Quotulatiousness

March 25, 2011

Libya operations do not support UK’s recent defence decisions

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

Lewis Page is doing an analysis of the current British involvement in Libya. He points out that many of the recent decisions by the British government are not being proven by the actual pattern of combat:

Recent combat operations by British and allied forces in Libya are beginning to tell us a lot: not so much about the future of Libya, which remains up for grabs, but about the tools one actually needs for fighting real-world wars against real-world enemy armed forces.

The vast bulk of our own armed forces are set up, equipped and focused on this type of mission — rather than the hugely more common one of battling guerillas and insurgents, as seen in Afghanistan — so the Libyan operations of the last week are very important to us at a time of shrinking budgets and worldwide turbulence. Libya is telling us how well the Coalition government did in its recent Strategic Defence and Security Review — and bluntly, it is showing that the Review was a fiasco.

Mr. Page has not been a fan of the Eurofighter, and sees the initial stages of the Libyan campaign as proving the investment is so much wasted money:

. . . highly advanced specialist air-to-air combat capability has not been necessary here. The RAF has rushed Eurofighter Typhoons to Italy — they were the first British aircraft to arrive there, in fact — but they are pure air-to-air planes at the moment (the RAF doesn’t expect to have them properly ready for use as bombers until 2018). The odds are that they will not fire a shot — and if they do it will be to swat down some rusty old MiG flown by a suicidal pilot. For this job, much cheaper fighters would have been more than adequate: say American F-18s or F-16s, or even our previous embarrassing Tornado F3, now retired.

So, point one: buying the Eurofighter remains a stupid idea on our part.

Canada’s F-18 aircraft have seen more combat in Libyan airspace than the RAF’s Eurofighters, because the F-18 has a ground-attack capability.

On the other hand, Mr. Page rejoiced at the overdue decision to scrap the Nimrod, but the ancient-but-terribly-expensive aircraft appear to have a valid role to play in Libya:

Point two: electronic warfare and AWACS planes are useful, even against the minor regimes who we might genuinely fight in the real world. The decision to keep both in the recent UK Defence Review was sensible (the Nimrod R1 Elint planes were marked for the bin — and have been temporarily been reprieved for duty in the Libyan situation — but replacement “Rivet Joint” aircraft are on order).

The use of the Tornado aircraft for very long range attacks seems like a waste of time and resources:

We are told in official announcements that some 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles were used in the initial strike at the weekend, launched from US and British warships and submarines off the Libyan coast. We are also told that “a number” of Storm Shadow shorter-ranged cruise missiles were launched from Tornado bombers. The Tornadoes had flown 3,000 miles from Kent Norfolk to do so, requiring the aid of repeated air-to-air refuelling assistance both on the way out and on the way back.

We can be pretty sure what the unspecified number of Storm Shadows was, as the Tornado can carry only one Storm Shadow into combat and we are told that a total of four Tornadoes have been assigned to Operation ELLAMY, the British contribution to the Libyan fighting. Some accounts suggest that in fact only three Storm Shadows were fired in the initial long-range Tornado raid.

[. . .]

Our lesson from a shooting war against a national air force — the first we have fought since 1982 — is that you don’t suppress enemy air defences of the sort you actually meet in the real world with deep penetration bombers and clever air-launched weapons (far less with stealth planes). You do it with AWACS and Elint planes and Tomahawks launched from the sea.

And speaking of the sea . . . what about the Royal Navy contribution to the Libya campaign?

Don’t we just wish we had a carrier off Libya now? Shame we scrapped ours just months ago. Nice work, Mr Cameron

There can be little doubt that the Harrier would also have been better for Libya. The Harrier fleet actually had more aircraft modernised to drop the latest smart weaponry — it was a superior battlefield strike plane — and it was cheaper to run. Best of all, it could operate from our also-recently-axed pocket aircraft carriers right off the coast and thus reach the theatre of action in minutes rather than hours. France and the USA both have carriers operating off the Libyan coast right now, but our foolish decisions in the recent review have left us on the sidelines.

