatic nerve I would and then it felt like kidney pain instead. I've discovered about Hanna Somatics so I'm trying their exercises. Anything to be able to get back to walking miles without the sudden hot needle pain going down the back of my leg. By the way, decorating and gardening are very helpful for me as is a determination to break through the pain wall - I never believed those games narcissists like Coe when they wibbled on about it but I experienced something like it.

Super-injunctions - the intermission has made me consider the pernicious evil of the super-injunction and the anti-democratic development of privacy law over freedom of speech and transparency by virtually unsackable judicial activists. Judicial activism had a part to play in apartheid-era South Africa when putting a legal spanner in laws was the most effective peaceful means available to remedy the democratic deficit. Our Judges and the placemen of the ECHR are causing a democratic deficit in England and action must be taken to restore the proper constitutional balance. That is an independent Parliament that can be voted out by the electorate that passes laws for the Courts to follow, just as they obey the precedents of the remaining Common Law. Judges aren't meant to be creative, just sober, wise and fair to all.

That's Not What I Pay My Taxes For: Number 3

2011-04-23T22:41:00.000+01:00

Edward Miliband's nose job. If people find his nasal voice irritating he should embrace Austerity Britain and talk less. Never did Clement Attlee any harm. Why can't a Labour Luvvie pay for it instead?

Fellow Travellers And The Space Traveller

2011-04-23T17:58:00.000+01:00

What is it with the Establishment, especially the London Establishment? Just when I thought they had entered into a civil partnership with muzzie extremists they return to their first love and plan to install a zinc-resin copy of a Soviet-Era statue of Yuri Gagarin just off the Mall. It's fifty years since the 5'2" pilot followed several trailblazing dogs and completed an orbit of the earth. Ignore the fact that Kruschev wanted to show the American public that the intercontinental missiles that launched Sputnik could now deliver bigger nuclear weapons on the continental US. Why is British Council money being wasted on the aggrandisement of a failed genocidal state that collapsed in a haze of vodka over twenty years ago. Apart from the Gulag, the Kalashnikov and male-female shot-putters, what did the USSR do for us? Why not an exhibition on the successful Blue Streak and Black Arrow rockets and their cancellation by Establishment idiots?
Why not celebrate the British genius of Sir Frank Whittle properly? I can heartily recommend Robert Hardman's article and also the Whittle DVD. Admittedly, there is a statue of Sir Frank Whittle at the centre of the universe, which is right and proper, but putting him on a plinth in Trafalgar Square would show Cockneys that 99% of Britain's inventors flourished outside The Great Wen. Indeed, I'm amazed that Londoners allowed the belated erection of a statue of the great New Zealand fighter leader Sir Keith Park in Waterloo Place off Haymarket, when he deserves a place of honour for saving London during the daylight Battle of Britain. The fact that the Luftwaffe subsequently blitzed the country almost at will at night is best forgotten.
And the reference to Fellow Travellers in the title? Perhaps they are more properly Useful Idiots. Either way, the statue of Yuri Gagarin is more suited to the campus of the National Space Centre in Leicester.

That's Not What I Pay My Taxes For: Number 2

2011-04-22T17:33:00.000+01:00

£650 million aid to Pakistan. Lovely people, aren't they?

Arithmetic On The Frontier

2011-04-22T12:28:00.000+01:00

By Rudyard Kipling:

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after -- ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --
A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares -- shoot straight who can --
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap -- alas! as we are dear.

According to Wikiquote:

"Arithmetic on the Frontier was first published in Departmental Ditties and Other Verses in 1886. The poem was written about the Second Anglo-Afghan war, describing the conflict between highly-educated British soldiers and poor tribesmen." Progress.

The AV Referendum: A Question

2011-04-22T00:16:00.000+01:00

Why is it First Past The Post? Wouldn't listing one's preferences on the ballot paper be fairer? Wouldn't both sides in the debate have to "work harder" to represent more people's opinions?

Daily Mail Gives Pontiff A Makeover

2011-04-21T22:27:00.001+01:00

The correct word is beatification. Sub-editors beat spellcheckers hands down. Or reading what one has written.

Update: Daily Mail article amended to beatification and beatified at 11:17 pm.

"That's Not What I Pay My Taxes For": David Cameron 2011

2011-04-21T15:45:00.001+01:00

Apparently, over 80,000 people claim Incapacity Benefit because they are too fat or drunk to hold a job down. Well, not everyone can be an MP, Chairman or Chief Executive.

Dave "I shall wear morning dress at the wedding after all"* Cameron, drew a distinction between the "undeserving ill" and "people who are incapacitated through no fault of their own". Er, Dave, remember the righteous claiming that promiscuous gays who caught HIV/Aids through unprotected sex were martyrs of heterosexual oppression and were not to blame for their lifestyle choices. (4,030 on Incap with unspecified AIDS versus 1,830 for obesity).

Here's what I don't pay my taxes for (in no particular order as all are equally undeserving):

Overseas Aid
Wasted defence expenditure
Translation services
Giving prisoners televisions
Climate Change and associated Green Fraud
Benefits for immigrants
The European Union
Sham Charidees
The Electoral Commission
The Charidees Commission
MPs and Councillor's allowances
Footballer level salaries of Town Clerks and Senior Civil Servants

There will be more....

*The only decision left open to him and it was probably made by his spin-doctors.

