Quotulatiousness

January 5, 2014

Infamous Edinburgh bodysnatchers’ final five victims?

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:36

If you’ve ever visited Edinburgh, you’ll probably have heard about the sinister pairing of Burke and Hare, the bodysnatchers who murdered 16 people and sold the bodies to medical students for dissection. In 2012, five skeletons were uncovered during a townhouse renovation in the Haymarket district, and it’s speculated that the four adults and a child were previously unknown victims:

Archaeologists have only now determined that the five date back to the early 19th century following studies by Historic Scotland and consultants Guard Archaeology.

Altogether around 60 bones were found, including four adult jawbones and others believed to be from a child.

The bodies are thought to be those of criminals or dwellers of the poor houses. Those that were not claimed were frequently used for either dissection, to be anatomical skeletons, or both.

Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare murdered 16 people in Edinburgh in 1828 and sold the bodies as dissection material, but it is thought unlikely that the pair were responsible for the five found in Grove Street as the notoriety of their crimes means that all their victims are believed to have been accounted for.

John Lawson, from the Edinburgh City Council Archaeology Service, was the first to examine the remains on site.

He said: “At the end of the Enlightenment period there was significant demand for cad­avers and which indeed outstripped supply, and that led to a thriving illegal trade, with Burke and Hare clearly the most infamous of those who supplied bodies to medical schools.

“We can’t rule out that those found on Grove Street were sold by the resurrectionists, as they were called, although it might be a stretch to say it was Burke and Hare themselves, given their crimes are well-documented.”

He said that most would be used for dissection, with the skeletons of others used to teach anatomy to students.

But Lawson said it was still unclear why they would have been buried in the garden.

This is a good example of the division of work in the newsroom: the headline says the bodies are linked to Burke and Hare, while the article itself quotes an expert saying it’s “a stretch” to say that. Headlines are usually written by editors, rather than the journalists who put the stories together.

December 6, 2013

Defending an independent Scotland, continued

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Sir Humphrey is back with the next part of his series assessing the needs of an independent Scottish military organization:

Despite the ability to talk to each other being so vital, there seems to be no mention [in the Scottish white paper] of any form of IT infrastructure beyond a vague reference to ‘communication units’ in the paper. This is a real concern — good secure IT able to provide secure communications of classified material and not fall prey to hackers or cyber attack is very expensive and requires specialist skills. It is probably highly unlikely that the UK Government would be willing to allow the new Scottish Government to use its national defence IT system (and arguably would a Scottish Government want to?). This means that in the run up to independence the SDF is going to have to work out how to install an entire communications network from scratch. Don’t forget that provision of IT is contracted out to various different companies for the MOD, so its not as if one can simply divvy up the assets and black boxes.

[…]

The paper commits the SDF to retaining in existence all current MOD sites in Scotland, and possibly restoring RAF LEUCHARS to flying status. One of the challenges facing the MOD at the moment is the dilemma between having a broad footprint across a range of areas, often made up of aged buildings with heavy maintenance requirements, or condensing this into smaller but more modern sites.

The SDF will find itself inheriting a very large footprint of sites, many of which are quite old, quite remote and in need of a lot of work. It will need to decide whether to invest in them, or rationalise and save money for better facilities elsewhere. At a most basic level, is the SDF going to provide housing to their personnel? After all the MOD housing isn’t actually owned by the MOD, but by Annington Homes — this means that at independence there will not actually be any housing for the SDF personnel. It may sound a small thing, but the new SDF will need to quickly work out a complicated contract to house people in married quarters.

[…]

At a most basic level, one must ask about how the recruitment and selection process is going to work. To grow a force of some 15000 over 10 years and then retain it will prove to be a real challenge for any military when you consider the small resource base open to it (barely 5 million people). At present recruitment for the UK armed forces is able to draw from a much larger pool, and even then it is a struggle to get the right recruits at the right time. When you look at the potential sets of skills required — Typhoon pilots, Infanteers, Naval Officers etc, and consider that these all have very different selection and training procedures, you quickly realise how challenging its going to be to recruit for the SDF.