Mr. Page still thinks the Royal Navy got royally shafted by the RAF:

Point four: The decisions taken over many years to whittle down the Harrier force to the point where it was barely viable – and then finally axe it in the Review — were totally wrong. Instead the Tornado should have been scrapped. Our present-day fleet of more than 130 of these cripplingly expensive-to-run, slow, lumbering low-altitude jets, assisted by similarly costly tanker planes, has offered us an utterly pathetic capability to deliver three or four dodgy missiles into Libya and a minimalist air support capability thereafter.

Even by the time of the Review, when the Harrier fleet was down to an almost unviable 44 jets, it would have made more sense to keep them, scrap the Tornado and buy or lease some nice cheap F-18s from America to bulk up our strike forces somewhat. The RAF should be ashamed of itself for manipulating the Prime Minister into keeping Tornado; heads should roll.

Is it too late to save the Ark Royal and Invincible? Yes:

To make the situation even more pathetic:

Once, this would have been a sight to strike fear into the hearts of any enemy fleet, a vivid portrait of the naval clout of this island nation.

But, today, these are two ghost ships. This depressing photograph taken yesterday is merely a reminder of the current state of the Royal Navy. Until recently, Britain had three aircraft carriers. The latest round of defence cuts means we have just one carrier — HMS Illustrious — and no planes on board. It only does choppers these days.

Invincible is bound for the Middle East. But Colonel Gaddafi need have no fears about this gallant old warhorse. In a few days’ time she will be off the coast of Libya but she won’t be stopping. She’ll be pressing straight on for Turkey where she is due to be cut up — or ‘recycled’ as an MoD spokesman insisted yesterday.

Back to Mr. Page’s conclusions (not that there should be any surprises based on the examples I’ve included):

Summing up, the lesson of Libya is that the recent Defence Review was, indeed, a dismal failure. RAF empire-preservation saddled us with the useless Tornado at the cost of our carrier capability. The army insisted on preserving pointless tanks and big guns and as a result we are not pulling our weight in Helmand — a war we more or less unilaterally started in 2005 — and we have no option to intervene on the ground in Libya seriously.

The navy made no real effort to help matters. It might have managed to preserve a carrier capability by making concessions on its pointless frigate flotilla, but this it refused to do.

[. . .]

But the chance to change things is not gone yet. So badly fudged were the Strategic Defence and Security Review’s figures that more reorganisation remains on the cards; in effect, a review of the Review is now very likely. The chance is still there to scrap the cripplingly expensive Tornado and Eurofighter altogether and replace them with cheap, excellent F-18s — so getting our carrier capability back in just a few years, as well. When the F-35C actually becomes affordable at last around 2025 we can buy some — by that point its Stealth and other new technologies might actually be becoming relevant for wars that might really happen, along the lines of Libya.

Polling numbers

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:54

The poll numbers will change over the course of the election as muck is raked, accusations are hurled, and reputations are assailed (assuming that the Conservative government is defeated in Parliament later today). The last poll was conducted by IPSOS for Global News:

I’ll try to update this chart as the polls are published. I doubt that the 19% lead the Tories had yesterday will hold up for the first few days of the election campaign, but anything is possible.

Update: As expected, the government has fallen, so the election is on. Tasha Kheiriddin congratulates the media on their success:

And they’re off. In newsrooms across the country, journalists are tossing their Team 2012 shirts on the trash heap, while the Team 2011 folks are collecting their $5 bets. Sure, they could have cashed in on Tuesday, but it’s always prudent to wait for the chickens to actually hatch. Or, in this case, come home to roost. After stoking election fever for months, the media now get to feast on the fruits of their labors: bad plane food, no sleep, and crazy deadlines.

CNN: US government finance requires both spending cuts and tax increases

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:26

Jeanne Sahadi at CNN Money insists that the government can’t control the ballooning debt situation by spending cuts alone:

If lawmakers wanted to permanently freeze the debt held by the public at the today’s level — 62% of GDP — they would need to immediately cut spending by 35% or about $1.2 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office. And those cuts would need to be permanent from hereon out.

How hard would that be?

Consider that in 2010, all of discretionary spending — including defense — totaled $1.35 trillion. In other words, to do deficit reduction all on the spending side means “you have to cut into the real meat,” said Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

Consider, too, how much fun lawmakers are having right now trying to negotiate spending cuts for this year alone. Their working range: Between $10 billion and $61 billion.