Volcanic Ash One Year On: Why Was There No VC-10 K.3 Air Sampling?

2011-04-19T00:38:00.004+01:00

photo with thanks to Paul Hermans, Wikipedia

Remember this time last year when almost all commercial flying over the North Atlantic and Western Europe was cancelled because of volcanic ash from an Icelandic volcano that only Icelanders could pronounce? Eyjafjallajökull.

Remember how the airspace was closed because of predictions from computer models of the movement of volcanic ash particles that would wreck jet engines? The UK's Met Office was responsible for the North Atlantic and the NERC handled the operation of a twin-turboprop Dornier 228 capable of sampling up to 20,000 feet and a LIDAR-equipped BAe 146 four-engined short-haul jet that could reach 31,000 ft to take actual measurements. Unfortunately at the critical time, the BAe 146 was having a paintjob and had to be rushed out of the hangar...

However, back in 1983 the RAF ordered four VC-10 K.3 tankers, the last three of which (ZA148-150) had provision for air sampling pods (believed to be converted Sea Vixen drop tanks) to be fitted under the wing*. This was because the Vulcan B.2MRRs of 27 Squadron which hitherto performed this role were being retired and the squadron disbanded. In 2006 two VC-10 K.3s fitted with the pods flew to Japan to monitor the North Korean nuclear test. And again in 2009 according to the Times and PPRuNE.

It beggars belief that an aircraft with the transatlantic range (5,855 nautical miles without air-to-air-refuelling) and 38,000 ft service ceiling of the VC-10 was not used to gather data on the ash to confirm the computer model predictions. Flying could have been resumed earlier as aircraft could have diverted around the dispersed ash plumes. I googled ZA148, ZA149 and ZA150 and found plenty of lovely photos of all three aircraft flying before and after the imposition of the Atlantic NFZ.

Were all three aircraft unserviceable or otherwise engaged at the time?

* Either on the fifth (spare) engine attachment close to the starboard wing root or (more likely) in place of the outer wing hose drum refueling units.

Have They Lost The Nelson Touch?

2011-04-11T16:54:00.004+01:00

This advert at the top of the AoL homepage appears a smidge tactless in view of recent events.

Update 13/4/2011. A frigate has replaced the submarine:

Update 17/4/2011: Despite their world famous expertise with iPlayers or iPods, yes. I hope they have a fucketty-fuck-fuck button on Trident subs to press to undo a key-stroke error.

Update 17/4/2011: I reckon the silhouette is actually of a Type 45 Dearthing class destroyer. Still, no secrets lost.

Daily Telegraph Dispenses With Sub-Editors

2011-04-07T11:36:00.001+01:00

Do they even read what they write? As a rule of thumb, ancestors come before descendants. Mind you, if the descendants of posh people living today were able to defeat King Harold and put William the Bastard on the throne of England nearly a thousand years ago (1066-Ed) that is evidence of progress. For time travel, not social mobility.

On reflection, descendent is preferable to descendant because the root verb is third conjugation and its infinitive ends in -ere. Hence -ent. But how many Telegraph writers have even an O Level in Latin nowadays?

Why Does Pakistan Get An Apology But I Don't, Dave?

2011-04-06T13:00:00.005+01:00

You broke your promise to me to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and replaced it with a referendum to help the Limpdims.

Yet you visit Pakistan with an aid bribe of £600 million (how many Pakistani nuclear warheads will that buy, Dave?) to soothe the hurt feelings of the pyjamaed bomb-makers there and the postal vote scammers here in England. And you have the ignorant cheek (which took some doing after your "junior partner in 1940" gaffe ) to say "I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place." in answer to a question about how the Kashmir problem could be solved. The lad is too thick to say "By stopping killing each other and instead talk to each other sensibly". India and Pakistan were granted independence at their request in 1947. They have had 63 years to solve the problem that was caused by the Hindu Maharajah wanting his majority muslim state to belong to secular India instead of overtly muslim Pakistan.

If England was so awful to Pakistanis, why did so many people leave Pakistan after independence for a better life in England. Indeed, England remains so resolutely anti-Pakistan that arranged marriages are organised to import a shallow gene pool of Pakistani cousins into England to marry into the million plus Pakistani-heritage community.

An apology for the 7 July 2005 bombings and disproportionate involvement of members of the community in grooming of underage girls and fraud of all sorts (and don't explain it away as jizya from dhimmis) plus ain institutional refusal to integrate into British society ought to have been given by the Pakistani Prime Minister instead. Prime Minister? Oh yes a vestige of the parliamentary, civil service, legal system and armed forces that Britain gifted Pakistan at Independence. Just imagine how things could be now if Pakistan's ruling elite hadn't been even more corrupt and incompetent than its Indian counterpart.

Paypal And The EU

2011-04-03T11:15:00.001+01:00

I received an email this morning from Paypal headed "We Noticed An Issue With Your Account".

The email continued (with wider spacing than below):

"We need your help resolving an issue with your PayPal account.

What's the problem?

Please provide the necessary information by 18/05/2011. If we don't receive

the information in time, we are required by law to limit access to your
account. When PayPal limits an account, your funds may be held until we've

confirmed your identification as per the User Agreement".

