Quotulatiousness

November 11, 2010

In memorium

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:

The Great War

  • Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)
  • Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 1915 at Loos, age 35
    (Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
  • Private Walter Porteous, Northumberland Fusiliers, died 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
    (my great uncle)
  • Corporal John Mulholland, Royal Tank Corps, died 1918 at Harbonnieres, age 24
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)

The Second World War

  • Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
    (my uncle)
  • Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
    (Elizabeth’s father)
  • Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
    (Elizabeth’s uncle)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

November 10, 2010

“Don’t you know who I am?” UK style

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:34

It’s all very well to pass restrictions on the peons, but when those restrictions are applied to your aristocratic self, you’re apparently entitled to rant:

Britain’s anti-terror chief launched an astonishing attack on airport security staff after they stopped her taking a banned amount of liquid onto a plane.

Home Office minister Baroness Neville-Jones, in charge of national security, was en route to a Washington summit when she was found to have an over-sized aerosol can in her bag.

[. . .]

The Baroness was ticked off by border staff, who did not recognise her. But she took offence when they told her how important security is.

The 71-year-old Baroness, known for being haughty, ranted: “Of course I know how important it is, I’m the Security Minister.”

It’s so tedious to have to put up with back-chat from the peasantry, isn’t it?

Pompeii building collapse triggers calls for nationalization privatization

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, History, Italy — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:30

I never thought I’d read an article in the Guardian calling for the privatization of a state asset:

Opposition politicians and commentators accused Italy’s government of neglect and mismanagement today over the collapse of the 2,000-year-old House of the Gladiators in the ruins of ancient Pompeii.

Some commentators said the Unesco world heritage site should be privatised and removed from state control. La Stampa newspaper ran a story headlined “Pompeii — the collapse of shame,” echoing national opinion over the cultural disaster.

The stone house, on one of the site’s main streets and measuring about 80 sq m (860 sq ft), collapsed just after dawn yesterday while Pompeii was closed to visitors. The structure was believed to have been used as a club house by gladiators before they went to battle in a nearby amphitheatre.

[. . .]

“Precisely because it belongs to all humanity, its management should be taken away from a state that has shown itself incapable of protecting it,”

[. . .]

Approximately 2.5 million tourists visit Pompeii every year, making it one of Italy’s most popular attractions. Art historians and residents have for years complained that the sites were in a state of decay and needed regular maintenance. Two years ago the government declared a state of emergency for Pompeii but it lasted only a year.

Roberto Cecchi, under-secretary at the culture ministry, said there had been no effective, continuous maintenance at Pompeii in half a century. Breaking ranks with his ministry, he said stop-gap, ad hoc measures, such as the appointment of commissioners, which attracted flashes of publicity, were no substitute for the constant monitoring worthy of a world treasure.

To be fair, the Guardian is merely reporting on the calls for privatization, not explicitly endorsing them, but even that is shocking enough.

Pat Condell: Free speech in Europe

Filed under: Europe, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

UK schools to include study of Paganism with other religions

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Education, Religion — Nicholas @ 12:10

The Lincolnshire school authorities have decided to allow local schools the choice of including the study of paganism with the existing study of religions:

If you’re looking to improve your child’s chanting skills or enhance their moon dancing, Lincolnshire may soon be the place to go — as the county decided this week to let individual schools decide on the teaching of pagan doctrine.

At present, some six world religions are studied in that County’s schools.

According to the minutes of a meeting of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (Sacre) the county’s RE advisor fed back the results of her investigation into Paganism.

I’m not a fan of teaching any religious beliefs in any public school, but if you’re going to cover any of them, you can’t exclude one arbitrarily. “Paganism”, in this instance is a superset of Druidry, which is now officially recognized as a faith (that is, all Druids are pagans, but not all pagans are Druids):

This makes 2010 a very good year for UK Paganism, following the recognition of druidry as a religion in Britain for the first time in October, when the Charity Commission accepted it as a faith and gave it the charitable status afforded to other religious groups.

