200 years ago this week, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born. This week, this blog’s favourite pig-incompetent, corrupt arms manufacturer BAE Systems decided to sell its 20% share of Airbus Industrie, including the Filton plant and design centre just three miles or so from Brunel’s Clifton suspension bridge. BAE is apparently trying to make “bolt-on acquisitions”…
Read More Brunel Memorial SaleInformation has reached me that some progress may have been achieved about the C-130 Defensive Aids Suite, and specifically about the foam in the fuel tanks that might have saved the crew of XV-179 on election day in Iraq. Apparently the K fleet (super-E in US parlance, CMk1 in UK officialese) are getting their foam…
Read More Foam Party!They lie, they lie, they lie lie lie. We already knew that, but this is rather surprising in its sheer bare-arsed obviousness. Apparently, when Bush made his speech blathering about those “suspected mobile biological weapons labs” that turned out to be for filling weather balloons, the US government already knew from their own investigation of…
Read More Liars, Liars, LiarsBig media pick up a bit on the Hercules defensive-aids suite story (see here and here). Not much dig-in, though. This is just the latest in a sea of bullshit – there are 9 out of 25 RAF C-130s that have the full fit of defensive gear, including some really clever stuff like the Directional…
Read More DAS AgainTom of Blairwatch has been doing some sums on how badly the ID card registration process is going to fuck up. You may recall we did something similar for the biometrics. Using the Home Office’s own figures, in which the best identifier (iris scanning) had a success rate of 96%, and assuming that each one…
Read More Scaling and Scoping an ID Card ProtestReally pissed off about the vomitous, turdridden herd of diseased bloodsucking rat-swine that masquerades as our government? Seriously? Do you live in Englefield Green East? Well, now’s your chance to do something about it. On May the 4th, you could vote for me as your Liberal Democrat councillor. There’s a thought. TYR embarks on the…
Read More Action time.Remember this post and a firm calling itself Aerospace Consortium FZE, of Fujairah, that was mysteriously settling bills relating to entirely different firms in Kenya using Phoenix Aviation, Johnsons Air, GST Aero and Asterias Commercial planes to send mortar bombs to Liberia? Take a look at this: not sure about sourcing, but a company of…
Read More Aerospace Consortium FZEYou may remember the shooting down of the RAF Hercules aircraft XV179 on election day, 2005, in Iraq. This blog ran quite a lot of stuff about it – some reasonable, some utterly ludicrous speculation. In the event, it turned out that the plane really was involved in special forces support (contrary to my scepticism…
Read More A Slight Return to XV-179One of the Jetline International-run Ilyushin 62 jets, 5A-DKR ex. RA-86554, has been destroyed in an accident at Moscow (Domodedovo). Apparently the aircraft, which came in from Tripoli for overhaul, overran the runway and came to rest 500 metres off-airport, breaking into three parts. Crew are safe. Interestingly, the Il-62s and other large aircraft at…
Read More 5A-DKR DestroyedScienceblogs.com has rapidly become one of the best things on the Web, and today I saw this post of Pharyngula’s regarding a crazed god-nut college in the US where you can be disciplined for “making eye babies”, touching a person of the opposite sex (your own is fine, though homosexuality is a big no-no), or…
Read More Optical intercourse