Yeah, right spoof. So I forwarded it to spoof@paypal.co.uk . But I also opened my Paypal account. Jings! as Subrosa is wont to exclaim. Text in a red-lined box repeated the request. Apparently, the catch-all "EU Regulations" (EU Regulations cause global warming) required me to provide additional information about my business status (individual, mind your own Barroso!) to combat money laundering, fraud and confirm my identity. No matter that I have had a Paypal account since 2002.

No matter that the EU's accounts are riddled with more holes than very high throughflow sieve or that they have not been signed off by auditors for the past sixteen consecutive years. I shall write to Muddy Barroso
and inform him that unless he supplies financial detail sufficient to convince the Court of Auditors that the EU isn't a money-laundering gang by 18/05/2011, I will limit access by his EU cult to my affairs. Isn't it time to ignore such time-wasters who wish to create their own version of Angria, Gondal, Gaaldine and Oceania with its equally childish flag?

Teaching Arabs The Wisdom Of Beaufoy's Verses

2011-04-02T17:47:00.000+01:00

Libyan Rebels hosed off some Arab confetti at an A-10 Warthog and were surprised when 13 of them were killed and 7 injured by return fire. Why should they fire at an aircraft when NATO has established a No-Fly Zone for their protection?

The Beaufoy Verses, learned by heart by every responsible person handling a firearm, have never been translated into Arabic. The first verse, below, is the most important:

Never, never let you gun pointed be at anyone; that it may unloaded be matters not the least to me.

Young Johnny Simpson of the BBC said Arabs shooting off in an undisciplined fashion was a cultural thing that NATO has to learn. Er, no, it's the other way round you dhimmi moron. Arabs obviously use firearms to compensate for their inherent small penis anxiety.

Negligent discharge of a weapon is a cross-cultural offence and deserves severe punishment.

Religion

2011-04-01T21:27:00.000+01:00

Two religions, ten deaths. Both parties ignore the peaceful messages in their holy books. Innocent people pay the price of the primitive hatred of idiots who rely on the collected wisdom of camel herders instead of thinking for themselves.

Lessons Have Been Learned

2011-03-31T11:57:00.000+01:00

Don't send thugs on a seaside jolly at public expense.

How To Tackle Violent "Anarchist" Demonstrators

2011-03-28T16:35:00.001+01:00

Peaceful protest is a right that should remain available to everybody. Even, pace BBC and Police, the EDL whose demonstrations are such a drain on the public purse because rival fascists seek to prevent them by violent means.

However, when criminal damage or violent disorder takes place the right to protest is superseded by the necessity to keep the Queen's peace. I'm in favour of inserting the provisions of an updated Riot Act into the Public Order Act 1986, giving a Magistrate the power to order a hostile crowd to disperse peacefully within an hour by reading its proclamation.

If protestors refused, then they would be sprayed with water from water cannon. The Police could then arrest people who fluoresced under UV light.

Sentencing for public order offences ought to become more flexible and imaginative. How about withdrawal of student loan facilities?

What Do They Teach In Schools These Days?

2011-03-28T16:08:00.002+01:00

Watching the coverage of the Miliband March Against The Actual Increases In Public Expenditure But Changes Within Departmental Budgets And Yes We Would Have Smaller Cuts But They Wouldn't Cost Any Marchers Their Jobs on the BBC News Channel I spotted a red flag with a yellow hammer and sickle and the words Communist Party.
The Communist Party. Not the New Communist Party nor the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), but they might have been there as well. Digressing, don't they believe in Unity Is Strength anymore?
The Communist Party. I am of the generation that remembers 9/11 as the evening the Berlin Wall began to be knocked down (for the benefit of youngsters, 1989, the same year that the last hosts of the Olympic Games murdered thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tianmen Square, Beijing). That was the Communist Party of China that did that.
Are people so thick that the lessons of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Poland (1981) have already been forgotten? No, make that the whole of the Soviet Union's history and the postwar history of Eastern Europe. March with BNP or EDL banners and the Pavlovian training kicks in to produce a three minute hate from the BBC. Spout extreme left wing nonsense or wear "ironic" CCCP clothing and you are right on and green and cuddly.
Someone once wrote in a history essay that those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. That is not true of course, except for exams. However, I consider that the excellent work of the Holocaust Educational Trust in keeping alive the story of the shoa among schoolchildren ought to be copied in order to educate children about the equivalent evil of communism. Definitely something that Michael Gove should pick up and force past the barbwired minds of the teaching unions.

As a footnote, is anyone interested in a March Against Paying Interest To Overseas Owners Of UK Government Bonds That Costs £44 Billion A Year? £44 Billion? That's enough to send everyone to university free or care for our old people.

Update: A Good Thing - I don't reckon they read this blogpost though.

Libya: A Necessary Intervention But Not A Worthwhile One.

2011-03-23T15:54:00.003Z

Sometimes one has to do things that are not in one's best interests but which one's ethics make one do. The Libyan No Fly Zone is a case in point. Britain has no historic links with the country beyond the North African Campaign, a short term UN Mandate of Tripolitania (the western half) and the location of one of the penultimate time Britain set the world absolute speed record. Apart from that, Libyans are just the people who killed WPC Fletcher and blew up the Pan Am 747 over Locherbie. Let them kill each other and sort it out themselves would be the cold, logical response to the rebellion. After all, oil is just sticky black gunge until it's sold for folding money, which can then be exchanged for exploding stuff we make. Trade is amoral: so long as the price is right and contracts are observed, business is done.