Critics — who have been slow off the mark so far on this issue — may also be relieved to learn that modern pagans, unlike ancient druids, are more concerned with focussing personal energies through ritual than human sacrifice. Then again, that allegation was laid by the Romans, who also accused early Christians of eating babies.

Retired RN admirals warn of risks of scrapping Ark Royal and Harriers

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the British government announced that they were giving up on being a country with a navy and just wanted a medium-sized coast guard retiring HMS Ark Royal and eliminating the Harrier VTOL aircraft from service. Even if the current Admiralty staff were willing to go along with this, some retired admirals point out that it’s a risky decision:

A group of former Royal Navy chiefs urged the government today to reverse its decision to scrap the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the fleet of Harrier jets, which they described as “the most dangerous of the defence cuts” announced by the coalition.

In a letter to the Times, the former commanders said the cuts would leave the oil-rich Falkland Islands open to a fresh Argentinian attack “from which British prestige … might never recover”.

The signatories, who include former navy chief Lord West and admiral of the fleet Sir Julian Oswald also said they believed David Cameron had been badly advised before agreeing to the measures, which they said “practically invited” Argentina to attempt to inflict a national humiliation on the British on the scale of the loss of Singapore in 1942.

Of course, the administration of the Falkland Islands knows that any hint of agreement with the dissident admirals is likely to be punished by the government and is rushing to distance itself from any taint:

But a spokesman for the Falklands government said it was not concerned that defence cuts would leave the islands vulnerable to attack. “The Falkland Islands government is satisfied and grateful for the levels of defence on the islands which are suitable to maintain an effective deterrent,” a spokesman said.

Update: Lewis Page thoroughly agrees with Julian Thompson’s letter to the Times:

     Harrier could still use Kandahar runway if half of it were blocked by Taleban action; can use any make-shift landing site; has a response time of less than 10 minutes, as against 30 [for the Tornado]; performs better in hot weather; requires fewer ground crew; and has better availability.

     Harrier can deliver close air support of ground forces anywhere from the existing carriers … [it] has nearly twice as many airframes provided with precision-guided ground attack capability [as Tornado]; will not require a further £1.4 billion to re-engine in 2014; and can remain in service until 2023 without significant investment.

     The existing Tornado force will cost, over 10 years, seven times as much to keep in service as Harrier …

     The decision to axe the entire Harrier force is strategically and financially perverse.

The letter is signed by former Royal Marine major-general Julian Thompson, who should be the best-known of the signatories. Thompson commanded the UK’s Commando brigade, mostly made up of Marines (reinforced for the occasion by troops from the Parachute Regiment) during the Falklands campaign, when it acted as the primary unit in the victorious land fighting.

November 9, 2010

Submarines, and the things they run into, literally

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:49

It’s always a subject of uninformed joking, but submarines can and do have collisions with all sorts of things. HMS Astute is the most recent case of this, fortunately with only minor damage and no reported casualties. Strategy Page puts this and other incidents into perspective:

British media and politicians made much of the recent grounding of their new nuclear submarine HMS Astute. On October 22nd, the sub got snagged on a sand bank off Scotland for ten hours. This was during sea trials, and after it was freed, Astute collided with one of the tugs, causing more damage. Members of Parliament demanded to know, among other things, how often this sort of thing happened. They were told there had been seventeen collisions since 1988. One in that year, two in 1989, one in 1990, one in 1991, two in 1996, one in 1997, two in 2000, one in 2002, one in 2003, one in 2008 and two in 2009 and two, so far, this year. This made it clear that such collisions are not as rare as most people think.

This has to do with how the media deals with these events. For example, five years ago a U.S. SSN (nuclear attack sub) collided with an underwater mountain. The sub survived, but its sonar dome was smashed in, and one sailor died. This was big news, but most collisions are minor, and don’t make it to the media. The navies involved like to keep it that way, if only to keep secret where, and when, their submarines operate. Most of the American collisions involve snagging fishing nets of large fishing vessels, or other lines (towing, anchor) hanging from surface ships. There were also lots of bumping into piers or buoys. Bumping into other ships or subs was also common. Most of the time, damage was minor, making it easier to keep such incidents quiet.

