Lessons learned - by Richard... Friday, April 29, 2011

Lessons learned - by Richard... Friday, April 29, 2011

The classic claim from the brain dead and those who have absolutely no familiarity with the complexity of the current legislative code is that "ignorance of the law is no defence".

However, the state of the law, and especially much of that emanating from Brussels, is now such that it is almost impossible to work out what much of it actually means. And rather confirming that situation is a report from the Wall Street Journal which tells us that the EU Commission is under fire from its own ombudsman for misreading its own law.

This occurred last spring when it gave "misleading information to air passengers" during the wholesale grounding of European flights, after the Icelandic volcano had reportedly filled the skies with ash.

European Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said yesterday that the commission not only published incorrect information about compensation for delayed luggage when EU member states closed roughly 80 percent of their airspace last April and May, but also took two weeks to correct the mistakes, despite being informed of them quickly.

This was "unacceptable", said the ombudsman's office, noting that this is the second time in five years the ombudsman has smacked the commission on the wrists for telling air-passengers they're entitled to more compensation from carriers than they are actually due under EU law.

But, in the manner of leaden bureaucracies everywhere, the commission makes its excuses, saying that it had "acted in a state of urgency" when publishing the incorrect information. It apologises for the delay in rectifying this, it says, then telling us that "The Commission has learned lessons" on how to move faster", in recently informing "EU citizens" of vital information.

And this is where these creatures do not even begin to understand how lame their excuses are, and the degree to which their platitudes incite the blackest of hatred. When we foul up, we get harassed, prosecuted, fined, lectured and sometimes imprisoned. Yet when these morons get it wrong – again and again – they get to tell us that they have "learned lessons", without a hair of their pensions being touched.

One yearns in these cases to give the commission a lesson it can never forget – one so brutal and permanent that its members are no longer capable of remembering, or anything else. And we like to think that it is only a matter of time before they get their just deserts.

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The sacrificial van - by Richard... Thursday, April 28, 2011

There has been some speculation about the Land Rover Discovery and trailer abandoned by the police during the riot in Bristol last week. Police vehicles being trashed by the crowds is such a feature of recent disturbances that we wondered whether they were being left deliberately as "bait", to give the police meaty charges when they picked up the culprits.

However, some would suggest we need to discard the conspiracy theories. Avon & Somerset Constabulary hierarchy simply do not have the brains to dream up something that complicated. Their procedures are confined to lining up their plods in neat little rows and beating the citizens of Bristol brainless (that, in itself, not always a very difficult undertaking) when they come close enough to hit.

Others might argue that the most likely reason we can discount a Machiavellian plot is because vehicle and trailer were owed by Wiltshire Police. Even if they are thought to be in the race to the bottom with rival forces - their senior officers competing to see who can discard most brain cells, fastest - it is unlikely that they would want to make a gift of this Disco to Avon plods. It turns out that it is a nearly new vehicle and the combined value of the ensemble is estimated at £100,000 (presumably including the goldplated iPlod).

Nevertheless, you might think that leaving an expensive plod-mobile, with a trailer full of kit, unattended in a riot zone, is a tad stupid. That impression might be reinforced when they leave it with no police protection at all, next to a store which has been the target of protesters. You might even argue that in the race to prove themselves even more cretinous than, say, Cressida Dick, Wiltshire plods have won hands down. But that is where you would be completely wrong. Not even they could be that stupid.

Besides, the police themselves would doubtless deny that they are as stupid as they look. Such claims, they would say, are a major slur on the professional reputations of a fine body of men and women. Every one of the 60 plods supplied by Wiltshire to help create this riot were highly trained officers, with salaries and pension rights. They were disciplined, higher beings. And they were working to The Plan devised by highly intelligent superior officers, promoted on merit and further trained in Staff College, their intellects honed to the razor-edged sharpness we saw displayed last week.

Thus, leaving this vehicle unattended in a riot zone was not what you think. It is an example of ultra-professional community policing. As such it clearly demonstrates the value of the huge public investment made in training police officers. Only thus equipped would they be confident in using such advanced techniques in circumstances such as these.

Shame on you for not recognising superb policing when you see it. It just goes to show how ignorant you all are.

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Another fine mess - by Richard...

It was all going to be different under the Tories, wasn't it? All these procurement messes, like the Nimrod, the Eurofighter, the Type 42, the A400-M, the Chinook. They were all Labour cock-ups ... except that they were all initiated by the Tories.

Now that Labour have returned the compliment, and saddled the Tory administration with a seaborne version of the Eurofighter, doubtless the Tories will be complaining equally bitterly about their legacy, the latest development being a new price-hike for the new carriers for the Royal Navy.

This, we learn from diverse sources is to be about £1 billion, just announced by the consortium building the ships, bringing the ship-building costs to £6 billion.

That figure, though, is not likely to be the final asking price. It is expected to escalate to £7 billion before the hulls even get wet. And since only one of the carriers is actually expected to see service, the effective cost of the capability is roughly £2 billion more than the cost of the bigger, more capable Gerald Ford nuclear carrier for the US Navy.

The proximate cause of the current price hike is the decision to fit catapults and arrester gear. That is to accommodate French Navy Rafales, although the fiction is being maintained that we are still considering buying the US F-35. Even without the Kermits though, the costs of the American aircraft are soaring out of control, so buying that kit really is a non-starter. There is also the embarrassing problem of trying to get out of the £400 million contract for three prototypes of an aircraft we do not now want.

This really does underline the modern-day British genius for getting less for more. But, having developed this to a fine art by paying over £1 billion for Type 45 Destroyers which were originally costed at half that price, we should not be at all surprised that the carriers are also going to cost twice as much, for half the originally planned capacity.

Nor is it in the least a surprise that were are cosying up with the Kermits on this. This is something we predicted would happen five years ago, and with Euroslime Dave at the helm, the pace of integration has quickened.

The only consolation here is that, by most recent form, our skills at ballsing-up defence procurement have reached such rarefied heights that, by the time we come to fit out the second carrier (the one that is actually going to be used), the price will have escalated so much, and the technical problems will have magnified so greatly, that it will probably be cancelled anyway.

Do remember, there is no theoretical limit to the number of times our gifted civil servants and politicians can screw up, a fact they seem determined to remind us of at every opportunity. As long as we keep paying them instead of hanging them from the lampposts of Whitehall, this is going to continue. Sooner or later, a decision is going to be unavoidable, purely to ensure our own survival. This cannot go on.

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Thank goodness - by Richard...

... for the Huns. At least they have a sense of proportion, and can see how ridiculous this is all becoming. Apparently, there are 10,000 journalists descending on London to cover this charade. There will be more "journalists" writing their crap than reading it, at this rate.



Anyway ... for the happy Huns, a little compensation. I suppose this might do as well. This onemight be going too far, though - which would just leave this ... unless this jolly little ditty would do instead.

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