However, I consider that the West has to set an example and help the underdog because our civilisation and ethical code is superior. The rebels cannot rely on the Arab League to help because "so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel." Arab policy and African policy is to side with the bloke with power and ignore right and wrong. The chap with power doles out money and weapons to his fellow tribesmen. Any problems can be blamed on the Iz-Ray-Eeelis or Whitey (from whom another dollop of misplaced guilt aid will be given). We have to help even if it means spending money we can scarcely afford on weapons and aircraft.

It's as if one was driving along a country road and saw a traveller's caravan on fire. One would naturally first call the fire brigade, but the human instinct to save another life would kick in as well. Imagine the only liquid one had was a very nice case of claret in the boot. Obviously, it would be preferable to process the claret through one's kidneys before dowsing the flames, but if the situation required it, the contents would go straight on the fire. One wouldn't expect gratitude for a good deed, indeed one might be berated for getting involved, but the imperative of saving life trumps everything else. It's what makes our society the best. It's what makes the West the best. And if anyone disagrees, well, they can start paying the bills. And I hope that DfID will be picking up the tab for the NFZ, after all it is aid to foreigners.

Why isn't the intervention worthwhile? Quite simply, worthwhile wars in which Britain is involved are either self-defence or for the benefit of countries that speak English, play both cricket and rugby union and Canada. They are countries that help us in return.

Digressing slightly, the lessons of Tunisia and Egypt have been ignored by the Hamas terrorists. FFS, if they want to convince a democracy that they want a peaceful solution to the Palestinian question* then peaceful demonstrations works better than blowing a bus up or mortaring Israeli civillians.

Finally, one good thing about the Libyan NFZ is that if Gadaffi and his regime are toppled, then the disgusting stain of the conduct of the Blair-Brown-Salmond regimes' appeasement of the criminal will be cleansed from England's Colours.

*which ought to be: why don't they accept they lost the land in war just as their ancestors conquered it?

Operation Ellamy - What A Daft Name For A War

2011-03-19T16:42:00.000Z

Ellamy. It sounds more like a Z list sleb's sprog or the subsequent chav copy name. Something to be put in those daft big wheeled buggy prams. Ellamy Hydrangea Smile Sleb. Sixteen years on, tattoos, TV chat show and Priory clinic holiday. They haven't got the right sort of people in the MoD codeword office anymore.
Remember the classic operations: Chastise, Overlord, Market Garden, Mincemeat. What's wrong with Operation Hannibal or Payback?

Was This Why Germany Abstained On The No Fly Vote?

2011-03-18T16:12:00.001Z

The Seventieth Anniversary of the Deutsches Afrika Korps arriving in Libya?

Cable Reaches Japan Nuclear Plant

2011-03-18T00:35:00.003Z

I read this headline on the BBC News Site and my first reaction was give the man a bucket. Well, he did say in December last year that he had the nuclear option. Reading further, it turns out it's a power line.

Good luck.

Update: the BBC rotters have edited the title on the original page overnight. Wish I'd screengrabbed the page.

Update 2: I found another page, linked and screengrabbed:

Some Questions

2011-03-17T16:52:00.002Z

About the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

1 Were they modified to solve the faults of the General Electrics Mark 1 design that were identified in 1972 and 1980?

2 Why are the Japanese relying on manned helicopters and water cannon to cool the reactors and spent rods? Japan is the world's biggest user of industrial robots because of labour shortages and consequent high wage rates. Japanese popular culture is very big on robots. Surely, working in nuclear reactors was the most obvious use of unmanned or autonomous vehicles/robots. An unmanned Chinook could be flown from Nevada on waterbombing sorties without fear of radiation poisoning and then buried when the job's done. If drones can zap terrorists in Pakistan then why can't they pick up buckets of seawater?

3 Is the lack of Black Swan thinking or ignoring known risks the secondary cause of the problem? I've worked with civil engineers and while they are excellent at civil engineering, they are extremely narrowly focussed thinkers. That's why they learn at least as much from bridge collapses as in the laboratory.

Sometimes I think that scientists and engineers are as much of a danger to the planet as religious nutters.

Update 18/4/2011: Robots from Qinetiq

Could A Windfarm Withstand An Earthquake Or Tsnunami?

2011-03-16T13:10:00.002Z

Libyan No-Fly Zone Is A Job For The Arab League.

2011-03-09T16:40:00.002Z

The Arab League. Pretty self-explanatory. The Libyan Air Force consists of perhaps a couple of dozen seventies technology Sukhoi Su- 22 ground attack aircraft and some attack helicopters. The Egyptian Air Force has over 200 latest model F-16C & Ds in service. Combine these with a USAF, NATO or even Saudi AWACS flying outside Libya and there will be no Libyan aircraft in the air in a day or so. A couple of dozen Russian made MANPADS supplied to the rebels would be more effective than the ZPU-4s. The Americans and French discovered that quad fifties were excellent against attacking infantry.
On the ground the rebels sorely need tactical advisors (was this what the unlucky SBS team was intended for?), not merely to show them how to defend and attack economically, but also to advise them how to construct IEDs to deny pro-Gadaffi armour and trucks use of the road "network". A couple of IEDs front and rear of an approaching column would allow free range for a half dozen Toyota Land Cruisers armed with heavy machine guns and RPGs to make bounce attacks out of the southern flank. Everything needed was learned in the Western Desert Campaign of 1940-43. Even I have read most of it. One lesson is that, except in unihabited parts of the desert, getting rid of insects was just about impossible. Hands had to be held over mugs and mess tins constantly to avoid sharing with a mouthful of flies.

