Quotulatiousness

March 16, 2010

This is taking nostalgia too far

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, WW2 — Nicholas @ 07:18

Britain survived the second world war partly through the early introduction of rationing — there were too many people to be directly supported from British farms, so food importation was critical. My mother told me that rationing was actually an improvement in basic nutrition for a lot of working class families: they got a wider variety of foods, even if it wasn’t of high quality. George Orwell’s pre-war writing solidly confirms this for miners and their families (probably the best known example is The Road to Wigan Pier).

All this being said, I still think that this is taking nostalgia too far:

I’m intrigued by this Time Out review of Kitchen Front, a restaurant at London’s Imperial War museum that serves accurate re-creations of the (mostly horrible) food eaten in Britain during WWII’s rationing period. Time Out gave it two star for food quality and full marks for accuracy (in the print edition, at least — they haven’t recreated this online). It sounds like a uniquely wonderful and horrible dining experience, especially as the food is prepared by a well-loved firm of caterers who’ve really gotten into the spirit of things.

March 9, 2010

QotD: Early America

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:30

Early America enjoyed, perhaps, a little more participatory local democracy than Britain, and had a slightly broader electorate and already the highest standard of living in the world. But the revolution so rapturously mythologized by Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry and others, was really, as Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison and Adams did not forget, a somewhat grubby contest over taxes.

In one of the greatest feats of statesmanship of all history, the Americans, and especially Benjamin Franklin, persuaded the British to expel the French from North America, and then persuaded the French to provide the margin of victory in evicting the British themselves. This precocious manipulation of the world’s two greatest powers by a group of colonists showed astounding finesse and precocity, made more piquant and ironic by the fact that their rebellion was against paying the colonies’ share of the cost of removing the French, and the French were recruited to save the Americans their proportionate share of the cost of their own eviction.

All countries swaddle themselves in myths, and the Americans aren’t more self-indulgent than others; only more successful and operating on the grand scale of a country that in two long lifetimes grew to possess completely unprecedented power and influence in the world.

Even without the great pre-eminence of America, the founders of the country possessed a presentational skill that vastly exceeded the procession of demagogues and lunatics that sent and followed each other to the guillotine in the French Revolution. And they were certainly more persuasive and sophisticated than the British spokesmen for constitutional monarchy.

But their unintended legacy of this gift for theatricality is the endless hyperbole and hucksterism of American materialism and individuality.

Conrad Black, “Send in the clowns”, National Post, 2010-03-09

Opening the door to arbitrary punishment

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:33

Cory Doctorow talks about why the proposed “three strikes” internet ban is such a stupid idea:

March 5, 2010

The winds of change: UK’s Met Office to abandon seasonal forecasts

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:01

You’d almost think someone was paying attention. Britain’s Met Office has given up providing seasonal forecasts:

The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after it came in for criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.

It was berated for not foreseeing that the UK would suffer this cold winter or the last three wet summers in its seasonal forecasts.

The forecasts, four times a year, will be replaced by monthly predictions.

The Met Office said it decided to change its forecasting approach after carrying out customer research.

Explaining its decision, the Met Office released a statement which said: “By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.

That last point is why, in years gone by, newspapers used to have much amusement contrasting official weather forecasts with non-scientific publications like the Old Farmer’s Almanac, where just often enough to be newsworthy, the annual’s predictions were more accurate than those provided by “real weathermen”.

March 4, 2010

How to tell when the bureaucracy has won

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

It’s when you have 18 firefighters standing around for six hours debating about whether the rules allow them to rescue a dying woman:

An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.

A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public. A memo had been circulated in Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations months previously stating that it was for use by firefighters only.

The Scotsman has more:

During the hearing, solicitor Gregor Forbes asked Mr Rooney: “On the basis of the manpower and equipment that you had available, is it your view it would it would have been possible for the firefighters to have brought the person to the surface before the mountain rescue team?”

