The crying waste involved in scrapping the remaining Nimrod MR4s sees the end of a saga that began with a decision made by Portillo in his capacity as defence secretary for the Major government. How apt it is that the mistake, having been made by a Tory minister, should have to be corrected by ... a Tory minister. And how typical it is that the taxpayer foots the bill, currently up to £4.1 billion, for which we get nothing at all but an expensive pile of scrap.
It is not altogether a bad idea trying to graft on new technology onto old airframes, but this project carried the practice to extremes, ending up with virtually new (but not quite new) aircraft, at more than three times the cost (and possibly much more) of buying and converting new airframes. For once, I am with Lewis Page on this. We are better off without these white elephants.
The worst of it, though, is that we really do need this capacity, and none of the alternative options really cut it. Apart from anything else, if we have a serious maritime incident out in the near or mid-Atlantic – such as, say, a large ship sinking - we will need overhead assets for command and control.
But, while the clever dicks prattle, what this case underlines is the importance of procurement, the long shelf-life of bad decisions, and the costs of getting it wrong. Yet, at the time Portaloo made his decision, there was very little intelligent (or at all) discussion in the media. Everybody can be wise after the event. What we need, though, is to be wise before the event, in which case the worst of these disasters could most certainly be avoided.
Unfortunately, that would require of the media, amongst other things, to spend some time researching and understanding a subject, and writing intelligently about it. It is not that hard - look at FRES for instance - but this is not something in which our media has shown any great skill.
Thus, for all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, we are most certainly likely to see history repeat itself, with more procurement disasters probably already in the making - the Army has not yet abandoned its ambitions for FRES.
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The Met Office is caught out in a lie. Why is it that lying is the dominant ethos of public service these days?
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I do get more than a little pissed off with this. If you stand back from the hype, there is no evidence to support a claim that Galileo is suffering from "cost overruns."
Looking at broad US costings for GPS, in order to commission a brand new, fully-fledged satellite navigation system, complete with ground stations and infrastructure, you are not going to get much change out of €10 billion. If anything, that is on the low side.
Thus, to say, as does Time, that the predicted cost of the project has almost doubled to €6.4 billion is to miss the point. The original estimate was unrealistically low, and the current estimate is also unrealistically low. If the EU got inside €6.4 billion, it would be a modern miracle.
Thus, in this case, we are not dealing with cost overruns, but something completely different. Essentially, as we averred in our piece, the EU commission has been lying about the cost, and is continuing to lie. It did so and is doing so because, had it been open about the true costs of the system, it would never have got approval in the first place.
Such issues are not hard to work out, but they point up the essential defect of the whole project, in common with the EU itself, that it is built on a foundation of lies. That, it seems, the timorous little journos of Time Magazine can't deal with, so they run with the low-octane Open Europe line and stay within their comfort zone.
This is what is has come to – the euroslime can rob us blind and no one even has the courage to say so – least of all the Uncle Toms in Open Europe.
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According to the Voice of Russia, in the last 24 hours, the ice trapped Sodruzhestvo factory ship has made a mere 300 meters in the past 24 hours - not even twice its own length. Aided by the Admiral Makarov and the Krasin, Ria Novosti confirms that the convoy has only covered 1.8 miles "in heavy ice floe" since the start of what was hoped to be the final phase of the rescue in the Okhotsk Sea crisis.
"The convoy is moving very slowly due to breaking towing cables and constant shifting of heavy ice floe," says the spokeswoman for the factory ship owners, Tatyana Kulikova. "The ships have managed to cover only 1.8 miles since Wednesday, and have about 20 miles to go till they reach clear waters," she added. The Krasin is towing the Sodruzhestvo, while the Admiral Makarov is leading the convoy, attempting to clear a passable channel in the thick ice.
Since the beginning of the current operation on Wednesday morning, the rescue operation has been suspended twice because of the breakage of towing cables. Yesterday we learned that a replacement cable had been brought by helicopter. Now, that cable seems to have broken. This is the third time a breakage has been reported.
Looking at the sheer bulk of the Sodruzhestvo (pictured top), it is not at all surprising that problems are being experienced. But with it having spent over four weeks trapped in the ice, the 348 crew must be wondering whether their ship will ever again see the open sea. Still, as one of our readers observes, as long as they have this, they won't get bored.
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS
The single currency is finished, says Jeff Randall. The debt bill is too high for the Club Med nations and they will have to leave the zone.
Yeah ... but we've heard that before. This is a political, not an economic project, and the "colleagues" will do everything in their power to keep their "baby" alive – and some. So, where economics ends, politics takes over. They will ruin the economies of every nation in the EU rather than give up hope.
Many times and in many places, it is said that Merkel must bite the bullet. Let's even mix metaphors ... Germany has to pull the plug, or it will bring us all down. But when, we ask ... when?