And here’s the kicker: Even permanently cutting $1.2 trillion today wouldn’t be the end of the story. Deficit hawks note that public debt at 60% is still well above the country’s historical average — which is below 40%. So more cutting would need to occur in subsequent decades.

The joker in the pack is that interest rates at the moment are incredibly low by historical standards. This is an aberration, not the “new normal”, and won’t last. If the government fails to take serious steps to reduce the debt now, it’s vanishingly unlikely that they’ll be able to avoid a default. It’s like running up a huge debt on a credit card with a low introductory interest rate: once the low interest period is over, the debt becomes payable at the higher interest rate. Pretending that tomorrow will never come is never a good planning strategy.

French stereotypes

Filed under: Europe, France, Health, History, Humour, WW2 — Nicholas @ 09:09

Even if we have to stop calling them “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”1, we still have all the other stereotypes to fall back on:

The myth of the great Gallic unwashed seems to have travelled back to the US after the second world war with GIs shocked to discover that a still largely rural population with scant access to hot and cold running water should, after four years of German occupation, not always consider irreproachable personal hygiene an overriding priority.

It is, unfortunately, sustained by the odd wayward statistic. According to one 1998 survey only 47% of French people take a daily bath or shower, against 80% of Dutch and Danes. Worse, France’s own health education council calculated that if those 47% were being honest, the country’s annual soap consumption should be 2.2lb a head, whereas it happened to be 1.3lb.

Another 1998 report found that only 60% of French men and 75% of French women pulled on clean underwear every morning.

March 24, 2011

Reason.TV: That’s why they fought

Filed under: History, Humour, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Deconstructing “Friday”

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

Jon sent me this link, saying “you owe it to yourself to read up on Rebecca Black and her self-published (in the worst sense of what that used to mean) music video, Friday. You need to see the video and absorb the meme to really enjoy this epic piece of work:”

She offers the camera a hostage’s smile, forced, false. Her smoky eyes suggest chaos witnessed: tear gas, rock missiles and gasoline flames. They paint her as a refugee of a teen culture whose capacity for real subversion was bludgeoned away somewhere between the atrocities of Kent State and those of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the start of a creeping zombification that would see youthful dissent packaged and sold alongside Pez and Doritos.

“Look and listen deeply,” she challenges. An onanistic recursion, at once Siren and Cassandra, she heralds a new chapter in the Homeric tradition. With a slight grin, she calls out to us: “I sing of the death of the individual, the dire plight of free will and the awful barricades daily built inside the minds of all who endure what lately passes for American life. And here I shall tell you of what I have done in order to feel alive again.”

***

Ms. Black first appears as her own computer-generated outline: wobbly, marginal, a dislocated erasure. The days of the week flip by accompanied by dull obligations — “essay due” — and tired clichés — “Just another manic Monday…” Her non-being threatens to be consumed by this virtual litany of nothing at all until, at long last — Friday.

[. . .]

Yet here the discerning viewer notes that something is wrong. Because it is a simple matter of fact that in this car all the good seats have already been taken. For Rebecca Black (her name here would seem to evoke Rosa Parks, a mirroring that will only gain in significance) there is no actual choice, only the illusion of choice.

The viewer knows that she’ll take the only seat that’s offered to her, a position so very undesirable as to be known by a derisive — the “Bitch” seat.

She might well have been better off on the school bus, among the have-nots. But Rebecca Black’s world is so advanced in the craft of evisceration that this was never a consideration. John Hughes died while out jogging, these are the progeny of his great materialist teen-villain, James Spader, a name that would come to be synonymous with desperate sex and high-speed collision. And as she gets in the car Ms. Black’s joy is as patently empty as her liberation.

“Partying, Partying,” she sings, in hollow mantra.

“Yeah!” an unseen mass replies, a Pavlovian affirmation.

Even if the government falls, we’ll still be paying through the nose

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:12

A round-up of what happens if the government falls includes this nugget of information for anyone who hoped the spending would at least slow down while the politicians are off on the campaign trail:

To fund the daily operations of government without a budget, the Governor-General will typically issue special warrants that allow government departments to take funds from the federal bank account (officially known as the Consolidated Revenue Fund) without having to get Parliament’s approval. The money must be “urgently required for the public good” according to the House of Commons Procedure and Practice manual, and the Treasury has to show that no existing funds have been set aside for the payments. The special warrants run from the date that parliament dissolves until 60 days after an election and the government has to give the next Parliament a list of everything they have spent within 15 days of the new government taking office. The money still needs to be retroactively approved by the new Parliament and included in their upcoming budget.