He replied: “Yes, I believe so.”

The now-retired fire officer said the memo had been circulated around Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations in March 2008.

Mr Forbes said: “Your position is that, while you were supplied with safe working-at-height equipment, while this could be used to bring up firefighters, it could not be used to bring up a member of the public.”

Mr Rooney, 51, told the inquiry at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court: “Yes, that’s correct.”

All 18 firefighters at the scene were trained and capable of using the equipment, he added.

Of the memo four months before the incident, he was then asked: “If Mrs Hume had fallen down the shaft on 13 March, instead of 26 July, you could have used a lowering line?”

Mr Rooney replied: “We could have.”

I lack words to express my outrage and disgust with the “men” who allowed themselves to be restrained by a memo in this situation.

H/T to Natalie Solent for the link.

March 1, 2010

UK Photographers . . . act now, or lose your rights

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:52

Philip Dunn has all the bad news, photography-wise:

Photographers to lose copyright protection of their work

This startling and outrageous proposal will become UK law if The Digital Economy Bill currently being pushed through Parliament is passed. This Bill is sponsored by the unelected Government Minister, Lord Mandelson.

Let’s look at the way this law will affect your copyright:

The idea that the author of a photograph has total rights over his or her own work — as laid out in International Law and The Copyright Act of 1988 — will be utterly ignored. If future, if you wish to retain any control over your work, you will have to register that work (and each version of it) with a new agency yet to be set up.

I had wondered where Lord Mandelson had picked up his “of Mordor” sobriquet. Now I know. Oh, and it gets even worse:

Photographers are to lose all effective rights to take photographs in public places.

Not content with taking away photographer’s copyright, another section of this Government is proposing sweeping changes to your freedom to take pictures in public places.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has deemed that a photograph taken in a public place may now be considered to contain ‘private data’.

This means that if you take a picture in the street and there is a member of the public in the shot, that person has the right to demand either payment — if you wish to publish the image — or that you do not publish it. In fact, according to the ICO. There does not actually have to be an objection, it is up to the photographer to ‘judge’ whether the subject might object. Now work that one out if you can.

You may think this won’t affect you . . . but if you’ve got a camera in your cell phone or MP3 player, it’s going to have an impact. Contact your MP now and explain that you don’t approve of this drastic change in the law and try to get it tossed out before it becomes law.

February 26, 2010

US Navy SEAL teams to use British mini-sub

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

Lewis Page discovers that the latest minisub for the US Navy’s SEAL teams is actually made in Britain:

A groundbreaking new miniature submarine in use by the US Navy’s secretive, elite frogman-commando special operations force was actually designed and built in old Blighty, the Reg can reveal.

We reported first on the S301 mini-sub two weeks ago, noting from federal documents that the famous US Navy SEALs had leased a demonstration model for “doctrinal, operational, and organizational purposes”. This was followed up last week by the Honolulu Advertiser, which had spoken to Submergence Group, the American firm listed by the US government as provider of the S301.

It emerged that the S301 — now in trials with the SEALs in Hawaii — had cost just $10m to develop, which contrasted especially well with the $885m+ spent on the ill-fated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS).

The ASDS, from US defence behemoth Northrop Grumman, had been intended to supersede the SEALs’ current Mark 8 Mod 1 minisubs, which are carried in a “Dry Deck Shelter” (DDS) airlock docking bay fitted to a full-sized US Navy nuclear submarine — either a normal attack boat or an Ohio-class dedicated Stingray-style special-ops mothership. The Ohios, nuclear missile subs retired from their old job under arms-reduction treaties, have space aboard for a large force of SEALs and pack a powerful armament of conventional-warhead cruise missiles for precision shore bombardment.

February 23, 2010

BBC accused of bias in euthanasia debate

Filed under: Britain, Health, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

The BBC’s decision to broadcast Terry Pratchett’s speech on euthanasia tribunals is cited as evidence that the corporation is acting as an advocate on this highly emotional issue:

The Care Not Killing Alliance accused the BBC of flouting impartiality rules and adopting a “campaigning stance” in an attempt to step up pressure on the Government to legalise assisted suicide.