Roll On 22 May 2011!

2011-03-07T22:37:00.000Z

These aren't religious nutters. I ought to tolerate their sincerely-held beliefs but I can't do so with a straight face. At least when scientists predict the end of the earth their estimates provide me with the necessary few billion years or so to finish everything without hurrying. And if I survive the sun's expansion across the solar system, I have a few more billion years to look forward to before entropy and a cold universe turns life into a wet Sunday in Aberystwyth.

PP&PPPPP

2011-03-07T18:42:00.002Z

Dear me. The apparently urgent Operation Al-Need to land a diplomat and "special forces" by helicopter in rebel-held Eastern Libya at 2 am last Friday was approved by our 14 pint (half pint) Foreign Secretary. Even Minging Campbellsoup, the Limpdim foreign affairs "statesman" (why are all former Limpdim leaders except Charlie Kennedy lauded as knowing their way around the globe?) has criticised the fiasco, and he's part of the Coalition. If anyone landed without notice on the lawns of Gallimaufry Towers in the early morning, I wouldn't be inclined to get the dates and goat stew ready; instead, a brick through the cockpit window and a pack of hungry badgers is worth a thousand words, though only two are neccessary.

One thing fashionably-maligned Field Marshal Montgomery was good at, as was his counterpart Field Marshal Rommel and just about every other German from unteroffizier upwards, was planning battles methodically. He was hated for it by the brigade level and above former cavalry chaps whose limited grasp of strategy was mainly learned from fox-hunting. It's all very well claiming that even the best plans fall apart once the enemy gets involved (they're allowed to do that in a war), but the planning process is a formal, flexible tool to gain an overview of the whole situation. Initiative, courage and elan are very noble military traits but phoning up beforehand to check is one of those boring things for which not even the Americans award a medal or a badge. Muddling through is wasteful and unnecessary.

Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Lessons will be learned. And then forgotten.

Sky At Night 700 Not Out

2011-03-06T19:40:00.001Z

With due acknowledgement to Sir Patrick Moore.

It's the 700th edition since 27 April 1957 tonight and Sir Patrick Moore's 699th. Well done! He's not just an accomplished xylophonist as the drawing above illustrates.

Happy 75th Birthday Supermarine Spitfire

2011-03-05T17:37:00.004Z

On 5 March 1936, test pilot Joeph "Mutt"* Summers took K5054 up for her first flight. "Don't touch a thing," he is reported to have told Chief Designer R J Mitchell and the small gathering of Supermarine staff after he landed. Twenty-two thousand more Spitfires and Seafires were built and, even though Hurricanes shot down more German aircraft, it won the Battle of Britain in the hearts of the British People, which is what really counted. The Spitfire is probably the most "right-looking" ever aeroplane, even knocking Concorde into second-place, so it is therefore the best ever aeroplane according to the first law of aircraft.

The Spitfire was Mitchell's second attempt at fulfilling a specification for an interceptor fighter. He was unhappy with his first, the Supermarine 224, an unwieldy obsolescent donkey of an aircraft, and persuaded the Supermarine Board to let him have another try. This produced the Spitfire.

I may have mythologised the actualite slightly and leant too heavily on The First Of The Few as an unimpeachable source, but that's the gist of things.

Ideally, production of the Spitfire would have ceased with the MkIX and replaced with licence-built Merlin Mustangs able to escort Bomber Command on daylight raids and help the fighters of US 8th and 9th AF beat the Luftwaffe fighter force more quickly. But hindsight is always 20/20.

The greatest gift to the RAF and Britain was that Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo was not Secretary of State for Air in the mid 1930s. Otherwise, Fighter Command would have been equipped (or not) with 95% new SE5as each costing as much as a destroyer to keep aircraft factories open.** Whereas the Westland Wapiti rehash of the De Havilland DH-9A was good enough against tribal troublemakers, against the Messerschmitt Bf-109E and combat-hardened Experten nothing less than a thoroughbred would do.

Thank you RJ Mitchell, thank you Supermarine, thank you Spitfire and happy birthday. I hope to hear the spine-tingling sound of Merlins and Griffons and look up to see that beautiful elliptical wing for many more years.

*"Mutt" Summers was so called, not because of the comic-strip character "Mutt" of "Mutt and Jeff" or because he was deaf, but because of his habit of taking a pre-flight leak against the tailwheel like a dog or mutt. A full bladder is potentially fatal in a crash.

** the Nimrod MRA4 development contract was signed by this accomplished presenter of tv train programmes in 1996. I accept that the obsolescent Whitley and Battle were produced long after they were needed, but they did enable a massively increased workforce to be trained to build better aircraft.

Why Can't England Be Like Greenland?

2011-03-04T17:14:00.000Z

Not the world's largest island that isn't a continent, as that would require canalisation of our western and northern borders and an awfully large (785,363 sq.miles) extension around our coastline, but an amendment to our constitutional position (last) in the United Kingdom. The other home countries have a Parliament or Assemblies with devolved spending and legislative powers. England has the Westminster Parliament with only 533 of the 650 MPs representing English constituencies. 117 MPs from Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland can vote on matters affecting English people. Neither they nor the English MPs can vote on devolved matters in their countries. Memo to Tunisia, Egypt and Libya: this is "democracy".