[…]

Finding the money to pay the troops will be one thing, but actually finding the troops willing to join will be another. The key worry is that barring wholesale transfer of troops against their wishes, it seems that very few personnel would willingly wish to transfer over to the SDF on independence. Given that the current ORBAT calls for very specialist personnel and skills, one can foresee a situation where the SDF may inherit the kit, but if the operators and maintainers choose not to come over, and if the training pipeline cannot cope, then this equipment is likely to stand empty for quite some time to come, and also calls into question the ability of the SDF to effectively defend Scottish interests.

November 30, 2013

Creating a Scottish air force after independence

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:14

We looked at the problems of setting up a Scottish naval organization last week, and now Sir Humphrey turns his attention to the proposed air force for a post-independence Scotland. The proposed air force equipment from the white paper included “a Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) squadron incorporating a minimum of 12 Typhoon jets based at Lossiemouth” and “a tactical air transport squadron, including around six Hercules C130J aircraft, and a helicopter squadron”:

The first challenge is the Typhoon fleet and how it can be operated to best effect. QRA is a very expensive thing to do properly — it’s not just about having pilots based in a cockpit ready to take off. Setting up QRA is about having a Recognised Air Picture, a means of sharing information and communicating it to the airbase. It is about having the C2 links in place so that in the event of a scramble, the means exist for the senior decision taking Minister to be able to authorise a shoot down decision and then for the pilot to carry it out in an appropriate manner. This ability needs to be available 24/7/365 and is an onerous task on aircrew and support teams.

In the SDF the reality is that with only 12 jets available, their entire effort will be taken up doing QRA — assuming two training aircraft come over, this gives a squadron of 10 aircraft to generate 2 airframes on a constant basis. Take two out of the equation for servicing, two on the flight line and two being prepared to take over, and this leaves you with a flex of four aircraft to conduct all training and flying for the fleet.

The MOD currently estimates that Typhoon costs £70k per hour to fly (full costs), so assuming that it flies for 30 hours per airframe per month over a year (an averaged figure as there will be peaks and troughs), you suddenly realise that it would cost £2.1 million per month, £25 million per year to keep each aircraft going, or a total of nearly £300 million per year to ensure that two jets were constantly available for QRA. This is well over 10% of the putative budget. Add to this the operating costs of RAF Lossiemouth currently exceed £100m per year, and you realise that nearly 20% of the SDF budget is going to be taken up just to run QRA.

As Sir Humphrey pointed out in an earlier post on the naval question, there’s no guarantee that lopping off a “fair share” of the UK’s existing equipment inventory makes any sense for the quite different needs of an independent Scotland. Again, the right approach is to ignore the equipment question at first and instead analyze the actual needs — what does Scotland need their air force to do — rather than building a wish list of impressive machinery that almost certainly won’t provide value for the money. An independent nation needs to protect their own airspace (or be involved in alliances to provide that protection communally), but that requires identification of actual or potential threats to Scottish interests.

Another problem with automatically adopting the same equipment as the UK is that the supporting organizations and infrastructure will also have to be created to utilize the equipment:

The other problem is who actually supports the aircraft — a lot of deep level RAF servicing has been contracted out now, and these contracts will be null and void for the SDF airframes. The SDF will either have to spend a lot of money to introduce servicing facilities (which are not cheap) or it will have to enter into all manner of very expensive commercial arrangements with UK companies to get them to support Typhoon in Scottish service. This sort of arrangement cannot be skimped either — if you don’t service your aircraft, then you quickly lose the ability to fly them. As such a newly independent Scotland may find itself hamstrung by a need to pay a great deal of money in support contracts and servicing contracts and not capital investment in new technology.

[…]

The proposal to acquire C130s seems similarly expensive. There is not, and has never been a C130 basing presence in Scotland. This means that the SDF would need to pay out from the start to set up a C130 support facility and hangar in Lossiemouth. They would also need to find sufficiently trained crews and groundstaff – a small point, but the C130 fleet has been based at Lyneham and Brize Norton for nearly 50 years. Finding a sufficient pool of operators and support staff to uproot from their home to go to a newly independent Scotland is going to be a major challenge in itself.