After all, submarines don’t have windshields or portholes you can look out to see obstructions . . .

November 5, 2010

Monty on the social security Ponzi scheme and Ireland’s coming crisis

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

The always interesting Monty reminds everyone that social security won’t be there when you most need it:

Generational warfare is all but a certainty at this point as the lie that is Social Security festers and grows unchecked. All I can say is: reality will assert itself, sooner or later. Don’t get caught short — save enough of your own money to fund your own retirement, because Uncle Sugar is going to screw you just as surely as the sunrise. Pull quote:

There will be pain. The system will gore a lot of oxen. The obvious victims will be the oldsters who have become dependent on Federal handouts. They are a powerful swing vote today, but they are in the minority. When the majority of working citizens finally perceive that it is an inescapable choice between handouts to oldsters vs. their families’ solvency, they are going to vote away the oldsters’ handouts.

Social Security only survives at the suffrance of the taxpayers who fund it. Pay particular attention to the part where it’s explained in terrifyingly clear detail that it doesn’t matter how much you paid in: you were paying a tax, not a contribution to a savings account. Uncle Sam can legally stiff you at any time.

And on the Irish financial crisis:

That Irish austerity program just went from “painful” to “Oh my God I think I just barfed up a lung”. The problem in Ireland, as in Greece, is that you somehow have to convince your own citizens to accept dire reductions in their own quality-of-life to make sure that (mostly foreign) bondholders don’t have to take a haircut. I suspect that this strategy will fail, and end in default. Which, really, is probably the best course of action for the PIIGS — get off the Euro, go back to the old national currencies, and devalue. Yes, they will be shut out of the credit markets for a while, but not for all that long in relative terms. And the alternative — extreme civil unrest — is worse.

Banned from visiting Afghanistan due to weight

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:07

John Turner sent me this link, which could be said to point out fitness requirements for lawmakers:

Britain’s defence ministry says two lawmakers from Northern Ireland have been barred from visiting troops in Afghanistan until they can find flak jackets big enough to fit their bellies.

The ministry says Ken Maginnis and David Simpson were scheduled to fly to Kabul this week, but army-issued body armour doesn’t exceed 49 inches (124.5 centimetres), too snug for both.

A ministry spokesman said Thursday the British army offers “a wide range of sizes but, regrettably, none was suitable on this occasion.”

Alternatively, you could just roll ’em up in kevlar carpets, or something . . .

Now the sale of bogus explosive detectors makes more sense

Filed under: Britain, Law, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:58

Remember a couple of items from earlier this year about a British manufacturer being arrested for selling fake bomb detection devices called the ADE-651? These devices were claimed to be so sensitive that they could even “detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills”. I figured that it was all just a kickback scam, but Strategy Page explains how the scam was not only possible but easy:

But it wasn’t just bribes that made the ADE 651 survive over a year of use in Iraq. Arabs, more than many other cultures, believe in magic and conspiracies. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, many Moslems again blamed Israel. A favorite variation of this is that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center, a secret message went out to all Jews in the area to stay away. Another variation has it that the 19 attackers (all of them Arab, 15 from Saudi Arabia) were really not Arabs, but falsely identified as part of the Israeli deception.

[. . .]

American troops arriving in Iraq go through a real culture shock as they encounter these cultural difference. They also discovered that the cause of this, and many other Arab problems, is the concept of “inshallah” (“If God wills it.”) This is a basic tenet of Islam, although some scholars believe the attitude preceded that religion. In any event, “inshallah” is deadly when combined with modern technology. For this reason, Arab countries either have poorly maintained infrastructure and equipment (including military stuff), or import a lot of foreigners, possessing the right attitudes, to maintain everything. That minority of Arabs who do have the right attitude towards maintenance and personal responsibility are considered odd, but useful.