The decision to broadcast Sir Terry Pratchett’s speech advocating “euthanasia tribunals” in full earlier this month was an example of unbalanced reporting, the alliance claimed.

Lord Carlile, chairman of the alliance and the Government’s independent reviewer of terror legislation, has demanded a meeting with BBC bosses to seek answers over the “biased” coverage.

In a letter to Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC trust, the Liberal Democrat peer also raised questions over the corporation’s failure to inform police that a veteran presenter had confessed to killing his lover on one of its programmes.

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

February 19, 2010

Bosworth Field, real location now made public

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

As I mentioned back in October, archaeologists have located the actual site of the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Now that they’ve had time to do more research and examination, they’ve gone public with the location:

The true site of one of the most decisive battles in English history has been revealed.

Bosworth, fought in 1485, which saw the death of Richard III, was believed to have taken place on Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire.

But a study of original documents and archaeological survey of the area has now pinpointed a site in fields more than a mile to the south west.

A new trail will lead from the current visitor centre to the new location.

[. . .]

The original announcement was made in October but the exact location was kept a secret until now to protect it from treasure hunters.

Researchers also believe they have identified the medieval marsh where Richard III was dragged from his horse and killed.

February 18, 2010

MoD denies reports that Falklands naval presence to be reinforced

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:21

The BBC reports on British military preparations in the Falklands, after Argentina imposed tighter controls on the seas around the islands:

The UK has made “all the preparations that are necessary” to protect the Falkland Islands, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.

Argentina has brought in controls on ships passing through its waters to the islands over UK plans to drill for oil.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague told the BBC the Royal Navy’s presence in the region should be increased.

The Ministry of Defence has denied reports a naval taskforce is on its way to the Falklands.

While it’s unlikely that we’ll see a re-run of the 1982 Falkland war, recall that it was a reduction in British force in the region that gave Argentina’s military junta the opportunity to invade. Britain appears to have learned from that mistake.

February 11, 2010

Britain to try new method of trimming defence budget: locking the generals out

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:40

It’s an unusual way of “[fixing] the counter-productive incentives within the system”:

Lord Drayson, the British arms industry’s man inside the Ministry of Defence, has moved to lock the heads of the armed services out of the room in which the Forces’ future is to be settled. This is being billed as an attempt to prevent interservice bickering, but it will leave the rapacious UK arms business facing almost no uniformed opposition in its bid to pocket more government cash.

The Financial Times, having seen a copy of a speech to be delivered by Drayson, reports that a new MoD committee set up to “review direction and affordability” will not include the heads of the army, navy and air force “because we need to fix the counter-productive incentives within the system”, according to Drayson.

“We need to make sure that the decisions made about capability are rigorously examined… from the perspective of Defence overall and not a single viewpoint within Defence,” the noble lord is expected to add.

A skeptic might assume that there’s no good reason for this, but there is a plausible explanation:

The RAF, left to itself, would squander fortunes on buying more Eurofighters and then turning them into a deep-strike force capable of penetrating strong enemy air defences — a thing that it is vanishingly unlikely the UK will need to do. The Army is currently planning to spend no less than £14bn recreating its heavy tank force, despite the fact that it is 20 years since that force went to war — and the general who commanded it then has since said that in fact the last real tank battles ever seen took place 20 years before that.

The Navy is also wasting money foolishly at the moment, not on aircraft carriers as everyone thinks — those are a good idea and a joint-service one to boot, and cheap in this context at £4-5bn — but on billion-pound unarmed missile destroyers.

February 2, 2010

The Lancet formally retracts controversial paper on Autism

Filed under: Britain, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

In a long-overdue move, British medical journal The Lancet has retracted a paper by Andrew Wakefield on links between the MMR vaccine and Autism:

The Lancet medical journal formally retracted a paper on Tuesday that caused a 12-year international battle over links between the three-in-one childhood MMR vaccine and autism.