What I propose is that England becomes an autonomous country within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK would retain control of foreign affairs, security, and financial policy but England would be able to secede from the European Union if a referendum willed it.The Barnett Formula would be replaced by a new system of equal support based on actual population figures, thus England would receive its fair 83% of public spending.

Do You Know This About Meat? Update

2011-03-01T15:18:00.001Z

On 13 February I posted about the exemption under the slaughtering of animal regulations for Kosher and Halal requirements. The exemption from stunning before slaughtering was specifically for food for Jews and Muslims. So it is unlawful to slaughter meat for other people except as prescribed in the regulations. Yet many restaurants, takeaways, supermarkets and butchers offer kosher and halal meat for sale. There is no requirement to prove adherence to either religion when buying such meat.
I sent an FOI request to DEFRA to enquire how many prosecutions there had been since 2000 for breaching the regulations. This is the relevant section of its reply:

"I can confirm we have reviewed our record of prosecutions under WASK (Welfare of Animals Slaughter and Killing) and we have no record of any prosecutions involving the Schedule 12(2) requirements conducted by the Department since 2000."

Either the regulations are obeyed in law and spirit or there have been infractions but no prosecutions. That's fair enough as there are two sizeable hurdles to clear in the prosecution process:

1 Is there sufficient evidence to enable at least a 50% chance of conviction;

2 Is prosecution in the public interest?

If the matter is not prioritised then investigation and obtaining evidence to build a case will be under-resourced. The question of whether prosecution is in the public interest is a political one. Does the government want to potentially offend the loud Jewish and Muslim lobbies? The wrong end of the stick will be grasped and it will be wrongly claimed that human rights about religious freedom are breached by stricter control of the animal slaughter and killing exemption. Or can mainstream animal welfare activists be bought off with the cynical wording of Schedule 12(2) within the WASK regulations?

So it would appear that a soft-pedal approach is applied in this instance. However, another paragraph of the FOI reply states:

Regulation 1099/2009 is here. It's got added derogation and subsidiarity to protect slaughter in accordance with religious rites to protect Article 10 Human Rights. Note that there will be full consultation with all interested parties before any final decision on implementation takes place. Your comments as an individual carry the same weight as those of an organisation.

As I wrote in my previous post I disapprove of the unconventional slaughter methods on moral grounds, but do not seek to have the exemptions repealed because I respect the beliefs of the communities that require slaughter by religious methods and wish that the number of farm animals so slaughtered is kept to the necessary minimum. If you agree, please contact the Animal Welfare Team at DEFRA to register your interest and views. If selling off the Forestry Commission in England was U-turned so quickly, we have a chance here. Welfare of animals should be one of the pillars of the Big Society.

No-Fly Zone Is Still A Non-Starter

2011-03-01T13:20:00.001Z

I hope Dave hasn't been emboldened by the success of the risky Hercules flights into Libya to rescue mainly British oil workers and a dog. Just imagine if the aircraft had suffered a puncture or if the accidental rebel groundfire had killed aircrew or brought the Hercules down. Result = propaganda opportunity for Gaddafi and £45 million hull loss. So whilst congratulating the efforts of the RAF and RN, my previous opinion holds firm.

What would a No-Fly Zone involve? Apart from the fighter aircraft required, AWACS aircraft would be needed to manage to battle area, tanker aircraft would be needed to refuel the fighters and AWACS. Add Combat Search and Rescue Helicopters and MV-22s in case a plane goes down and you have something about half the size of the RAF. It's not as if the African Union is in favour of doing anything.

Finally, don't start one job before you've finished the other. Contrary to the PC view, multi-tasking isn't efficient. For the benefit of the Cabinet: AFGHANISTAN and IRAQ.

Update: 3 March. Dutch helicopter crew from HMNLS Tromp captured at Sirte. Let's hope they're released soon.

Aircraft Miscellany

2011-02-24T19:20:00.006Z

Here's a controversial thought: the Avro Shackleton ought not have been replaced by the HS.801 Nimrod. If the Nimrod had been a commercial threat to P-3 sales, the Americans would have stopped the project in the mid sixties when Britain was wanting an IMF loan with Uncle Sam's support: the Shorts Belfast production run was curtailed and C-130s were bought instead for that reason. Instead, the Vickers Vanguard should have been re-engined with RR Speys in overwing nacelles to provide additional lift and reduced stall speed by upper surface blowing. Jet flaps to create the Coanda effect had been successfully developed on the Hunting H.126 and the Boeing QSRA mod. of the dHC Buffalo proved the concept used on the Boeing YC-14 and Antonov An-72/74. A similar underfuselage fairing to that used on the Nimrod could have been fitted onto the Vanguard. The advantage of the Vanguard MR would have been a more modern base design with more scope for growth, and a smaller wing area with higher wing-loading (similar to the P-3 Orion) which would provide much smoother flight at low level. But BAC was too busy with the VC-10 and One-Eleven whereas Hawker-Siddeley's workload was low due to the end of both the Avro Vulcan and de Havilland Comet programmes. (Edit: I've just checked my copy of Tony Buttler's British Secret Projects: Jet Bombers Since 1949 and the story of the RAF's Shackleton replacement requirement needs a bit more explanation. The NATO Maritime Patrol Aircraft competition in 1957-8 produced the Breguet Atlantique but that wasn't good enough for the RAF. In the early sixties OR350/Specification MR218 was issued for which variants of the Comet, Trident and Shackleton were offered by Avro and BAC's versions of the Vanguard and VC-10 (with underwing panniers a la Wellesley). However AST.357 superseded OR350 in 1963 and the Shorts PD.69 was also tendered. It looked as though the Avro 776 trijet would win until the RAF realised its Shackletons wouldn't last until it came into service. And the Treasury wanted something cheaper. Consequently AST.357 was replaced in June 1964 by the panic ASR.381/MR.254 as good as an off-the shelf Atlantique, so long as it's ready by 1970 spec - without telling Hawker Siddeley! Avro schemed a minimum cost, minimum risk Comet development within a week which became the HS.801 Nimrod. The HS.800 development of the Avro 776 was rejected. as was the Atlantique and the P-3 Orion.