The “inshallah” thing is made worse by a stronger belief in the supernatural, and magic in general. This often extends to technology. Thus many Iraqis believe that American troops wear sunglasses that see through clothing, and armor vests that are actually air conditioned. When they first encounter these beliefs, U.S. troops think the Arabs are putting them on. Then it sinks in that Arabs really believe this stuff. It’s a scary moment.

However, many troops learn to live with, and even exploit, these odd beliefs. Troops at one base discovered that they weren’t being attacked much, because many of the locals believed that the base was surrounded by a force field, so the troops would casually make reference to their force field, when they were outside the wire and among the locals. This reinforced the force field myth, and made the base safer. Other troops would invent new fantasies, like a pretending that a handheld bit of military electronics was actually a mind reading device. That often made interrogations go a lot quicker. Not all Arabs believe in this stuff, and those that didn’t and worked for the Americans, often as an interpreter, could only shrug their shoulders when asked about it.

November 4, 2010

The continuing dramedy of the A400M

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Germany, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

Remember when the opposition were up in arms that Canada wasn’t going to be buying the new A400M for the Canadian Forces? That decision is looking better and better:

Germany has cut its order for A400M transports from 60 to 57. This was in response to demands from the manufacturer for more money. This is not a new problem, but for those who have already ordered the A400M, it’s getting old. The new European military transport, the A400M, is already three years late and billions of dollars over budget. Those who have already placed orders (for 180 aircraft) have been told that the price they thought they were going to pay ($161 million per aircraft) will go up twenty percent. In response, some major buyers said they were considering cancelling their orders. In turn, the manufacturer said that such actions would force the cancellation of the project. With the German reduction of its order, it looks like the A400M will be getting more expensive, to the point where it will be twice what the new C-130J costs. The A400M made its first flight 11 months ago.

[. . .]

During the Cold War, such air transports were very low priority in Europe, because if there was a war, the mighty Red Army of the Soviet Union was going to home deliver it. But now all the action is far away, and the military needs air freight for emergencies and other urgent missions. For that reason, the Russian An-124s get a lot of work from NATO nations. This aircraft can carry up to 130 tons of cargo, as well as outsized and extremely large cargo. The more numerous American C-17 can only carry up to 84 tons, while the new A400M can lift a maximum of 40 tons. The advantage of the two smaller airlifters is the ability to operate from shorter unpaved runways, which makes them less dependable on existing infrastructure. Russia has put the An-124 back into production, partly because of the delays in the A400M project.

November 2, 2010

James Delingpole: “Thank God for the Tea Party!”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

James Delingpole clearly wishes he could vote in today’s American elections:

Arriving back at Heathrow late on Sunday night I felt — as you do on returning to Britain these days — as if I were entering a failed state. It’s not just the Third World shabbiness which is so dispiriting. It’s the knowledge that from its surveillance cameras to its tax regime, from its (mostly) EU-inspired regulations to its whole attitude to the role of government, Britain is a country which has forgotten what it means to be free.

God how I wish I were American right now. In the US they may not have the Cairngorms, the River Wye, cream teas, University Challenge, Cotswold villages or decent curries. But they do still understand the principles of “don’t tread on me” and “live free or die.” Not all of them, obviously — otherwise a socialist like Barack Obama would never have got into power. But enough of them to understand that in the last 80 or more years — and not just in the US but throughout the Western world — government has forgotten its purpose. It has now grown so arrogant and swollen as to believe its job is to shape and improve and generally interfere with our lives. And it’s not. Government’s job is to act as our humble servant.

What’s terrifying is how few of us there are left anywhere in the supposedly free world who properly appreciate this. Sure, we may feel in our hearts that — as Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe put it in their Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party manifesto — “We just want to be free. Free to lead our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe on the same freedom of others”. And we may even confide it to our friends after a few drinks. But look at Australia; look at Canada; look at New Zealand; look at anywhere in the EUSSR; look at America — at least until things begin to be improved by today’s glorious revolution. Wherever you go, even if it’s somewhere run by a notionally “conservative” administration, the malaise you will encounter is much the same: a system of governance predicated on the notion that the state’s function is not merely to uphold property rights, maintain equality before the law and defend borders, but perpetually to meddle with its citizens’ lives in order supposedly to make their existence more fair, more safe, more eco-friendly, more healthy. And always the result is the same: more taxation, more regulation, less freedom. Less “fairness” too, of course.