November 28, 2013

Poking holes in the proposed Scottish defence plans

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:07

Sir Humphrey says he’s neutral on the political issue of Scottish separatism, but he has a few professional criticisms of the fleet plan contained within the white paper:

At a most basic level, the paper appears to fall foul of what can be described as the ‘fantasy fleet’ syndrome so often found on the internet. In other words, people have taken an order of battle, hived of a reasonable sounding level of equipment and assumed that this would make a good defence force. That’s a great theory, but in reality its likely to be far more complicated than this.

For starters, the British Armed Forces are the product of hundreds of years of evolution, procurement and support. They operate a closely integrated set of equipment, underpinned by a well developed training network, and supported by a very complex set of support contracts to ensure availability. Due to the numbers and amounts of equipment in service, costs can be calculated using economies of scale, and planned workflow, in a way that smaller sized support cannot.

A nascent SDF would find itself operating a truly eclectic collection of units which are not necessarily the most appropriate for its situation. For instance, the proposal that the Navy takes on two Type 23 frigates seems a little odd. The Type 23 is one of the worlds most advanced anti-submarine warfare escorts, and designed to be a submarine killer par excellence. To use it to best effect requires a well trained crew, who have a range of extremely specialised skills. Assuming that no one is forced at independence to join the SDF, the challenge will be recruiting and retaining a core of niche skills to actually employ the vessel in her intended manner. This includes the engineers, weapon systems maintainers, the warfare department and those with the skills and experience at all ranks and rates to use the vessel in its intended manner.

[…]

Similarly, the issue of maintenance will be a complex one. There are no T23s based in Scotland, which means that a great deal of money will be spent creating a permanent support facility for the class in Scotland. In these circumstances the SDF will need to negotiate and establish support contracts, similar to the ones used by the RN, and pay to put in place the complex web of support arrangements in order to keep the vessels available for service. In a small procurement and support budget, it is hard to see where the money will come from for this sort of activity.

The sheer running costs of the vessels will also be a challenge — on average it costs about £20 million per year (source THEY WORK FOR YOU) to keep a Type 23 at sea, and about £3 million for MCMVs and patrol craft. To keep the Scottish Navy afloat, you are looking at an annual running cost of around £60 million — before you consider salary costs of the crew and the shore support infrastructure to go with it. On a relatively small budget of £2.5 billion, it is easy to see how much of a cost it would be just to keep the ships at sea, let alone deploy them.

In a sense, the white paper’s defence plan does appear to have been drawn up with an eye toward “order of battle” and “table of equipment” that would create — on paper, anyway — a scaled-down version of the RN, RAF, and British army. That isn’t the sensible approach for an independent Scotland’s defence needs. The first thing they should have done is analyze what practical tasks their defence forces would be required to undertake, then consider the most cost-effective way to build and equip an organization to accomplish those tasks.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with toy soldiers. I had hundreds and hundreds of them from various eras from Roman versus Celt down to 8th Army versus Afrika Korps. When setting up my “battles”, it was always the soldiers with the cool kit who got to be the heroes: stirring combat poses and cooler weapons were my selection criteria. When I moved on to building models, the same characteristics dictated the particular models I built: more heavily armed ships, bigger tanks, more weapon-studded aircraft. The authors of this portion of the white paper appear to have had similar childhoods … and they’re still influenced by the same selection criteria. What sense does it make for Scotland’s defence forces to operate Type 23 frigates and Typhoon aircraft? They’re cool kit, but do they accomplish the primary protective duties for Scotland cost-effectively? Almost certainly not.

Scotland has a large coastline and significant offshore assets to protect, but it isn’t likely to need the hugely expensive (and admittedly very capable) kit that the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force need to accomplish their wider tasks. Scotland’s navy is much more likely to end up resembling a strong coastguard than a battle fleet, and their air force will probably not be equipped with top-of-the-line fighter aircraft (especially not F-35 or Typhoon fighters) as they would eat a hugely disproportional share of the defence budget for capabilities the Scots don’t actually need.