“Ultimately Parliament has to come back an approve the budget but there are these ways of getting interim finance when parliament has not passed a budget,” said Ned Franks, an expert in parliamentary procedure and professor emeritus at Queen’s University.

Thanks to some abuse of the system while Brian Mulroney was prime minister, the system was amended in 1998 to limit the use of special warrants to only those times when Parliament has dissolved.

China’s “sexy spies” score another intelligence goal

Filed under: China, Japan, Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Strategy Page says that the Chinese are “probably the most enthusiastic, and successful, users of this technique these days”:

China is widely known to use sex to obtain secrets from foreigners, inside and outside of China. Four years ago, Japan uncovered a widespread Chinese effort to use sex to steal military technology. Attractive Chinese female intelligence agents in Japan were marrying members of the Japanese armed forces, and then using that access to obtain military secrets. The situation was complicated by the military attempts to keep these “embarrassing incidents” secret. The government was particularly anxious to keep the Americans in the dark about all this, since the Chinese apparently got their hands on Aegis anti-aircraft system technology via their sexy spies.

Actually, most of the Chinese agents don’t have to marry Japanese troops. Just putting out usually does the trick. In Japan, the military doesn’t get much respect, and many of the bases are in backwaters. So the troops are pretty lonely. It’s not unusual for Chinese women to be in the country, as many come, legally or illegally, looking for jobs. The set-up is perfect for using the old “honey pot” (sexual entrapment) routine to extract military secrets.

The military geeks are the most sought after, as these guys have access to the most valuable military secrets. Geeks tend to be least experienced with women, and most vulnerable to a clever, and shapely, Chinese spy. Military commanders are not sure if they have the problem under control, but now that the situation is out in the open, there will be more efforts to tighten up security. As the Japanese expected, the Americans were not amused. And the Chinese honey pot scandal was apparently one reason for refusing to sell F-22s to Japan. To make matters worse, part of the Japanese cover-up involved prosecuting the Chinese spies on immigration, not espionage, charges.

Stone the CROWS: US Army’s next step to robotic combat

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:46

It may not herald a new droid army, but it’s a welcome development for front-line troops:

The Protec RWS is the key component of the U.S. Army CROWS (common remotely operated weapon stations). This idea of a remote control turret has been around for nearly half a century, but years of tinkering, and better technology, have finally made the remote control gun turret finally work effectively, dependably and affordably. This has made the RWS practical for widespread combat use. While some troops miss the greater feeling of situational awareness (especially being able to hear and smell the surroundings) you got as an old-school turret gunner, most soldiers and marines have adapted and accepted the new system. What it lacks in the smelling and hearing department, it makes up in terms of night vision and zoom. And it’s a lot safer.

CROWS is a real life saver, not to mention anxiety reducer, for troops who drive through bandit country a lot, and man the turret gun. You’re a target up there, and too often, the bad guys get you. Not with CROWS. The gunner is inside the vehicle, checking out the surroundings (with night vision, zoom and telephoto capabilities). CROWS also has a laser rangefinder built in, as well as a stabilizer mechanism to allow more accurate fire while the vehicle is moving. The CROWS systems (RWS, weapon and installation) cost about $260,000 each, and can mount a variety of weapons (M2 .50 caliber machine-gun, MK19 40-mm automatic grenade launcher, M240B 7.62mm machine-gun and M249 5.56mm squad automatic weapon). CROWS comes in several different configurations, based on weapon mounted and armor installed (light, at 74 kg/163 pounds, standard, at 136 kg/298 pounds and CROWS II, at 172 kg/379 pounds.) The heaviest version is usually used in MRAP (armored trucks) and has a better user interface, a thermal imager and sniper detection system.

By the end of 2006, there were about a thousand CROWS in service. There are now nearly 8,000. Many of the enemy fighters have seen Western or Japanese films featuring killer robots, and often think that’s what they are facing. The fear factor is real, and it helps. The accuracy of the fire, and uncanny speed with which the CROWS gun moves deliberately, is due to something few officers expected. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating computer systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls. This was important, because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements (and any firepower the enemy sends your way). But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around, and picking up any signs of danger.