November 1, 2010

Shipping at Age-of-Sail speeds

Filed under: Asia, China, Economics, Germany — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:40

In an attempt to save fuel, shipping lines have been ordering their ships to go slower. Some of them are now slower than 19th century clipper ships:

For those who haven’t followed the situation closely, many container ships right now have practiced ‘slow steaming’ due to a glut of ships being built worldwide.

Essentially, they are sailing at speeds well below their potential in order to reduce the supply of ships in the market, and thus support shipping rates.

The way this works is that the slower a ship sails, the fewer times it can make a round trip per year. Thus purposely sailing slowly reduces the effective supply of ships. It’s a response to insufficient shipping demand relative to the size of the global container shipping fleet.

Yet these poor shipping companies have taken this practice to such an extreme that many ships are now sailing at speeds slower than old clipper ships from the 1800’s.

H/T to Monty:

Overcapacity in shipping means lower demand for the finished goods overall. This is also a prime reason why export-driven economies (China, Germany) are in for a pretty dramatic adjustment soon. They’ve been counting on an economic recovery in America and Europe to soak up all that excess production, but it looks like things are going to stay weak for at least another six months to a year.

This will come as a surprise only to drug warriors

Filed under: Britain, Health, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:10

A recent British study totted up the effects both on the individual and costs to society of various legal and illegal drugs:

Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet.

The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009.

It ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.

Tobacco and cocaine are judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD are among the least damaging.

H/T to DarkWaterMuse, who writes:

An interesting result, no doubt, but one thing the researchers failed to do is to aggregate the harm due to all illicit drugs, or even a handful of drugs frequently abused by the same users. Seems to me this would likely reveal alcohol as relatively benign though it’s not clear how additive the effects are.

October 30, 2010

“North Americans have gotten used to ‘licorice’ that tastes like strips of laminated DQ menus”

Filed under: Europe, Food, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:28

A. Brouwer and A. Wilson lament the so-called “licorice” that benighted North Americans put up with:

A Twizzler is to genuine licorice what Edward Cullen is to Vlad The Impaler: empty calories. The real thing is an unmistakable, reverberant, compellingly Gothic experience, older than a crumbling castle and just a little bit spooky (Tutankhamen’s tomb was stocked with copious amounts of licorice). The tenacious, pale-flowered licorice shrub is related to the pea family, and is found in Southern Europe and Asia. Its long yellow-brown roots contain the distinctive licorice ingredient in addition to a compound that is 30 times more powerful than cane sugar. Boiling the roots produces infusions and extracts; crushing and drying them yields sticks for chewing. Like marshmallow, licorice root was originally used medicinally (to treat bronchial ailments, reduce pain from ulcers and arthritis, and relieve anxiety), long before it evolved into a sweet treat. Licorice confectionery is created by adding sugar and a binding agent to the extract, often with added anise (although their flavours are similar, anise is not related to the licorice plant — but it is cheaper). Other ingredients in traditional licorice candy may include molasses, honey, menthol, fruits and berries. The pulped block licorice sold to manufacturers often absorbs flavour from bay leaves used for packing.

The largest exporter of licorice extract is Spain, followed by Russia and Italy; their products range in taste from mild to sharply peppery. The Dutch in particular are crazy for the dark stuff, selling zoet drops in market bins in the shapes of animals, coins and lucky charms. European licorice confectionery tends to be hard and salty, as distinct from the soft, sweet U.S. type. Which brings us back to Halloween here at home, and — sigh — the bogusness of those shiny black ropes. Genuine licorice tastes like a cross between a wizard’s apothecary and the best sugar ever; sadly, North Americans have gotten used to “licorice” that tastes like strips of laminated DQ menus.

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