The end of organic naval AEW in 1978 due to the retirement of Ark Royal and the Fairey Gannet AEW3 could have been prevented by the conversion of, say, eight new Westland Sea Kings into AEW helicopters in the early 1970's. The rush job to convert two in 1982 took 11 weeks, consisting of attaching a modified version of the Nimrod Searchwater radar scanner in an inflatable radome to the starboard rear fuselage. As the Sea King entered RN service in ASW configuration in 1969, why wasn't even eleven years long enough to develop the AEW version in time? If cost had been such a driver, surely refitting the ex-Douglas Skyraider/ex-Fairey Gannet AN/APS-20F radar into a retractable fairing on the underside of an HC4-like airframe (like that fitted to the ASW Gannets or MR Shackletons) would have been better than nothing.

But the RAF claimed that it could provide long-range AEW for the Fleet by having the third-hand radars fitted into a dozen re-sparred Shackleton MR2s. MR2s had been replaced by MR3s which had been replaced by Nimrods. They were old, very noisy aircraft that could trace their ancestry back to the Avro Manchester (via Lancaster and Lincoln). The radar "suite" carried by the Shackleton AEW2 was unable to detect the altitude of targets. The USAF and USN had, since 1954, operated a version of the Lockheed Super Constellation known, eventually, as the EC-121 Warning Star. This had the same AN/APS-20 under the fuselage for air search and a height-finder AN/APS-45 antenna in a dorsal hump radome. The operators worked in a converted airliner environment. If only the RAF had decided to convert a dozen of their Bristol Britannia C Mk 1's into AEW aircraft instead. The newer, low hours Britannias went in the 1975 defence cuts whereas five of the Shackletons shook on until 1991.

Update: I've just read this excellent book and the story about MR and AEW aircraft for the RAF is a bit more complicated. Read the book: Amazon can actually obtain it in under a week. I can't wait to read the next book I find on the topic that makes this post even wronger!

Libya: No Fly Zone Is A Non-Starter

2011-02-23T19:49:00.001Z

Lockheed EC-130J Commando Solo III

The ongoing revolution in Libya is a testament to the bravery of the Libyan people who are slowly, and at great cost to themselves, overthrowing the regime of the evil tyrant Gaddafi. Foreign mercenaries have been terrorising unarmed civilians and the Libyan Air Force has been ordered to bomb rebel areas. Wholesale killing of one's own people is a common activity in Arab dictatorships unfortunately, practised in Iraq, Egypt Syria and Jordon.

There are calls for NATO to declare a "No-Fly Zone" over Libya to protect the Libyan rebels. That would be a declaration of war and could lead to escalation of the current fighting in unforeseen ways both inside Libya and in neighbouring countries. What if Iran weighed in to help its new ally threatened by the imperialist West?

I suggest instead that the response of NATO and the United Nations should be passive. The aircraft at the top of this post is a Hercules modified to broadcast radio and television signals. It would be easy for the Wing that operates it to transit across the Atlantic from Pennsylvania to an Airbase in Southern Italy and then fly sorties in international airspace off the Libyan coast.
Specialists would begin the psyops cold-war by broadcast appeals to Libyan Airforce pilots to defect and then widen the message to the whole of Libya by relaying BBC World Service radio and TV. It may be happening already but I'm not saying anything.

I just hope that Libya can be sorted out quickly and with as little loss of life as possible.

A Big Society First Needs A Small Society

2011-02-23T17:25:00.000Z

With thanks to Multi-Generational Life
Jim Baxter's recent post Cultural Differences pointed out how Muslim families in general take responsibility for looking after their elders within the home. In my experience this is mirrored in Hindu, Sikh and Chinese families as well.

Of course this practice happens as well, though to a much lesser extent, in white British familes. Before the creation of the Welfare State and the promise of care from cradle to grave, the alternative was charitable almshouses or, dreaded as much as the shame of a pauper's funeral, the workhouse. For reasons of love and duty and stubborn pride in standing on one's own two feet and looking after one's own, it was the social norm to care for aged relatives in the family home. The generations experienced each others' wisdom and charms. Toleration of differences and making allowances were vital lessons learned sharing an often crowded household. It wasn't perfect by any means but it worked for the few years of retirement that the grandparents had earned.