I strongly suspect the best course of action for Scotland (in the event of a successful independence vote) would be to negotiate a short-to-medium term deal with the rest of the UK to provide military units to Scotland as an interim solution while a sensible Scottish organization was built-up to take on those roles. It might sting the pride of nationalists to admit that they can’t afford to take on the full trappings of an independent state immediately, but it would be far more practical (and far less expensive) than carving off “their share” of the UK’s existing military.

November 27, 2013

Scottish defence, in a post-independence world

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

Think Defence has posted a portion of the Scottish Independence White Paper dealing with defence issues. This includes an outline view of what is thought to be required for Scotland’s (non-nuclear) military establishment at independence:

Maritime forces

One naval squadron to secure Scotland’s maritime interests and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and contribute to joint capability with partners in Scotland’s geographical neighbourhood, consisting of:

  • two frigates from the Royal Navy’s current fleet
  • a command platform for naval operations and development of specialist marine capabilities (from the Royal Navy’s current fleet, following adaptation)
  • four mine counter measure vessels from the Royal Navy’s current fleet
  • two offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) to provide security for the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). However, as the Royal Navy only has four OPVs currently[263], a longer lead time for procurement might be necessary
  • four to six patrol boats from the Royal Navy’s current fleet, capable of operating in coastal waters, providing fleet protection and also contributing to securing borders
  • auxiliary support ships (providing support to vessels on operations), which could be secured on a shared basis initially with the rest of the UK

These arrangements will require around 2,000 regular and at least 200 reserve personnel.

Land forces

An army HQ function and an all-arms brigade, with three infantry/marine units, equipped initially from a negotiated share of current UK assets, and supported by:

  • a deployable Brigade HQ
  • two light armoured reconnaissance units
  • two light artillery units
  • one engineer unit deploying a range of equipment for bridging, mine clearance and engineering functions
  • one aviation unit operating six helicopters for reconnaissance and liaison
  • two communication units
  • one transport unit
  • one logistics unit
  • one medical unit

Special forces, explosives and ordnance disposal teams will bring the total to around 3,500 regular and at least 1,200 reserve personnel.

Air forces

Key elements of air forces in place at independence, equipped initially from a negotiated share of current UK assets, will secure core tasks, principally the ability to police Scotland’s airspace, within NATO.

  • an Air Force HQ function (with staff embedded within NATO structures)
  • Scotland will remain part of NATO‘s integrated Air Command and Control (AC2) system, initially through agreement with allies to maintain the current arrangements while Scotland establishes and develops our own AC2 personnel and facility within Scotland within five years of independence
  • a Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) squadron incorporating a minimum of 12 Typhoon jets based at Lossiemouth
  • a tactical air transport squadron, including around six Hercules C130J aircraft, and a helicopter squadron
  • flight training through joint arrangements with allies

In total this would require around 2,000 regular personnel and around 300 reserve personnel.

Civilian support

In addition to military capability following a vote for independence, the Scottish Government will establish core government capacity for defence functions, such as strategic planning, oversight and policy functions for defence and security. Given the importance of ongoing shared security interests between Scotland and the rest of the UK, we will ensure a partnership approach during the period of transition to independence.

Following a vote for independence, priorities for the Scottish Government capacity dealing with defence will be planning for the strategic security review to be carried out by the first Scottish Parliament following independence, based on the most recent UK National Risk Assessment and input from Scottish experts and academic institutions.

I linked to a couple of posts by Sir Humphrey on this issue that are also worth considering.

October 10, 2013

Defending an independent Scotland

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:33

Sir Humphrey has read the British Ministry of Defence paper on Scottish options in a post-independence scenario and has a few thoughts:

The paper nicely highlights the reality that you cannot slice up defence assets and turn them into a coherent military force – ORBATs may look impressive, but dividing them into something more meaningful is particularly difficult.