The paper, published in 1998 and written by British doctor Andrew Wakefield, suggested the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot might be linked to autism and bowel disease.

His assertion, since widely discredited, caused one of the biggest medical rows in a generation and led to a steep drop in the number of vaccinations in the United States, Britain and other parts of Europe, prompting a rise in cases of measles.

The knock-on effect of parents avoiding getting their children vaccinated creates opportunities for much more serious outbreaks of these diseases. Dr. Wakefield’s “research” has been harmful to the population at large for helping to create and exacerbate parents’ fears for their children, and in encouraging them to take the greater risk of not getting the MMR (and, in many cases, other vaccinations) for their kids.

January 27, 2010

HRH Prince Charles and his political tin ear

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

It’s been a long-standing — and safe — practice for members of the royal family to avoid controversy (at least, controversy in topics not actually involving members of the royal family). Prince Charles apparently didn’t get the memo recently:

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia is under government investigation for fraud, data manipulation and withholding or destroying scientific data in defiance of freedom of information requests. Many of the disgraced scientists working at the CRU were closely involved in putting together the now ferociously suspect Fourth Assessment Report for the notoriously unreliable Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) headed by the lethally compromised Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

Is this really the best time, you might wonder, for the future King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to praise the CRU for the “quality” of its work and to dismiss the Climategate scandal as a “little blip”? (Hat tip: Roddy Campbell)

Well the Prince of Wales clearly thinks so or he wouldn’t have paid a visit to Norwich yesterday to deliver a jolly little fillip to the beleaguered scientists. In his sublime wisdom, Prince Charles clearly believes they have done no wrong at all.

January 26, 2010

“Involvement in counter-espionage cases induces in some a form of paranoia”

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

Gordon Corera briefly looks at the KGB penetration of Britain’s intelligence agencies:

For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence’s most controversial episodes.

In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service (MI5) because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that British intelligence had been further penetrated by its enemy — the Soviet Union’s KGB.

A number of spies had been discovered in the 1960s but De Mowbray believed there were more. But he found no-one at the top willing to listen.

“People thought I was either mad or bad because I was trying to do something,” he says of that time.

Three decades later, De Mowbray decided to tell his side of the story after reading the authorised history of the Security Service, published last October.

I’m currently reading Christopher Andrew’s Defence of the Realm and just got to the start of the relevant section the other night. Between De Mowbray’s concerns and the careful concealment of “The Laundry”1 in the coverage so far, it’s a wonder they managed to find enough that was considered safe to release to the public.

If you’re interested, MI5 discusses their policies on information disclosure here.

1 I kid, I kid. “The Laundry” is the fictional department of British intelligence in The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.

January 22, 2010

British law enforcement moves on bomb detector scam

Filed under: Britain, Law, Middle East — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:03

Well, it’s nice to see that sometimes the British government can move quickly on something. As reported on the BBC program Newsnight, a bogus bomb detector has been selling briskly in Iraq (link here). The lead scammer has been arrested today:

The managing director of a British company that has been selling bomb-detecting equipment to security forces in Iraq was arrested on suspicion of fraud today.

At the same time, the British government announced that it was imposing a ban on the export of the ADE-651 detectors because it was concerned they could put the lives of British forces or other friendly forces at risk.

The government promised to help investigate the multimillion-pound deal between the company, ATSC, and the security forces in Iraq.

Iraq has invested more than £50m in buying the devices and training people to use them. Police and military personnel have used them to search vehicles and pedestrians for explosives. But concerns over their effectiveness — and fears they could put lives at risk — have been raised.

Avon and Somerset police officers arrested Jim McCormick, 53, on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation. A spokesman said: “We are conducting a criminal investigation and, as part of that, a 53-year-old man has been arrested.

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