Remind me not to go back to Dubai if at all possible. It’s what happens when you leave the keys where the postmodernists can get at them, a formless mass of rapid urbanisation running along the coast from the border with Sharjah to beyond the docks at Jebel Ali. “Sprawl” doesn’t describe it, because sprawl…
Read More Brainfuck CitySeveral people have sent me this story from the Times (a newspaper that seems to be improving at the moment, despite being a Murdoch property). It deals with a British-owned airline, Avient, and its extremely dodgy activities in the DR Congo. As well as shifting arms in and diamonds out, Avient went so far as…
Read More Avient and their new marketJust a quick update on this one. The Nimrod MR-2 lost with its entire crew over Afghanistan was XV230, the first one to be delivered to the RAF in October, 1969. She was also the first to get the colour display version of the Thomson Searchwater 2000 radar, which is a detail. What is less…
Read More Nimrod UpdateThe Grauniad yesterday interviewed David Nicholson, who’s just been appointed chief executive of the NHS. The text is illuminating in the extreme, especially in terms of managerialism and technocracy. David Nicholson, the new chief executive of the NHS in England, took up the reins of office last week and set about dispelling the notion that…
Read More A case study in managerialismYgelsias suggests that the US Army is historically hopeless at counter-insurgency because of the strong Southern influence in the officer corps. His reasoning runs as follows: the Confederates chose to fight an all-out war with the Union, and when it went to ratshit they decided against fighting on as guerrillas and gave up in a…
Read More A Southern strategy?Phil Carter beats the clock.
Read More Phil Carter is BackAnd you thought we handed over in Maysan voluntarily. You poor fool! Comments Dan thinks that Blair will finally be done in by angry army wives after a disastrous overrun somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s a testament to the strategic incoherence of the trip to Afghanistan that it’s now getting more dangerous at the…
Read More Big HoumousA man in Doncaster gets caught speeding in the firm’s van. Fearing for his livelihood, he decides to eliminate all traces – including the camera. Fortunately for him, he’s a railway welder and has access to thermite. Ah, thermite.. I remember this as the coolest reaction going in school science. For the un-initiated, the thermite…
Read More Thermite ahoy!A useful quick guide to Pat Robertson’s business interests.
Read More Saint BonaventureLudlum, right? Author of crappy thrillers, who invented the standard operating procedure of titling your book The (enter random name) (enter intriguingly sinister plot item). I present something similar. What might finally push the Blair over the edge? I theorise that it’s The Edinburgh Gambit. According to Tom Green Ribbon Griffin, the Liberals in Scotland…
Read More Robert Ludlum, eat your heart out