Additionally the paper highlights the issue of how one takes a world class military, optimised for power projection abroad, and then carves off a smaller chunk of it to focus on missions for which it was not designed. For instance, the idea that Scotland would keep running a modern air force built around Typhoon seems interesting, but where does the pilot training pipeline come from, how is this affordable and what happens when the Eurofighter nations move to upgrade their aircraft? Is it truly feasible to imagine a relatively small Scottish Defence Force being able to shoulder the burden of paying the costs of sustaining an increasingly obsolescent Typhoon fleet, which is no longer at the same standard as its multi-national peers?

The problem facing a newly independent Scotland seems to be that the UK military assets are simply not appropriate for what will be a low level defence force in a relatively small country. Stripped of the recruiting, support and logistical contracts and pipeline that have sustained the equipment, one can imagine a future Scottish Defence Force burdened down with legacy equipment which requires expensive training and support to run properly, and which is too expensive to meet what will be a very small budget.

One could almost argue that rather than take much UK military equipment, it would be more sensible for Scotland to instead take a large cash payment and procure a low level defence force (with UK forces providing sovereignty assurance in the interim) which better meets their specific needs. So, procurement of low level OPVs, simple vehicles and so on – in other words start from scratch with something that is feasible, and not take on equipment that is designed for a very different role.

Update: His look at the SNP’s proposed military structure from last year is also worth reading:

At the moment, the current policy seems to be that on separation, those army regiments deemed Scottish will become part of the SDF. Similarly, an equivalent amount of manpower, roughly 1/8th of all UK military assets and personnel will be offered to the Scottish Government. In broad-brush terms, this leads to an Army of about 10,000 troops, 5,000 air force and 4000 navy/marines (say 19,000 overall).

Here is where the fun really starts. Firstly, the armed forces do not neatly break into component parts which can be divided up. An infantry battalion may have 650 people on its strength, but there may be many more from supporting arms such as REME and so on who will be there to maintain and support weapons and equipment. Do the SNP want to take the supporting arms too?

Secondly — how will they attribute manpower against specialisations — the RN for instance has a deeply specialised manpower structure, made up of composite branches – it’s not just a mixy blob of 30,000 sailors looking good and drinking rum prior to catching the eye of hairy women with tattoos, it’s a collection of branches and capabilities.

[…]

The author knows relatively few individuals who would willingly wish to transfer to any SDF. Most of the Scots personnel he knows are immensely proud of being Scottish, but are also equally proud of belonging to something much greater in the form of HM Armed Forces. They relish the challenge offered by soldiering in a military that has a track record for being employed aggressively overseas. How many of them will willingly want to transfer to a SDF that is unlikely to be used in any similar manner?

The SDF is going to have a challenging initial few years — it will inherit people at all levels, but probably not enough for any one role. It’s going to take time to grow personnel into the jobs required of them, and even if it started recruiting on the day of independence, it would still take 5-10 years to grow the critical mass of SNCOs and junior officers needed to manage and lead the organisation.

June 16, 2013

Not from the Scottish Tourist Board

Filed under: Britain, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:40

For more great reasons to love Scotland, click here.

May 26, 2013

More on Scotland’s proposed “child protection” scheme

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:25

Last week, I linked to a story about the Scottish government introducing a new “child protection” program that would assign a “named person” as guardian for every child. Christopher Booker has more on this rather disturbing Big Brother initiative:

We are familiar with the idea that state employees are expected to take an interest in a child’s welfare, from health visitors to teachers at school. But this proposal that local authorities should be empowered to appoint an official to act as a personal “guardian”, or social worker, to oversee every aspect of a child’s life from birth onwards is a world first.

In fact, the Bill is remarkably vague about the powers to be given to these “named persons”. Will they be free to arrive unannounced at the family home to check on how a child is being treated by its parents, when it goes to bed, what food it is given, what political or religious opinions it is being brought up with? In other words, the Bill gives no idea of how this hugely ambitious scheme, estimated to cost Scotland’s local authorities up to £138 million a year, will work in practice. And most worrying of all, to anyone familiar with the failings of our existing “child protection” system, is how often the most damaging errors can arise when professionals are charged with reporting to social workers their suspicion that something in a child’s life might be amiss.