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Yeah ... but we've heard that before. This is a political, not an economic project, and the "colleagues" will do everything in their power to keep their "baby" alive – and some. So, where economics ends, politics takes over. They will ruin the economies of every nation in the EU rather than give up hope.
Many times and in many places, it is said that Merkel must bite the bullet. Let's even mix metaphors ... Germany has to pull the plug, or it will bring us all down. But when, we ask ... when?
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It was Autonomous Mind who first picked up the stench on the breeze from a little-known blog. This had it that Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell were seeking to wind up the Better Off Out campaign. Supported by Mark Reckless, they are proposing that BOO should be replaced by a cross-party referendum campaign, which says AM, "confirms the suspicions of many people" that the pair "are nothing more than David Cameron’s useful idiots".
The clue as to the direction of travel came from an earlier post on the Hannan blog and, while it does indeed look as if the deadly duo are shifting their ground, I would not entirely endorse the analysis offered by AM. Given how the pair, and Hannan especially, function as token eurosceptics, their function to lead waverers into the Tory Party, the real clue to their role is given in the comments to yet another Hannan post. There it is suggested that Judas goat might be a better descriptor.
A Judas goat is a trained goat used at a slaughterhouse and in general animal herding. The Judas goat is trained to associate with sheep or cattle, leading them to a specific destination. In stockyards, a Judas goat will lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared. Judas goats are also used to lead other animals to specific pens and on to trucks.
Funnily enough, though, Judas goats are illegal under EU slaughterhouse law. Once an animal has entered a slaughterhouse, it must be slaughtered within 24 hours. There are no exceptions permitted, and the only working animals allowed - and then just in the lairage - are dogs. As long as he is an MEP, Hannan would be safe enough from the branding.
However, so apposite is the description that we have nevertheless decided on an honorific for the Hannan, judging "Myrtle" to be the most appropriate. This is slightly better than Rose, but that name can hardly apply. The experience of that animal which led it to such great fame is that which is intended for the unwise and gullible who follow Myrtle to the final destination.
But, says Your Freedom and Ours, see how they squirm, while Witterings from Witney adds his own well-crafted points.
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There are probably no two words in the entire English language that have become more debased than: "experts warn". That simple truth, however, evades the simple souls recruited by The Daily Telegraph to write their headlines, their latest offering being: "Climate change means we will be skiing in Yorkshire rather than sunbathing under palm trees, experts warn."
This announces yet another dollop of from the incredible Richard Alleyne, styled as the paper's "science correspondent", his labours helping to turn a once respected newspaper into the laughing stock that is has become, driving down the circulation to the point eventually when even this blog will be able to boast more readers.
Of course, we all remember the contribution from The Independent on 20 March 2000, when we got the headline: "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past". According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia - former home also of Paul Nurse - within a few years winter snowfall, would become "a very rare and exciting event".
Now, that Viner's little fantasy no longer holds true, we thus have the re-writing of predictions on a scale that would have taxed even the inventive powers of Winston Smith. And in this case the honours go to Dr Simon Boxall, of the National Oceanography Survey, who tells the gullible Alleyne that, while the planet as a whole will get much warmer, this country will see temperatures plunge as the ocean currents and weather patterns around the world change.
What is so very remarkable about this is not that Alleyne is stupid enough to believe it, but that he is stupid enough to believe that we, his readers, will believe it. Nevertheless, his commentators are attempting to disabuse him of that, as indeed they have tried with Geoffrey Lean and Loopy Lou.
But such is the nature of the British press that they haven't quite caught up with this internet thingie, and still believe - in common with the political classes - that communication remains a one-way process. For supposedly intelligent men and women, they are having extraordinary difficulty learning the very simple lesson, that ex cathedra pontification from idiot hacks no longer works. We are amused but not persuaded, and are increasingly taking our custom elsewhere.
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Well over three thousand comments on the Dellersblog about the Paul Nurse stitch-up (now online) is a remarkable social phenomenon. It is one to which the media and politicians should pay attention, as it demonstrates that "debate" – such that it is – has not disappeared. It has simply found other venues.
However, the use of scare quotes on the "debate" is well merited. The comments range from the barely literate abuse, to the pretentious, aggressive and, occasionally, well-reasoned. Very few, nevertheless, are going to plough through the many thousands of entries, but by and large, having comments read is not the intention. Instead, the aim of each side to dominate the argument by force of numbers, driving the opposition into obscurity.
Whether this is important is hard to tell, but the warmist "community" is certainly investing a huge effort in the activity, matching the determination of the BBC and its fellow-travellers in The Guardianand Independent to bring down high-profile sceptics such as Delingpole.