Online security: compromised HTTPS certificates

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:25

Iranian hackers (or someone trying to cast blame on Iran) managed to get a number of HTTPS certificates issued under false colours:

On March 15th, an HTTPS/TLS Certificate Authority (CA) was tricked into issuing fraudulent certificates that posed a dire risk to Internet security. Based on currently available information, the incident got close to — but was not quite — an Internet-wide security meltdown. As this post will explain, these events show why we urgently need to start reinforcing the system that is currently used to authenticate and identify secure websites and email systems.

[. . .]

Comodo also said that the attack came primarily from Iranian IP addresses, and that one of the fraudulent login.yahoo.com certs was briefly deployed on a webserver in Iran.

March 23, 2011

Breaking! New iPhone 5 features revealed!

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:49

Image from PC World article which is a bit more serious than the graphic might indicate.

Naming conventions, military style

Filed under: Africa, France, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

Jon sent me this link on the highly inappropriate name given to the military actions against Libya:

As Jonah Goldberg wrote, the name approved by Barack Obama, Odyssey Dawn, sends a slightly different message than perhaps intended:

Odyssey, after all, is a term for a very long and involved adventure. If memory serves, Odysseus took a very long time to come home. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the Pentagon came up with a label that basically says this is beginning of an extended, seemingly endless, journey.

I had the exact same thought — and shouldn’t a man with a classical Ivy League education have caught that reference? Even if Obama was not familiar with The Odyssey, the dictionary definition of “odyssey” should have raised a red flag:

Definition of ODYSSEY
1: a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune

For a mission that is supposed to be counted in “days, not weeks,” it looks like Obama’s choice of mission names is an epic failure.

I’d written, quite some time back, about the national differences in how Anglosphere nations named their military operations:

I often note with amusement the significant differences in naming conventions for military operations between the US and the rest of the “Anglosphere”. A typical US Army operation might be “Operation Devastating Earthshatterer”, while a British or Canadian equivalent might be “Operation Broken Teaspoon” or “Operation Goalie Glove”. (I’ll pass up on the urge to attribute something mockery-tinged to French codenames . . . but only because Babelfish didn’t give me a useful translation for “Operation Wet Knickers” or “Operation Big Girl’s Blouse”).

Not that there’s anything wrong with a dose of belligerant overkill in your naming conventions. . .

How quickly things change: the former “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” have become the leaders of the military coalition, while the Americans were on the verge of transforming into “burger-eating surrender monkeys”.

Harper government teeters on the edge

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

Tasha Kheiriddin thinks this has been a deliberate trap laid by the Tories and that the opposition have tumbled right into it:

The Foyer of the House of Commons turned into a beehive on speed. Within the next hour came reports that the NDP and Liberals were moving staff into their war room. Mr. Layton, gaunt but with a glint of steel in his eyes, strode stiffly by the CBC booth, leaning on his cane, turned to a group of journalists and smiled: “Looks like an election”. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff tweeted the first slogan of the coming campaign “An out-of-touch budget from an out-of control government.”

But Mr. Ignatieff is dead wrong — on both counts. This is very much an in-control government, which played its cards brilliantly in the face of not one, but two confidence motions this week. By falling on the budget instead of the contempt of Parliament motion, the Tories escape the stigma of being the only government to ever have been found in contempt by the House. This gives the Opposition less mud to throw their way, which is helpful in light of the brewing Carson scandal, and puts the focus back on the economy, the Tories’ campaign issue of choice.

It is also a very in-touch budget — in all the ways that benefit the Conservatives. The Tories have reached out and touched most of their key voter groups: homeowners, families, seniors, the military, and rural Canadians. They ignored less promising sectors of the electorates, including Quebec, though it is likely they are saving a Quebec HST announcement for the campaign. Had they included it in the budget itself, the Bloc would have been force to support it, which would have meant no election — yet another sign that the Tories were more interested in going to the polls than getting a deal.

Lots of pundits have (correctly) called the budget a “boutique”: small but attractive lures for many of the key constituencies, so that the Tories will have lots of opportunities on the campaign trail to characterize the Liberals as “taking away” promised benefits. It may never have been intended to be implemented: it works far too well as a campaign paper.