In too many of the cases I have followed where children have been removed from their families for what seems to be no good reason, their nightmare began with a report by a teacher or a doctor that got some overheard remark or slight injury absurdly out of proportion. Too often, such suspicions then harden into allegations that are never properly tested against the evidence, and the damage is done. However admirable, in theory, the thought of appointing a “guardian” to watch over every child might seem, experience suggests that, in practice, this may exacerbate those weaknesses in our existing “child protection” system, which make a mockery of the noble aims it was set up to promote.

May 19, 2013

Scottish government assigns state guardians to all children

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

The SNP has introduced brand new form of interference in the lives of Scottish families:

Under the “scary” legislation, known as Getting It Right For Every Child or GIRFEC, every child aged under 18 will have a ‘Named Person’ with the legal right to ensure they are raised in a government-approved manner.

It will also mean that sensitve personal details about every child — even down to the names of their pets — can be recorded, stored and shared on a central database.

Incredibly, GIRFEC has already been adopted by almost every local authority in Scotland and yet most people — including some MSPs — have no idea of the full extent of its Big Brother-style interference.

[. . .]

For children under five, the state guardian will usually be a health visitor, while for school-age children it will usually be the headteacher or deputy head.

They will have to record “routine information” about their charges, which is then stored in a vast database, and can raise concerns about a child’s wellbeing that could ultimately result in them being taken into care.

Marion Samson, headteacher at Westquarter Primary and Nursery in Falkirk, is a ‘Named Person’ who says her role is to “challenge” families who are not bringing up their children properly.

However, in response to her profile on the government’s Engage for Education blog, one teacher – giving her name as Sian Dawson — described GIRFEC as “quite a scary notion”.

She wrote: “Perhaps the Scottish Government would be far better tightening up the processes surrounding child protection for those who actually need help rather than not trusting the majority of families to do a good job.”

According to a Scottish Government training document seen by this newspaper, the specific aim of GIRFEC is to undermine parents and give the “community” a greater role in raising children.

May 5, 2013

An independent Scotland might not have an easy path to EU membership

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

At the EUobserver, Benjamin Fox outlines the potential trouble spots for a post-independence Scottish government in any attempt to join the EU directly:

Scottish first minister Alex Salmond has indicated that he wants to keep the pound sterling rather than join the euro despite the fact that a commitment to join the single currency is in all recent EU access treaties.

Meanwhile, with Scotland having a large fisheries sector and being one of the largest claimants of EU structural funds in the UK, it would be likely to seek its own country-specific exemptions and opt-outs.

There has already been confusion over whether Scotland would have to negotiate its own accession treaty with the rest of the EU. Although Scottish ministers have claimed that this would be a formality, it admitted that it has not sought legal advice. In response to parliamentary questions, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that “a new state, if it wants to join the EU has to apply to become a member of the EU, like any state.”

The committee concluded that “it is clear from these statements that there is no formal, automatic right to Scottish membership of the EU.”

It noted that regarding Scottish EU membership as a formality “seems to us to misjudge the issue and underestimate the unease that exists with the EU member states … about Scottish independence.”

It said Scotland could also struggle to secure the same opt-outs as Britain together with new Scotland-specific exemptions.

April 30, 2013

Another incident of hypersentimentality

Filed under: Books, Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

In sp!ked, Brendan O’Neill discusses the latest opportunity for people to ostentatiously display their sentimentality:

I wish Scottish author Iain Banks had kept his cancer to himself. For in making it public, through a statement about being ‘Very Poorly’, he has unwittingly mobilised one of the ugliest mobs of modern times: the death-watchers, the ostentatious grievers, those who like nothing more than to read about another’s physical demise and advertise how moved they are by it.

Almost as soon as Banks announced earlier this month, through the publisher of his entertaining novels, that he was suffering from terminal gall bladder cancer, these professional proxy weepers were doing their thing. Premature mourning was rife. Twitter became a vast virtual pre-death condolences book, as everyone stopped what they were doing for 45 seconds to tweet about how torn apart they were by the news of Banks’ sickness. People seemed keen to out-lament each other. One said Banks’ cancer revelation hit her like ‘a chill blast of sorrow and grief’, which makes you wonder how she’ll cope when he dies.

