This story about the US Democrats, and specifically the Obama campaign, and their strategy based on small, autonomous campaign groups working from a honking gurt database of voters, hooks into something I’ve been thinking recently; in all kinds of fields, it’s all about big enabling systems that small autonomous organisations can benefit from. This is…
Read More Small groups and big systemsIt appears that the defence procurement stories we’ve been tracking are coming to a head. Recently, it emerged that the Astute SSN, Nimrod MRA4, and T-45 destroyer projects are going significantly overbudget again; the first two of these are, of course, the ones that were already £800 million over budget and several years later. The…
Read More The Defence Crisis; BAE Are Still HopelessThe consistently superb Bartholomew’s notes on religion has published extensive details about Paul De L’Aire Staines, various old friends, and South Africa. As it seems inevitable that he will fire off a nastygram at any moment, readers are asked to mirror the text in the interests of public enlightenment; I’ve dropped it in the comments.
Read More Mirrorball: Paul Staines and those “Liberals”The consistently superb Bartholomew’s notes on religion has published extensive details about Paul De L’Aire Staines, various old friends, and South Africa. As it seems inevitable that he will fire off a nastygram at any moment, readers are asked to mirror the text in the interests of public enlightenment; I’ve dropped it in the comments.…
Read More Mirrorball: Paul Staines and those “Liberals”Off to WashingtonIain Dale 11:24 AM Just getting on the plane. No comments can be moderated until around 10pm. Have a nice day! Directly beneath this missive is the following HONKING GREAT AD: Mind you, the ability to be in favour of aeroplanes but not runways is pretty much constitutive of post-1979 British Conservatism. Or…
Read More Iain Dale is Frankly RidiculousThat’s what happens when an Antonov-12 runs right off the runway, engines churning, and hits a parked Boeing 727. But that isn’t the interesting bit. The 727 was 9L-LEF; and what it was doing in Pointe Noire, Congo-Brazzaville, when it’s meant to be with Iraqi Airways is a very good question indeed. Like all the…
Read More Crunch!FT: the AirTanker bond issue has, not surprisingly, gone pear-shaped as the monoline insurers fall apart. The story includes some vital detail on precisely what the Defence Procurement PFI team and the consortium have been doing all this time; essentially, trying to finance the deal at an acceptable rate of interest in the middle of…
Read More Can haz air-to-air refuelling? Oh noes…The Tory is sure to leap on the news that, as Dr Rant points out, there is little point in doing a “deep clean” of hospitals because hospital-acquired diseases are propagated by the staff. Strange, I remember when Michael Howard floated a whole election campaign on the line “How difficult can it be to keep…
Read More How difficult can it be?Interesting article in Aviation Leak & Space Technology about the Chinese air defence system, built of standard telecoms/IT stuff. Encrypted IP over many different bearers, landline fibre rather than microwave, that sort of thing. Two things come to mind: 1) Americans; can you just accept that Huawei exists and its engineers are competent? OK? You…
Read More PDA. UAV. Cup of tea?Nonbarking dog of the year, 2007 was the fact that the increasingly heavyweight NATO force in Afghanistan’s logistics are dependent on the road from Kandahar-Quetta-Karachi, that is to say through Taliban and Baluch rebel country to Pakistan’s most politically unstable and violent city. As you’ll see at the link, someone finally attacked trucks on it…
Read More The Flashman Option