John Reid, we hardly knew you.. It’s not looking good for him, is it? His strategy, on taking over the Home Office, appears to have been one of pre-emptive disclosure, trying to get the toxic waste out in the open as quickly as possible and get it over with. You poor fool! Wait until you…
Read More The politics of permanent crisisWell, who saw that one coming? China blasts an old weather satellite with an MRBM. There’s a lot to say about this, but here’s one of the most important things. One of the classic examples of cooperation in an adversarial relationship is the understanding between the US and the Soviet Union, and then everyone else,…
Read More Whoosh Kabooom!Dear God, John Redwood says something entirely sane. This frightens me – there is something we agree on. Naturally, I followed a link from Chris Dillow – I don’t read his stuff, you know. But I think he’s right that a big part of the solution to party spending is that the buggers ought not…
Read More You must have scared yourselfWhatever Sir Ian Blair says, the opposite is probably true. It’s a basic working assumption that has at least one major advantage – that even when it’s wrong, it won’t lead you into anything too terrible. Rather like the Malatesta estimator. To estimate a value people disagree about accurately, take the most and least exaggerated…
Read More Sir Ian Blair: IgnorantIn comments, Teresa argues that Rumsfeld’s incompetence can be traced to his time as a fighter pilot. Over at Yglesias’s, “Ajay” makes the same point with regard to John McCain, with impressive brevity: Good grief. Aviators. I admit the cocky buggers are handy to have around if you want a plane flown somewhere, but they…
Read More Sources of stupidityZiff-Davis Baseline carries a huge report on exactly why the NHS National Programme for IT is a disaster. (Thanks, Charles.) First of all, a reiteration of a past point: they mention as one of the few successes the N3 tranche of the project, which turns out to be the deployment of DSL lines to GP…
Read More HOWNOTTO build a computer systemThe chatter is building up that a serious change in policy in Iraq is afoot. Supposedly, there is talk of an ultimatum to the Iraqi government to do various defined things or face undefined sanctions (this is an old John Paul Vann idea from South Vietnam), but there are also reasons to imagine that the…
Read More Talking to Iran, part 2Now here’s a party proposal I can get behind. Lib Dems want to introduce a Great Repeal Act, which would consist of a single sweeping revocation of a whole catalogue of liberticidal, stupid and expensive Blairite nonsense. Details are here. 1. Restrictions on protests in Parliament SquareSections 132 to 138; Serious Organised Crime and Police…
Read More Repeal!Every blog and its cat has been discussing the tale that Richard Armitage supposedly threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the stone age, but no-one seems to have mentioned a very obvious fact about this: Pakistan has an estimated 20-60 nuclear warheads deliverable by various means. Now, you don’t go round threatening to bomb nuclear…
Read More All the Pakistan that’s fit to printMy thoughts on the Thai coup, free signup required. Which will explain the title. Interesting to see the classic model coup in action again. Turkey in 1997 had the so-called “virtual coup”, when the army didn’t actually leave barracks but did cause the government to fall by indicating its displeasure. But this was your Bolivian…
Read More Thax loss