Friends and fans of Banks set up a website where lovers of his novels can get updates on his condition and sign a ‘guest book’ that is really just another offensively early condolences book. Thousands of messages have been posted. It’s remarkable how many of the message writers admit they ‘don’t know what to say’ yet proceed to say it anyway, at length, clearly feeling weirdly compelled to sign up to the speedily constructed community of online mourners.

We’ve also had pre-death obituaries, articles assessing Banks’ life and work before either has come to an end: his next novel, The Quarry, will be published shortly. Even those who know nothing about Banks felt an urge to write about him, or rather about how they personally felt upon hearing he was sick. Simon Kelner at the Independent admitted ‘I haven’t read any of his books’, before producing a whole column on Banks’ cancer news. The macabre sense of anticipatory mourning is summed up in the way Banks’ wife is referred to on the tribute website: as his ‘chief widow-in-waiting’.

April 24, 2013

More on the currency choices facing an independent Scotland

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

John Kay works through the short list of options about money that a newly independent Scotland would need to decide about:

Speculation about Scotland’s currency future would begin on the day Scotland voted for independence — or the day on which a poll showed that this result was likely. Scotland would have three main options — the euro, the pound sterling, or its own distinct money.

The euro is the official currency of the EU, and Scotland would in principle be committed to its adoption. But there would be little enthusiasm for that course in either Edinburgh or Brussels, and Scotland — like the UK — would not meet the criteria on debt and deficits for joining the euro. A vague Scottish aspiration to join the single currency at some distant date would probably satisfy everyone.

The sensible outcome would be continued currency union with England — or with the entity that, in deference to Wales and Northern Ireland, participants in the Scottish debate call rUK — rest of UK. Scotland might ask for — and get — a Scottish economist on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (not a representative of Scotland — the rules of the committee preclude representative roles). But that would be the extent of Scottish influence on monetary policy.

[. . .]

If I represented the Scottish government in the extensive negotiations required by the creation of an independent state, I would try to secure a monetary union with England, and expect to fail. Given experience in the eurozone, today’s conventional wisdom is that monetary union is feasible only as part of a move towards eventual fiscal union. But desire to break up fiscal union was always a major — perhaps the principal — motive for independence in the first place.

Scotland could continue to use the pound unilaterally, whether the Bank of England liked it or not — as Ecuador uses the dollar and Montenegro the euro. But this is not really an attractive course, and the only countries that have adopted it are those — such as Ecuador and Montenegro — whose monetary histories are so dire that they prefer to entrust their policies to foreigners.

April 23, 2013

Independent Scotland would not be in currency union with the UK

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

In the Guardian, Patrick Wintour and Severin Carrell cover the latest provocative notion coming out of London, directed at the Scottish separatists:

An independent Scotland would be forced to adopt new currency arrangements that would be a “very deep dive into uncharted waters”, George Osborne has warned. The chancellor said an independent Scotland would be unable to operate with a currency linked to sterling, let alone be able to form a currency union with it.

“The best arrangement is if they stay in the UK,” he said.

Osborne said he thought it “unlikely” the rest of UK would agree to a currency union with Scotland, noticeably hardening his rhetoric against Alex Salmond’s proposal.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, the chancellor said: “Why would it want to risk a currency union? We’ve got a currency union in Europe and it’s called the euro, and look at all the problems that has had trying to co-ordinate the economic policies of different countries.”

Setting out the options, the chancellor said: “I think Scotland could either join the euro, and Alex Salmond is very nervous of saying that, or Scotland can set up its own currency. That is what lots of countries do, but Alex Salmond is again nervous of saying that.

“They can use the pound without our consent, like Panama uses the American dollar, or they can negotiate with the rest of the UK to form a currency zone. But Britain has had poor experience with things like the ERM [exchange rate mechanism], when it has tried to lock or peg its currency together with other currencies. So it is not clear that it would be in the rest of the UK’s interest to enter into a euro-style currency zone with the rest of Scotland.”

