Self-satirising ID card madness. So they’ve actually got as far as issuing some significant contracts. We’ll begin by noting that one of them has gone to CSC, last seen introducing the joy of Cerner software to the NHS National Programme for IT. But much more to the point, what is this talk about using the…
Read More it is now absolutely certain that the national ID card will be compromisedAs someone once said: ladies and gentlemen, we got him. It appears that – of all people – Boris Johnson gets the honour of dragging “Sir” Ian out of his spider hole. Of course, this raises all kinds of legal issues as to who, exactly, gets to hire’n’fire the commissioner of the Met. Is it…
Read More Mission accomplishedIt’s been said, I think by Alanbrooke, that strategy consists in the proper handling of reserves. Looking at the situation with this framework, what can we say about Iraq? It’s now been a year since the announcement of “The Surge”, the deployment of the US Army’s strategic reserve in Iraq. And what’s happened? First, it…
Read More Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?I’ve been reading old House of Commons Defence Committee reports – I was ill, forgive me. This one, from February, is likely to spin up to relevance any time now. It covers the Army’s FRES (Future Rapid Effects System) project, which was intended to provide a new armoured vehicle that would be light and handy…
Read More Unclear on the ConceptThe Government is trying to define down the Iraqi employees it is under pressure to accept as refugees after the forthcoming UK withdrawal from Basra. With the Murdoch press, it is signalling that some 91 interpreters might be accepted, but at the same time that there are as many as 20,000 people involved. That figure…
Read More We Still Can’t Turn Them AwayWe don’t just moan about today’s government surveillance projects and fiddle with other people’s webcams here. No. Sometimes we can offer you better things; like the solution to a huge mass-surveillance IT disaster that hasn’t even happened yet. Spyblog reports that even before Alastair Darling’s deranged scheme to monitor all motor vehicles by GPS has…
Read More The jamming signal increases its humMaking a late challenge for the title of the most offensively authoritarian Blairite, with only a week to go: David Triesman, the former Labour General Secretary and now “The Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Deportations.” He apparently thinks that nationality can be determined through…yeees..biometrics. Or DNA sampling. Or something, you know, sciency. Perhaps maglev, or…
Read More A late run up the blindsideHow could the principles in this post be put into effect? Here’s an opportunity. Legendary trade reporter Roger Ford discusses the situation at GNER, where the company’s franchise to operate the East Coast Main Line has been withdrawn because the parent company, Sea Containers, is in financial difficulty. The details of the difficulty can be…
Read More A practical example?Flying from Sharjah to Bagram AFB today is an aircraft operating for “British Gulf International Company” as opposed to British Gulf International Airlines, using the ICAO code BGI rather than BGK. Why should this be interesting? Well, back in the beginning in 2003, BGIA was supposed to be a company from Sao Tome that had…
Read More The airline that wasn’t is backOver the last few months, I’ve done a succession of posts which can be read under the tag TWOS, for the war on stupidity, which explore various forms of ideology and consensus. More related posts will be tagged as I go. But is this just an exercise in pooflinging? Beyond tirades about managerialism, Tony Blair,…
Read More Method, not ideology