Look! No ash! - by Richard... Friday, May 21, 2010

Look! No ash! - by Richard... Friday, May 21, 2010

No evidence of volcanic ash has been found in any BA aircraft engines since European skies were reopened on 20 April, following a six-day closure after the eruption of an Icelandic volcano.

From that period to date, we are told that BA has operated more than 20,000 flight segments and conducted more than 8,000 engine inspections. Engines and their filters had been inspected by BA engineers and sent to laboratories for closer analysis. Yet, says chief executive Willie Walsh, "Not only have we not found any damage from ash, we have not found any ash."

But for the intervention of Willie Walsh and other airline leaders, it is unlikely that the flight ban would have been lifted on 20 April. Still, the authorities would have been relying on a Met Office computer model to predict the location of the ash and set the safety criteria.

Observation by a research aircraft on 20 April, however, revealed that ash levels were "barely detectable", a finding repeated last week when again the Met Office warned of "dense ash clouds" over Ireland and northern England, then spreading southwards. When the research aircraft flew through the region, on its return from detachment in Nantes, it was unable to find ash in the predicted areas.

While BA's findings provide still further evidence of the failings of the ash model, the Met Office is still insisting – as it does with its global warming data – that its model is "accurate".

The Civil Aviation Authority has responded by increasing the tolerance limits for flying in ash clouds, but is still relying on Met Office data. Walsh thinks this is "a bit of a fudge." He want the airlines to be able to decide on whether to take the risk, and takes the view that: "We cannot have a situation where the Met Office decides if the skies are open or closed."

Yet, that has effectively been the case, with the safety authorities taking their cue entirely from the Met Office, a process that has undoubtedly led to huge over-reaction and massive cost and disruption. No one in authority though seems to want to take the lesson from this, or draw the wider inferences. But the issue is not going to go away ... Katla is rumbling.

ICELAND'S REVENGE THREAD

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You didn't see it here - by Richard...

There are some things in life you never thought you would see. This is one of them (look at the name of the author).

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Vanity money - by Richard...

One of the more egregious stupidities, from a man given to more than average, is David Cameron's decision to ring-fence the foreign aid programme.

Better late than never, we now have Andrew Gilligan in The Daily Telegraph questioning that decision, in a piece headed: "Did Britian (sic) really need to give millions to the wealthy state of Singapore?"

Apparently, "Britain" (i.e., British taxpayers) has given £8.7 million in development aid to Singapore, whose gross domestic product per capita is the fourth highest in the world, and 46 percent higher than our own. And, of course, we have dolled out well over £1 billion in aid to India over the last three years, for that country to finance its space programme, its defence re-equipment and its own aid programme.

Even where aid is directed to an ostensibly good cause, such as Afghanistan, we see some insane spending decisions, such as the spending of £420,000 on a leisure park for women in Afghanistan, complete with a Ferris wheel.

If ever there was a budget that needed to be ripped apart, shredded, eviscerated and then collapsed, it is our aid budget ... and DFID with it. But that is not Cameron territory. This is the PR spiv who lives by the "feel good" gesture, and for that vanity we are to pay £9 billion from our hard earned incomes.

And the reason we should not rise up and slaughter him is?

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A whole mess of uncertainty and fear - by Richard...

Yesterday was a big day politically, with the Cleggerons delivering the latest version of theircoalition pact - and the wrong day to go offline for most of the day, with an internet upgrade, especially as I returned to read of Cameron's stitch-up of the '22 Committee. This was recounted by Autonomous Mind, who was not the only one to be distinctly unimpressed.

But what comes over from both episodes is the low-grade pettiness of it all – the modern equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. The modern conflagration, in the shape of the euro crisis, is summed up by a trader recorded in The Guardian telling us that "the markets are a whole mess of uncertainty and fear right now".

The speaker is Joshua Raymond, market strategist at City Index, who then observes that, as the FTSE nosedived, "it is hardly surprising that investors are fleeing risky assets everywhere." This, he says, "necessarily, means heavy weakness for stocks, sterling and the euro."

It is times like these that one feels one's own lack of knowledge and expertise, although it is also clear that the experts are floundering as well. At least, though, the Wall Street Journal makes the crisis its lead story, with the legend: "The Euro Turns Radioactive".

The Times in London also leads with the story and from this source we learn that Merkel is leading calls for an international financial tax today, which she claims to be a "signal of strength" – preparatory to the meeting of finance ministers in Brussels tomorrow.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is calling it a "perfect storm", noting that market tremors are hitting China, Europe and the US. Just about every indicator you care to look at tells its own unhappy story, with no end in sight and no prospect of good news any time soon.

I asked Ambrose earlier how serious the situation was. Were we talking about unemployment and soup queues, or was it not quite that bad? The response was a cryptic two words: "that bad" – which sort of says it all. No one I can find is prepared to say any different - Randall is even moredownbeat.

Yet, with economic collapse threatening, with potentially catastrophic consequences, David Cameron is obsessed with his own petty affairs. Yesterday he was telling his backbenchers to "get used to the new world" as he and Nick Clegg unveiled their full coalition deal.

There's a "new world" coming alright and it's not the one he has in mind. But it's certainly one he is going to have to get used to. At the moment, he seems on a different planet – and now is not the time to have the children running the shop.