Jamie K, hence the Madchester title, takes issue with a Johann Hari column arguing in favour of National Service on the grounds that it will make politicians less likely to go to war. Two points: first, as a commenter points out, making the army less efficient as a way of preventing war is stupid. It’s…
Read More why not just bounce it and see just what goes wellDoes the idea of “embodied energy” convey any useful information whatsoever in the vast majority of its applications? I ask because I recently read about the difficulties faced in calculating this metric. For the uninitiated, it means the energy consumed in creating one unit of product X. People concerned about climate change and the supply…
Read More Useless metric of the decadeOK, so the US government has formed a highly secret Iran-Syria Operations Group, staffed entirely by private contractors from BearingPoint, Inc. What could possibly go wrong?
Read More Rudie can’t failI knew roughly what Resource Accounting and Budgeting was all about, but I never imagined they could invent a system that would require NHS trusts to pay back any overspend twice. Especially as, at the same time, the introduction of payment-by-results means that their income scales directly with their output. So, they can’t reduce the…
Read More Paying the cost to be the boss (of the civil service)Did I say I loved the Financial Times? When everyone else was frontpaging with Princess Diana, the paper had the following stories on the front: the BAE investigation kibosh (this was the lead), Blair grilled by the rozzers (number two, opposite the lead and separated by a photo of the man), then the OPEC meeting…
Read More Say yes and let’s enjoy the…Via Pat Lang’s, the American Enterprise Institute’s plan for yet another atttempt to secure Baghdad. You won’t be very surprised to learn that neither Lang, nor I, think very much of it. Peter Kagan’s strategy – a PowerPoint presentation, natch – is risible. The first and most basic fault is the frantic insistence on victory,…
Read More The generals bow to the government: they’re tired of the truthWell, where to start with my utter rage at the kiboshed Al-Yamamah investigation? It’s a total map of state direness, New Labour subtype: we have hypocrisy, we have a good day to bury bad news, we have cash, we have Lord Goldsmith, the professional get out of jail card himself. Obviously, this being a blog,…
Read More You’ve been bought and paid, you’re a whore and a slaveGet your idle legs over to the Weblog Awards and vote for Fistful. Exercise your democratic rights here. We’re losing to some random bunch of Dutchmen, but you can help us finish ahead of the demented thrappers of Brussels Journal. As usual with blog awards, it’s stuffed with the overrated and the clichéd. There was…
Read More For Dawkins’ sake…In 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 stupidityThe war comes to Iraq the Model. A modest proposal, if I may. Comments like this one are not “supporting Iraqi democracy”: Congratulations Mohammed. You and your neighbors have taken the first step toward democracy and living as free people. It appears you are coming to the realization that being “free” comes with taking the…
Read More Supporting Iraqi democracy