Given that the blog and then the comments are a response to the BBC Horizon programme, though, it is interesting but not at all surprising to find that none of the commentators display any real understanding of the dynamics which led to Delingpole being interviewed.
The core issue is that he was interviewed by Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, for around three hours, on camera, for the Horizon programme, which purported to argue the case for greater trust of science, claiming that science was "under attack".
What was very clear, though, was that the producers then "cherry picked" a tiny segment of the interview that gave them the line they wanted to present to the audience. That itself is a major issue and one might have thought that an intelligent, semi-adult discussion might then have responded by at least remarking on this phenomenon.
This is the practice of modern documentary makers, who can gather huge amounts of material and then edit and assemble the material in a way that they can present a message, the message the producer wishes to convey. This is irrespective of what is actually said, and what interviewees actually intended.
As it happens, I have had the self-same experience myself. Recently, I was interviewed for theDispatches programme by Rageh Omaar. That interview was easily three hours and I spoke freely, at length over a wide range of issues, all to do with the very contentious subject of immigration.
When the programmes were aired (it was a series) my interview was used, in very small measure, here and there, totalling no more than a few minutes. It showed my saying words, and I did say the words. But in no way did it even begin to convey what I felt about the subject. Huge areas which I had discussed at length were not even raised.
What helped me to recognise the process was that I've done the same thing. I've made several documentaries myself, including two Dispatches programmes. You write the script first, setting out what you want to say. Then you go out and find the talking heads that will say the words you need to fit the script. You (in this case I) interview them, collect up the words on the tape and then go back to the edit suite and pull out the words that fit.
I remember at a late stage in the film-making, we needed a scientist to say one thing, one sentence, to confirm a key premise we needed to make, for the film to hang together. And we would not find anything like it in all our interviews.
We hunted around and eventually found a water scientist in Inverness, who looked as if he might say it, so we took the crew all the up there from London. I went through the motions of interviewing him, waiting for him to say the words we needed.
At the time, we were under huge pressure to catch the last flight back and the man would not say the words. So I talked around the subject, and kept re-phrasing the question, putting it to him again and again. Then, as we were getting more and more desperate, he said the magic sentence. He didn't really mean it, but the way I had asked the question gave me the string of words I needed.
The cameraman snapped off the lights, we threw the kit in the boxes and fled, rushing to catch our flight. The poor sod must have wondered what he had said to get such a response. When the film was broadcast, it had that one sentence in it. Nothing more from that man, even though he had talked for hours.
That is TV for you – that is how it works. That's what Delingpole went through. The "line" was already pre-ordained - worked out in advance. He was picked as the "talking head" most likely to, and Nurse went out to collect the words needed to fit that part of the script.
It thus really didn't matter what Delingpole might have intended. The outcome was always going to be the same. So those who exult in him being "caught out" or some such really do not have the first idea of what they are talking about, or the first idea of what was going on.
This, of course, makes television documentaries (potentially) a massively dishonest medium - you think you are watching the expressions of the participants, but you are not. The audience is being led through a carefully crafted script towards a conclusion that was decided in editorial and commissioning offices, months and sometimes years before the first camera was switched on.
And yet, so many fell for it, have fallen for it before, and will do so again. Many did so this time because the programme fitted their own prejudices and expectations. But, while they are strident in condemning Delingpole, if they believed (or convinced themselves) that what they saw was real, they are the fools,
Delingpole's mistake was in trying to play a bent game straight.
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The silence from yesterday in the Okhotsk Sea crisis is now explained from the latest report, which tells us that the rescue of the Sodruzhestvo factory ship had been suspended once again. In a re-run of an earlier drama exactly two weeks ago, the tow rope snapped as the ship was being dragged through the ice.
With the icebreakers Krasin (pictured below from 2006) towing the giant factory ship and theAdmiral Makarov clearing the channel ahead, the ships only managed to break though "one and a half miles of thick ice" before the tow was lost again. We are told, however, that "spare towropes were delivered by a helicopter" and that the operation has been resumed. Make of that what you will.
This is now the 27th day the Sodruzhestvo has spent locked in the ice. And, although the Russians have been fairly candid about the difficulties involved in extracting her, the continued delays must be trying patience. There are 40 miles to go to the ice edge (although Russian miles tend to be rather elastic) and the ships were last reported in "a complicated area of dense ice".
Thus, there is still no immediate end in sight to this drama. The authorities are only committing to "several days" before the ships are in the clear, and experience tells us anything could happen.
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS
An almost certain way to ensure that a subject gets nowhere near the MSM is to have a committee of MEPs look at it. That has proved to be the case with the EU's "disproportionate" response to the outbreak of the H1N1 (swine flu) virus in 2009-2010. Despite the press release and the full resources of the EU parliament press team, the only newspaper we can find that has carried news of the investigation is the Sophia Echo.