As British society grew wealthier and individual rights and expectations were recognised so, paradoxically, dependence on the State grew. People moved away from their home towns to seek better jobs and houses, equal opprtunities and equal pay legislation and contraception empowered more women to seek careers, and incomes and aspirations leap-frogged upwards. Despite all the alleged benefits of the modern age, people work as hard and as long as before to afford necessities that were luxuries or unheard of by their parents' generation. As a consequence, care for children and the elderly and infirm was gradually contracted out to the State. After all, the Welfare State was a right and it had been paid for through tax so people were only getting back their dues. What was intended as a safety net for the needy became an easy chair for all.

And so the majority of our old people live for their final months or years in nursing or care homes and hospitals. Often the family home has to be sold to meet care home fees, causing anger that the State has broken its promise and deprived the family of the parents' life's work and an inheritance for the children. Care of the elderly has become professionalised, taken from the amateur with intimate lifelong knowledge of the personality and tastes of the individual to changing teams who, with the best will in the world, can not provide bespoke care and understanding to patients they have only known as bundles of symptoms causing inconvenience and trouble.

Because caring was historically undertaken voluntarily within the family, it is now a low-paid occupation. Regrettably, this tends not to attract the best candidates. To improve their status and self-esteem, some carers consider themselves superior to their charges who, especially from the viewpoint of some workers from poor countries without a welfare state, are unwanted and at the bottom of the social pile because they would otherwise be cherished and cared for at home by their families.

Nursing was originally a caring profession for women acting in support of male doctors. With increasing aspirations for higher status and the increasingly technological nature of medicine, nursing has become a graduate profession. In addition, the curse of professional managers has resulted in increasing demands for productivity on wards. All activities must be paper-trailed to satisfy the accountants and lawyers. There is both less time for nurses to care for patients in the old sense and an unfortunate attitude that some jobs are infra-dig for BScs rather than duties to be taken in one's stride. Ensuring patients are fed and watered clean and finding five minutes in a day to hold a hand and chat are surely the minimum that should be expected.

But is it right that we offload our parents,the most valuable members of our families next to our children, onto the State? The State that struggles to grit roads in winter yet subsidises windmill companies, that loses our tax details, that wastes hundreds of £billions in schools that still fail to teach the basics of reading and writing to a quarter of pupils after eleven years? Would you lend your MP your car to drive?

Who do you trust with your family's lives? Who knows you all best? You and your wife. So before we moan that the government should work better, let's take a reality check and realise that the only people with our best intentions at heart are ourselves. We must rediscover what our ancestors knew through experience, that independence from charities or the State based on close family bonds , what I call the Small Society, is the best and strongest building block of a Big Society. For only when we can guarantee our families' well-being through mutual trust and self-reliance can we begin to trust and care for others. And only then can we honestly claim to have a Big Society fit for purpose. There will be a cost to our standard of living and our individualism may have to take a back seat occasionally, but the change from the rat race to the human race will be worth it. And the government, banks and big business will hate having their power challenged as we cast off their chains of unreachable affluence that bond us to them.

Phobia

2011-02-23T15:22:00.000Z

Phobia is a technical term used by psychiatrists, doctors, chemists and biologists for the following:

an irrational disabling fear;

hypersensitivity to stimuli;

an aversion to another chemical;

a dislike of environmental conditions.

Phobia is also misused as a lazy shorthand suffix by laymen to smear others and close down dialogue. Hence, the neologisms "Islamophobia" or "homophobia", for example, are just as offensive as the incorrect use of the psychiatric term schizophrenia to mean split personality. It is as illogical as the phrase "War on Terror". Why should any belief or non-belief system be afforded special protection? However, people who follow particular beliefs or none deserve the same protection under the law as everybody else because they are individuals. Much better and clearer to say irrational dislike or hatred of Muslims or Gays, because the irrational and hatred parts are unpacked and highlighted. If someone has a rational dislike of someone else, that's life, however much we would all like to be universally popular. Universal popularity has its downside in the form of endless cards, cakes and beer received and given.

Closing down dialogue and restricting free speech was the unintended consequence (let's be generous, here) of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill (which didn't do Racial) before it was wisely amended by the House of Lords. Due to a miscalculation by Tony Blair's whips (the man who "didn't do religion"), the amendments were not overturned by the Commons before the Bill became law in 2006. Full text here. As an aside, why aren't political beliefs afforded the same protection as the other special cases under the law? Why not just make incitement to hatred of anybody an offence? (Editor's note: it already is.)

Our Noble Lords and Ladies inserted a clause into the Act that ought to be asas famous as Magna Carta, the Ship Money case, Habeus Corpus or The Bill of Rights. Section 29J, which amends the Public Order Act 1986, reads as follows:

"Protection of freedom of expression
Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system."

That paragraph is all that stands between free-thinking citizens in England and a theocracy on a par with modern day Iran, Calvin's Geneva or Catholic Europe under the thumbscrew of the Spanish Inquisition. It is highly likely that if the well-meaning "faith community" had its way and was able to close down all dissent for reasons of happiness, equality and public safety (just as books were burned in Fahrenheit 451), not only I as an atheist would be treated like Michael Servetus, but the moderate religious organisations would also be persecuted by extremists seeking power.

So when you are accused of a phobia, why not return the favour by describing the accuser as manic? Both are incorrect usaes of technical teminology but sometimes it requires an ascent into ridicule to clear the air in order to see what is important.