There hasn’t been much progress on my long-term beef with Martin Kettle for a while. But it’s worth remembering that if the Guardian has a major leading article that isn’t a business/economics story, it’s probably him. And Saturday’s second lead (behind a rather competent finance story) bears the Kettle hallmarks. Forty years ago the Royal…
Read More The Guardian Is Not Serious About CVFAckerman reckons we should be impressed that he suggested a Turkish-Kurdish rapprochement two years ago. The evidence for the rapprochement is pretty good – there are meetings going on between the KRG and the Turks, under the chairmanship of (Kurdish) Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, about issues connected with all the business Turkish companies are doing…
Read More People say to me just be yourself, it makes no sense to follow fashion. How could I be anybody else?When Pakistan Telecom tried to kill the Internet in an effort to stop the public seeing evil things on YouTube the other week, there was instant media-reaction and a fairly swift fix by the organisations involved. Things are different when you’re a small Kenyan ISP, though; for about a day now, Africa Online (AS36915) has…
Read More On the African Internet, no-one can hear you screamContinuing our Weekend of Defence Procurement, we’ve bashed the FRES vehicle program enough in the past. Costed at £14bn, meant to deliver a C-130 portable, RPG-tough, wheeled vehicle capable of carrying something equivalent to a tank main gun and providing reconnaissance, big gun, infantry, and utility variants, it’s so far failed to deliver anything at…
Read More French FRES Flop ForecastBack from Barcelona, after a terribly intense 3GSM. This was my third, and the first in which I was actually participating rather than just reporting; I feel the need to decompress, my feet hurt, and I’m feeling the effects of eating breakfast at 5pm, covering every game in town, and finally dining (or rather lunching)…
Read More Back from 3GSM Mobile World CongressSo Gates has been doing the rounds of EU capitals, looking for more troops (and money) for Afghanistan. He didn’t get very far; although Germany did agree to find half a battalion of light infantry as a quick-reaction force for the northern zone, this just relieves a Norwegian force that is currently doing the job.…
Read More Why Your Allies Won’t Have War With YouRussians! Russian air force out again, in some strength; and exercising a whole range of types, including the White Swan…sorry…Tu-160 BLACKJACK, BEAR, BACKFIRE, and MiG31 and Su27 fighters into the bargain, to say nothing of jet tankers. For people who aren’t making a political point, they certainly look like it. Meanwhile, the French Air Force…
Read More The King called up his jet pilots; he said you’d better earn your payAccording to Felix “Fishy” Salmon, the volume of lending in the London interbank market has gone from £640bn to £249bn since the credit furt hit in September. Say a 60 per cent cut. What percentage of that book of business does the City take as its turn? How much of that is spent or retained…
Read More Finance, mainstay of our economyThe International Herald-Tribune has an interesting article about a Serbian gun-runner and colleague of Viktor Bout’s, one Tomislav Damjanovic. For some reason it’s in the Style section; most photos of Viktor would seem to rule that out, but the one of Damjanovic they supply does have a certain Balkan sharpness. Anyway, the report is based…
Read More Fascinating Report out on Viktor Bout & CoRemember when the Airbus A380 was delayed and it was an example of the total bankruptcy of socialist Europe’s way of life? Look what’s happening with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner (and BA’s fleet)… Boeing blamed the delivery delay on continuing problems with flight control software, being produced by Honeywell International, and integrating other systems on the…
Read More 0x05B7Y: Out of Bolts Error