The issue is now the subject of a resolution adopted by the EU parliament's public health committee, addressing the cost of vaccination programmes and relative risks that were faced. MEPs criticise the EU commission and member states for their "disproportionate" response and their ill-co-ordinated vaccination programmes .
The criticism arises from differences in vaccination schemes in various EU, the excessive expenditure on vaccines, "the potential influence of pharmaceutical companies in response processes," and the conflicts of interest. Billions of euros were spent in total, yet H1N1 had caused 2,900 deaths in Europe by April 2010, compared with 40,000 for seasonal flu in a moderate year.
This is an issue we looked at a number of times, most notably here, but we also looked at theattempts to highlight the way the World Health Organisation and other public health bodies had "gambled away" public confidence by overstating the dangers.
At the time, of course, this was a classic scare, obviously so, and we said as much. Yet, while this has been latterly recognised, not least now by this MEP committee, none of those who succumbed to an expensive and damaging panic seem to be able to recognise the similarities in the dynamics of the global warming scare.
What also deserves comment is the way the public authorities - so quick to spend our money on their "moral panics" as they are sometimes called – are less enthusiastic about examining the results of their folly, and learning lessons from it. To that effect, we should offer one small cheer to the EU parliament, although the motivation here was to have a pop at "big pharma" rather than the thought that they might do something useful.
So it is that this one is going to get away – billions spent, and no real lessons learned. What makes me think that, once the global warming scare collapses, we will be faced with exactly the same thing?
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As the Sodruzhestvo (pictured above – ship on right) enters its 26th day of captivity in the ice of theOkhotsk Sea, the agency TASS was confidently reporting that she will be freed today. That news was posted early this morning, Moscow time and there are quite often updates issued. And, in the early evening here (England), it is in the early hours Wednesday in the rescue area, and all we are getting is an ominous silence.
We had been told from diverse sources that the icebreakers Krasin and Admiral Makarov would begin to pilot the factory ship from the ice. The Krasin was first into the ice after refuelling, and had forced its way to the factory ship. The Admiral Makarov was following, making the escape channel wider.
The two icebreakers were then to operate in tandem, leading the Sodruzhestvo to ice-free water for about 50 miles across heavy hummocky ice. The weather conditions were said to be favourable and the last we had heard was that the Krasin had been clearing the Sodruzhestvo from ice and preparing a channel for towing.
Meanwhile, as this drama plays out, US Rear Admiral Dave Titley, at an Arctic conference in Tromsø, Norway, is telling us that commercial ships could be sailing across an ice-free North Pole as soon as 2035.
Titley predicted that, as the ice-free period gradually increased, the Bering Strait between the US and Russia would begin to rival the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia as one of the world's most important shipping lanes.
This, no doubt, will come as music to the ears the crew of the Sodruzhestvo, who might also be entertained by the total lack of Western media coverage. The only news from that source, coming out of the region concerns a "rare whale" which has left the Bering Sea and is heading for the Gulf of Alaska.
Researchers have been tracking the whale since they tagged it off Russia's Sakhalin Island on 4 October, and the media is showing far more interest in this solitary mammal than it is the fate of over 400 trapped crew. It would be nice to think that the Japanese had a whaler handy to do a bit of quick "research", which could then grace the plates of Tokyo diners.
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS
One cannot help but be amused at the coincidence of the BBC transmitting its Horizon Programme, as an ill-concealed (and poorly constructed) defence of warmist orthodoxy, at the same time Peter Sissons is serialising his book in The Daily Mail, today arguing that the BBC has become a "propaganda machine for climate change".
In the media generally, this is definitely the sort of issue that separates the men from the boys. It thus comes as no surprise to find The Independent running interference on behalf of the BBC. Its so-called science editor, Steve Connor, has been rushing in to tell us that, "Scientists are being subjected to shocking levels of personal vilification and distrust" - this according to the distinctly low-grade former East Anglia University student, Paul Nurse, who fronted the Horizon effort.
With its daily circulation of 175,002 (down 6.39 percent, year-on-year), this national newspaper now takes in considerably less readers in a day than we get in a month, the other difference being that, while its readership is declining, ours is increasing. That is unlikely to be a coincidence.
Of course, the other cheek of the BBC's arse, The Guardian, has been in full flow, with not one buttwo pieces on the programme. That tells you exactly where it is coming from, as if anyone needed any reminders. For a more considered comment, you may have to wait for The Sunday Telegraphthis weekend.
Comments on the Dellersblog, meanwhile, are in full flow. One of the commentators refers to aDaily Mail poll asking whether the BBC is biased in its reporting on climate change? Some 85 percent say "yes" and 15 percent say "no". And this is a paper with a circulation 2,030,968. Dellers has it, methinks. The Guardianistas and Independenistas are talking to themselves.
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