Taken last year when every day was hot and the sky was clear blue.
Thursday, 3 January 2019
Monday, 31 December 2018
That Gatwick Drone Scam In 10 Points
1. £2.9bn deal for Vinci SA to buy a 50.01% share in Gatwick airport being discussed in private
2. One dumb report about maybe a drone from clueless members of the public, none of whom have been named or even described
2a. If it had been a pilot, ground controller or some other authoritative source, we would have seen them on TV every half-hour
3. If it is a drone and an aircraft strikes it, Gatwick will be hit with CAA enquiries, insurance claims, terrible publicity if there are any dead or injured people, along with attendant civil suits, for the next five to ten years
4. And the airport will be closed for at least thirty-six hours while they clear up the mess
5. At this point the decision is a no-brainer, because no-one wants to take any risks
6. Bring on Gatwick’s PR department / agency. You know they’ve got one, right? You know that PR departments’ job is to fill the press with BS that suits their company / client?
6a. “I know,” says Rebecca (25) in PR, “let’s say it’s a drone. The public hates drones, and only creepy weirdos use them.”
6b. PR Director calls the CEO and says “We’re going to say it’s a drone.”
6c. CEO asks “Is it a drone?”
6d. PR Director says “Who cares? It’s the right story. The public hates drones, and only creepy weirdos use them.”
6e. CEO says “Okay. Sounds good to me. We cannot screw up the thing we’re talking to the guys about, until the guys sign the thing.”
7. The media are briefed by Gatwick’s PR department and does what it is supposed to do: repeat what corporate PR departments say.
8. Absolutely NOBODY in the British public believes it, because...
8a. No authoritative witness, not even “Sharon Williams, 27, Schoolteacher from Penzance, said…"
8b. No video - there’s always video. Ten seconds of a dot does not count.
8c. Absolute unanimity in the media, which only happens when they are all singing from the corporate hymn-sheet
8d. Only creepy weirdos use drones, and creepy weirdos don’t do things like fly drones over airports because they might be creepy but they aren’t dumb
8e. Everyone knows drones have to be line-of-sight to the operator unless it’s a military drone, and those are very large and not subject to vague reports
9. On Monday, the deal goes through.
10. On Tuesday the story vanishes.
Things that make you go "Mmmmmmmm"
2. One dumb report about maybe a drone from clueless members of the public, none of whom have been named or even described
2a. If it had been a pilot, ground controller or some other authoritative source, we would have seen them on TV every half-hour
3. If it is a drone and an aircraft strikes it, Gatwick will be hit with CAA enquiries, insurance claims, terrible publicity if there are any dead or injured people, along with attendant civil suits, for the next five to ten years
4. And the airport will be closed for at least thirty-six hours while they clear up the mess
5. At this point the decision is a no-brainer, because no-one wants to take any risks
6. Bring on Gatwick’s PR department / agency. You know they’ve got one, right? You know that PR departments’ job is to fill the press with BS that suits their company / client?
6a. “I know,” says Rebecca (25) in PR, “let’s say it’s a drone. The public hates drones, and only creepy weirdos use them.”
6b. PR Director calls the CEO and says “We’re going to say it’s a drone.”
6c. CEO asks “Is it a drone?”
6d. PR Director says “Who cares? It’s the right story. The public hates drones, and only creepy weirdos use them.”
6e. CEO says “Okay. Sounds good to me. We cannot screw up the thing we’re talking to the guys about, until the guys sign the thing.”
7. The media are briefed by Gatwick’s PR department and does what it is supposed to do: repeat what corporate PR departments say.
8. Absolutely NOBODY in the British public believes it, because...
8a. No authoritative witness, not even “Sharon Williams, 27, Schoolteacher from Penzance, said…"
8b. No video - there’s always video. Ten seconds of a dot does not count.
8c. Absolute unanimity in the media, which only happens when they are all singing from the corporate hymn-sheet
8d. Only creepy weirdos use drones, and creepy weirdos don’t do things like fly drones over airports because they might be creepy but they aren’t dumb
8e. Everyone knows drones have to be line-of-sight to the operator unless it’s a military drone, and those are very large and not subject to vague reports
9. On Monday, the deal goes through.
10. On Tuesday the story vanishes.
Things that make you go "Mmmmmmmm"
Thursday, 27 December 2018
Monday, 24 December 2018
Thursday, 20 December 2018
November 2018 Review
Am I the only person who leaves it way too long between changes of guitar strings? I had to clean the fretboard and bits of the soundboard with a slightly damp scouring pad applied gently, which is far more than you really wanted to know. And spray furniture polish over the whole neglected instrument. So I now have nice new bronze wound light-guage strings on my guitar.
I read Julia Blackburn’s Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske, Ben Judah’s This is London: Life and Death in the World City, Hamilton Gregory’s McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War; Richard Taruskin’s Music in the Late Twentieth-Century; Anonymous’ The Secret Teacher; and Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden.