To the despair of small-c conservatives, the budget does not address the things that matter to that market. As Kelly McParland points out, it’s really a Liberal budget in a blue wrapper:

[The Toronto Star] is a big [Liberal party] supporter. It would like nothing more than to help orchestrate a return of Liberal hegemony to Ottawa. Yet it’s having trouble finding bad things to say about the budget over which the Liberal leader is determined to force an election.

Here are Wednesday’s headlines from The Star:
Page 1: “2011 Federal Budget Highlights: A Sprinkling of Cash for Almost Everyone”
Page 6: “Budget Promises $300 Tax Credit for Family Caregiver”
Page 8: “Tories Blueprint Looks a Shade of Liberal Red”
Page 9: “Low-income Elderly to Get Supplement Boost”
Page 9: “Tories Revive Retrofit Funding”
Page 9: “Job Creation Still Key Priority in Federal Budget”

Yes, the Star managed to editorialize against the budget, arguing it “fails [the] nation’s needs,” but Finance Minister Jim Flaherty could happily stand at the Toronto GO station handing this newspaper to commuters and seeking their support.

US government financial plight: more reasons to worry

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:21

The ever cheerful Monty brings us another helping of financial DOOM:

Our whole “plan” (to the extent that our government even has a plan for getting us out of this mess) is founded on the belief that our borrowing costs will remain low — that the interest-rate environment will remain at or near zero indefinitely. Well, it won’t, and I don’t think enough people are thinking about what a huge dent interest-payments on the debt is going to put into our budget. Our entire federal budget will be eaten up with four things: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and debt-service payments. That means any additional spending (like, oh, say, the military) will have to come from borrowed money…which will have to be borrowed at higher rates, which in turn causes debt-service costs to rise yet again. This is the vicious debt-spiral many European countries now find themselves in.

What has basically happened during the past forty or fifty years is that we’ve spent most of our actual capital — mainly on our vast welfare state and government apparatus, but also on our huge military. We are like a couple who lives paycheck-to-paycheck: any money that comes in goes right back out. Nothing gets tucked away. An unexpected expense — a busted water-heater, broken-down car, or an unexpected illness or injury — all of a sudden puts you in a hell of a financial hurt. So you borrow. You can’t really afford even the payment much less the whole loan, but what can you do? You may even cast caution to the winds and buy that jet-ski you’ve had your eye on (on credit, of course). Why not? You’re already screwed; being screwed a little bit more hardly matters at this point, right? Then something else breaks and you have to borrow again (if you can), and the monthly bills start to pinch you where you live — it’s either service your debt or pay the rent, because you can’t do both. At that point, the spinning plates will come crashing down — you will either default on your debt to avoid starving your family into oblivion, or you will force your family to live like animals in a cave so you can pay off the debt you ran up.

So the frustrated call goes up: “Okay, we’re boned! I get it! But what can we do about it?” Answer: I don’t know. Maybe nothing, at this point.

[. . .]

I’ve often said that circumstances will impose a solution on us if we don’t find one ourselves — we simply cannot continue as we are. And the reckoning is not comfortably far off in the future; it’s unfolding right now, before our very eyes.

Re-inventing pastis for a modern audience

Filed under: Europe, France, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:04

From the description, what is called pastis in France is marketed in Ontario as Pernod, one of my favourite beverages:

It is as French as berets and pétanque but now drinks groups are trying to boost flagging sales of pastis by shaking off the national drink’s fusty image and recasting it as a trendy long summer drink.

The French use the phrase “je suis dans le pastis” to mean in trouble and the foggy liqueur is indeed in trouble — eclipsed by whisky as the country’s favourite tipple.

Although 120m litres of pastis are still knocked back in France annually, sales are declining at a rate of about 1% a year and, like brands such as Baileys in the UK, it is heavily discounted in supermarkets.

Now market leader Pernod Ricard says it is trying to “redefine the pastis drinking experience” by marketing a new drink “piscine” — French for swimming pool — a heavily diluted pour of its Pastis 51 brand.

One of the things I find most appealing about Pernod is that it can be diluted quite a bit without becoming “watery”. It fills a number of different “roles” in the alcoholic beverage category, unless you’re one of those weird folks that don’t appreciate the anise flavour.

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