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 ConceptWell this is impressive; Polly Toynbee arguing that anyone who disagrees with ID cards is objectively pro-illegal immigrants being beaten up. Seriously; the argument is not that we need ID cards to keep the immigrants out, but that we need to cut the government some slack in order to stop them beating up illegal immigrants.…
Read More Polly Toynbee: Is an Egregious HackAn extra titbit on Nimrod: XV230 was the airframe that had refuelled from a TriStar the most. In second place was XV235; and on the 5th November, this aircraft experienced a fuel leak from one of those 38-year old rubber seals. In other news, apparently the decision to stop Nimrods air-to-air refuelling had little effect;…
Read More XV230 UpdateWhy must you record my phone calls? Are you planning a bootleg EP? (thnx, derausqed!) So said the Specials.Laura Rozen points us to a New York Times story regarding the wider telecoms surveillance effort that led to the great AT&T whistleblower case; it seems as good as certain that they got cracking the moment Bush…
Read More Datenschutz in AmerikaThis Brad DeLong post summarises criticisms of the Stern report on the economics of climate change and criticisms of the criticisms. Mostly, it’s concerned with the role of uncertainty; as the tail of the distribution includes some really horrible possibilities, it’s not sensible to assume that we’ll be OK because the middle of the distribution…
Read More A Fundamental Problem