I saw Red Lights, 10,000km, The Wanderers, Season of the Witch, and The Apparition on MUBI; and I, Anna, and A Pigeon Sat on a Tree Reflecting About Existence, on Curzon Home Cinema; and Tout va Bien, Revenge, Taken, Taken 2 and Taken 3 on DVD. Those Takens are well-made ninety-minute action movies.
Sis and I had supper at Picture on Great Portland Street. We like the other Picture, but we like sitting at the bar in Great Portland Street more.
And the slump went on. How do I know I'm having a slump? I watch way, way too much You Tube. I feel tired and start to lose enthusiasm for the gym. These days I feel like I put a lot of effort into sleeping, especially into dreams with incredible levels of detail.
The trick with slumps is not to try to explain them with some pop-psychology cliche so worn out it gets used the script for a Channel Four movie. No, it’s not the weather. Nor is it the ‘andropause’, or a reaction to a friend dying. Any of those things might have triggered it, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is getting out of the slump. Slumps aren’t exited by the entrance, but by the exit. That came in December, when I used the lack of hot water at the gym for a week to give myself a decent rest.
There is also the fact that it’s one thing to wake up, drag yourself off to work and wish you didn’t have to do it; and another to wake up, drag yourself off to work, and know that you can stop doing it in about fifteen months, if you want to. The cure for that is to enjoy the days that one has to drag oneself off to. It’s also to remind yourself that only people with a long and ambitious to-do / project list get the feeling they are slipping. Everyone else goes home and watches the match.
I read Julia Blackburn’s Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske, Ben Judah’s This is London: Life and Death in the World City, Hamilton Gregory’s McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War; Richard Taruskin’s Music in the Late Twentieth-Century; Anonymous’ The Secret Teacher; and Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden.
I saw Red Lights, 10,000km, The Wanderers, Season of the Witch, and The Apparition on MUBI; and I, Anna, and A Pigeon Sat on a Tree Reflecting About Existence, on Curzon Home Cinema; and Tout va Bien, Revenge, Taken, Taken 2 and Taken 3 on DVD. Those Takens are well-made ninety-minute action movies.
Sis and I had supper at Picture on Great Portland Street. We like the other Picture, but we like sitting at the bar in Great Portland Street more.
And the slump went on. How do I know I'm having a slump? I watch way, way too much You Tube. I feel tired and start to lose enthusiasm for the gym. These days I feel like I put a lot of effort into sleeping, especially into dreams with incredible levels of detail.
The trick with slumps is not to try to explain them with some pop-psychology cliche so worn out it gets used the script for a Channel Four movie. No, it’s not the weather. Nor is it the ‘andropause’, or a reaction to a friend dying. Any of those things might have triggered it, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is getting out of the slump. Slumps aren’t exited by the entrance, but by the exit. That came in December, when I used the lack of hot water at the gym for a week to give myself a decent rest.
There is also the fact that it’s one thing to wake up, drag yourself off to work and wish you didn’t have to do it; and another to wake up, drag yourself off to work, and know that you can stop doing it in about fifteen months, if you want to. The cure for that is to enjoy the days that one has to drag oneself off to. It’s also to remind yourself that only people with a long and ambitious to-do / project list get the feeling they are slipping. Everyone else goes home and watches the match.
Monday, 17 December 2018
Thursday, 13 December 2018
Brexit Chaos aka Democracy In Action
Puzzled or infuriated by what’s happening in the House of Commons around Brexit? It’s called democracy. Democracy is supposed to be messy when big decisions are at stake.
The EU does not want the UK in the EU anymore. It is too Socialist and the UK is too Free Market. The EU countries love being run by administrators who went to good schools - like the ENA - while the politicians are rendered powerless by their lack of education and inability to make friends. Quick, how many European countries have a two-party system? Yep. The UK. The EU wants an European Army and there is no way that Her Majesty - the C-in-C of the UK’s Armed Forces - is turning her lads over to a Belgian General who is at the behest of a bunch of unelected officials. The EU wants the unrestricted immigration of unskilled, uneducated young men from all over the world who have been thrown out of their home towns and villages for bad behaviour. The UK thinks would rather have well-behaved, educated, skilled people who speak English from all over the world.
Theresa May has known this all along. So did David Cameron. What do you think MI6 and GCHQ have been doing all this time?
The EU bureaucrats and other elitists thought that they could do a deal and not involve Parliament. Really. That’s elitists for you. Theresa May knew that even if she got The Best Deal Ever, she would have to present it to Parliament. This is because the UK is a democracy. There aren’t many of those in the world, so it’s not surprising that you don’t recognise one in action when you see it.
No negotiator, no Cabinet member, not the Prime Minister, nor even HRH QE2, can decide the terms on which the UK leaves the EU. Only the elected representatives of the British people can do that. Only they can do it, because only they can lose their jobs if they go too far against the wishes of their constituents. Read that again carefully: unless I can get rid of you, you don’t get to make decisions that affect me. That’s the basis of democracy.