February 6, 2013

Old and busted: organ transplants. New hotness: 3D organ printing

Filed under: Health, Science, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Matt Peckham on the very near future of organ replacement technology:

Say you need a new trachea, a part of the body we’ve already managed to replicate using stem cells and successfully transplant to a human with late-stage tracheal cancer (I’m not making that up or exaggerating). With a 3D printer and a bunch of stem cell-saturated bio-ink, you might be able to just print that trachea on demand thanks to a new technique that lets you pass human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) through a printer nozzle without destroying them.

A team of researchers from Scotland announced Monday that they’d finally managed to get an inkjet-style printer to craft an organic 3D object. Not an actual organ (well, not yet), but these scientists claim they’ve been able to clear a crucial hurdle: getting hESCs, prized for their ability to become cells of any tissue type, to survive the printing process.

The solution involved rejiggering the way the inkjet-style 3D printer worked, specifically the printing valve, which had to be tweaked to ever-so-gently deposit blobs of hESCs in programmable patterns without compromising the viability and functionality of the cells themselves. The researchers figured out how to do this using two types of bio-inks as well as allow for independent control of the amount in each droplet (with considerable control granularity — down to less than five cells per droplet). The results of the experiment were just published in the bio-science print and online journal Biofabrication.

January 20, 2013

Identifying Britain’s “greatest” land battle

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

Setting aside the fact that there’s no rational way to compare battles from different wars in different eras, the National Army Museum is holding a poll to determine the top five British battles, then a debate among historians followed by a concluding vote to determine the “best” of them.

As well as famous battles, the list includes some less well-known clashes, such as Megiddo in 1918, in modern-day Israel, where a British-led force decisively broke through the Ottoman front lines.

The earliest battle on the list is the English Civil War clash at Naseby, in 1645, in which the Royalists were defeated by the Parliamentarians’ disciplined New Model Army.

It is one of two that took place on British soil between two armies from this country. The other is Culloden (1745), which marked the end of the Jacobite rebellion.

Not all the battles ended in victory. The list includes the failed Gallipoli campaign (1915-1916), in which Britain and its allies tried to invade the Ottoman Empire.

Others are less conclusive: such as the Crimean clash of Balaklava (1854) – noted for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade — and the Somme (1916).

The most recent engagement is Musa Qala, in Afghanistan, where, in 2006, a small garrison of British, Danish and Afghan troops withstood a lengthy Taliban siege.

Only land battles are being considered, ruling out naval victories such as Trafalgar (1805) and air campaigns such as the Battle of Britain (1940).

Speaking non-scientifically, clearly the most important land battle in British history was the clash between Wolfe and Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham:

… also known as the Battle of Quebec, (Bataille des Plaines d’Abraham or Première bataille de Québec in French) was a pivotal battle in the Seven Years’ War (referred to as the French and Indian War in the United States). The battle, which began on 13 September 1759, was fought between the British Army and Navy, and the French Army, on a plateau just outside the walls of Quebec City, on land that was originally owned by a farmer named Abraham Martin, hence the name of the battle.

The battle involved fewer than 10,000 troops between both sides, but proved to be a deciding moment in the conflict between France and Britain over the fate of New France, influencing the later creation of Canada.[2]

The battle (and its aftermath) tend to be ignored in Quebec, but it shouldn’t be:

Montcalm died before dawn on the 14th. Hit again, probably by a Canadien militiaman, Wolfe died as the French ranks dissolved. Fighting on the Plains continued until dusk, sustained by Canadien militia and their native allies. When Quebec sovereignists killed plans to re-enact the battle they helped keep that heroic story secret. Perhaps they had no idea that it happened. When French regulars fled, the militia fought on.

Five times they stopped Fraser’s terrifying Highlanders from slaughtering the terrified regulars. Thanks to their despised militia and aboriginal allies, Montcalm’s French regulars could safely stop at Beauport, catch their breath, and begin a long, dreary march back to Montreal to prepare for another year of war. Did the separatists not want anyone to know?

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