January 13, 2008 – The Yorkshire Ranter

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 3 comments

Review: “Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates”, David Wootton

How did a set of medical techniques and institutional styles with absolutely no therapeutic value survive for 2,500 years from ancient Greece to the early 20th century – even though the scientific knowledge required to demolish them had been available since the 1600s? This is the question David Wootton’s “Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since…

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 0 comments

Iraqi Employees: It Gets Worse

This just keeps getting worse: The Times reports that the Government has rejected 300 out of 700 Iraqi employees who applied for resettlement, mostly under the 12 month rule. That’s a rejection rate of just under half. Curiously, the Foreign Office’s own scheme has turned down 38 out of 180; this seems to suggest that…

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 1 comment

Some are expendable; others are just expensive

This PPRuNE thread reminds me of something from the archives. During a meeting we had not long ago, the increasing sophistication and cost of the Unpersonned Aircraft was raised – because by becoming too sophisticated and HVAA in nature, they were in some danger of becoming too valuable to risk in certain scenarios. Rather defeating…

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 1 comment

We get it almost every night

It hasn’t been in the papers much since the summer, but did you know that the Russian air force has been around the North Sea a hell of a lot lately? Between October and December, I’m aware of at least five visits to the UK or Norwegian ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone). Not just that,…

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 1 comment

Away sea boat’s crew!

The naval incident in the Strait of Hormuz has rapidly been blogged into next week; I think there may still be some angular momentum to be had, though. It now looks like the USN is backing off from the claim that the voice taunting them on an open radio channel was someone aboard one of…

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 0 comments

Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?

It’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…

January 13, 2008 by yorksranter 1 comment

Dig the new breed

I keep noticing a new face in the game; Vertir Airlines, of Armenia, founded last year has been flying routes from the UAE into Afghanistan. Not much information has been available, but we know a few things; the only known aircraft, Antonov An-12 EK-12221, serial 7345201, is the old ER-AXE, which flew for the now-banned…