Those elected representatives have had their orders for a long time. The opinion polls confirm month after month that those orders have not changed. Sovereign courts and border control. Free trade is a nice-to-have.
Hence Theresa May had to work hard to get the best deal from the EU that she could get. So we would see how devious and one-sided it was. She has to champion that deal, because it is her deal. The House of Commons should rightly reject the deal and send her back to the EU to re-negotiate. Because they know that the EU never folds until 23:59:59. And if it isn’t going to fold, it has to be the EU who is shown to be intransigent and devious.
It’s supposed to be all about The Backstop. The Irish border is the biggest non-issue in contemporary politics. Anyone who makes it one is effectively threatening us with a new IRA / UDA bombing campaign. Everyone knows this, and no-one is going to make a decision about the UK’s political status on threat of a few IRA bombs. We did this already. Remember? Bombing the British doesn’t work. We’re stubborn like that.
Right now, the matter is in the hands of the members of the House of Commons. No lawyer predicts the jury decision. I hope they feel they have blustered too loud now to turn and accept the deal after Christmas. Unless it turns out that when Junker clarifies ‘No’ he means ‘Yes’. The Honourable Members will not be voting for a hard Brexit, but for more negotiations. If the EU refuses, the EU will be the one forcing a hard Brexit.
So expect lots of noise about preparing for a hard Brexit. Which is, I repeat, something that your employer should have done already. My suspicion is that most companies will have done this, or replaced their EU business with exports somewhere else. If you are working for a company that does business in Europe, and does not know how it will carry on if the UK is not in a free-trade zone with Europe, look for another employer NOW. And ask the interviewers what their hard Brexit plans are.
The EU does not want the UK in the EU anymore. It is too Socialist and the UK is too Free Market. The EU countries love being run by administrators who went to good schools - like the ENA - while the politicians are rendered powerless by their lack of education and inability to make friends. Quick, how many European countries have a two-party system? Yep. The UK. The EU wants an European Army and there is no way that Her Majesty - the C-in-C of the UK’s Armed Forces - is turning her lads over to a Belgian General who is at the behest of a bunch of unelected officials. The EU wants the unrestricted immigration of unskilled, uneducated young men from all over the world who have been thrown out of their home towns and villages for bad behaviour. The UK thinks would rather have well-behaved, educated, skilled people who speak English from all over the world.
Theresa May has known this all along. So did David Cameron. What do you think MI6 and GCHQ have been doing all this time?
The EU bureaucrats and other elitists thought that they could do a deal and not involve Parliament. Really. That’s elitists for you. Theresa May knew that even if she got The Best Deal Ever, she would have to present it to Parliament. This is because the UK is a democracy. There aren’t many of those in the world, so it’s not surprising that you don’t recognise one in action when you see it.
No negotiator, no Cabinet member, not the Prime Minister, nor even HRH QE2, can decide the terms on which the UK leaves the EU. Only the elected representatives of the British people can do that. Only they can do it, because only they can lose their jobs if they go too far against the wishes of their constituents. Read that again carefully: unless I can get rid of you, you don’t get to make decisions that affect me. That’s the basis of democracy.
Those elected representatives have had their orders for a long time. The opinion polls confirm month after month that those orders have not changed. Sovereign courts and border control. Free trade is a nice-to-have.
Hence Theresa May had to work hard to get the best deal from the EU that she could get. So we would see how devious and one-sided it was. She has to champion that deal, because it is her deal. The House of Commons should rightly reject the deal and send her back to the EU to re-negotiate. Because they know that the EU never folds until 23:59:59. And if it isn’t going to fold, it has to be the EU who is shown to be intransigent and devious.
It’s supposed to be all about The Backstop. The Irish border is the biggest non-issue in contemporary politics. Anyone who makes it one is effectively threatening us with a new IRA / UDA bombing campaign. Everyone knows this, and no-one is going to make a decision about the UK’s political status on threat of a few IRA bombs. We did this already. Remember? Bombing the British doesn’t work. We’re stubborn like that.
Right now, the matter is in the hands of the members of the House of Commons. No lawyer predicts the jury decision. I hope they feel they have blustered too loud now to turn and accept the deal after Christmas. Unless it turns out that when Junker clarifies ‘No’ he means ‘Yes’. The Honourable Members will not be voting for a hard Brexit, but for more negotiations. If the EU refuses, the EU will be the one forcing a hard Brexit.
So expect lots of noise about preparing for a hard Brexit. Which is, I repeat, something that your employer should have done already. My suspicion is that most companies will have done this, or replaced their EU business with exports somewhere else. If you are working for a company that does business in Europe, and does not know how it will carry on if the UK is not in a free-trade zone with Europe, look for another employer NOW. And ask the interviewers what their hard Brexit plans are.
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