Blogs
Friday, March 12, 2004
A long and unannounced absence
This is just a quick note to explain why there have been no posts here (if anyone is still reading!). Shortly before Christmas I was offered a new job, which starts next month due to notice requirements. That job will involve quite a few changes from my point of view and among these is that I have no idea what my new employer's stance on blogging will be. Therefore it seemed wise to take a break from posting here.
I had hoped to post a message to this effect in mid-January, unfortunately at that time my present employer had not revealed that I was leaving to a number of important clients and therefore I was not able to comment publically about it. That has now been resolved, and therefore I'm able to post this message.
Once I have started my new job, I will be able to find out what the policy is towards the use of blogs. So, if you check back here at the end of April I may have some news.
posted by James
Monday, January 05, 2004
Bethany and I are very pleased to announce that we are expecting our first child in July.
posted by James
Monday, December 22, 2003
Two points
I won't be posting for a few days, so let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
Also, if you haven't already, go and see Return of the King - now! It is awesome.
posted by James
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Dropping like flies!
Don't you love it when the conventional wisdom collapses before it is able to properly form. When that happens the media actually get so carried away that they report events rather than a narrative. No sooner was the 'no link between Saddam and 9-11' CW sent wobbling on Sunday, than the 'we'll never find Saddam' CW was spectacularly dispatched. The doom-mongers and naysayers seemed to be coalescing around the 'Saddam had no role in the insurgency' line (conveniently ignoring the pile of dosh and taxi - the perfect disguise - he had with him), but no sooner have they done so than BAM:
Secret papers found in Saddam Hussein's hiding place reveal that he had regular contact with the leader of the terrorists who oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq, military officials told The Post.
The papers prove Saddam communicated with Izzat Ibrahim al Duri, his former deputy in the Ba'ath Party - the political organization behind his reign of terror.
posted by James
Monday, December 15, 2003
Phew!
Also at the weekend, we dodged a bullet as the Euro Constitution hit the buffers. This horror will be back, and I'd bet sooner than everyone expects. While we can all breath a sigh of relief that it fell apart, we should not let complacency set in. Rather efforts to secure a referendum promise should be redoubled, as that is the only way we can beat this thing once and for all.
posted by James
RIMA - UK
I meant to comment on this article from Friday's Telegraph, but got distracted. John Keegan takes a look at the latest Defence Review and makes some very important points about funding levels for our Armed Forces:
It is also undesirable to reduce manpower, already stretched to the limit. The Chancellor has had no difficulty in finding the money for 350,000 extra public sector employees since 1997.Read the whole thing as they say.
The Army needs less than 10,000 additional soldiers to be brought up to strength and soldiers are cheap by comparison with civilian employees. They are exempt from health and safety regulations and, if on short engagements, do not swell the pension roll.
Altogether, I think there is some pretty good stuff in the Defence Review - if it succeeds in its aims of creating a more flexible and more rapidly deployable, highly integrated force it will go a long way to carrying out the UK's own version of the Revolution in Military Affairs - the prime requisite for building an Information Age military. Indeed if the procurement reality can be made to match the promises it will go some of the way to solving the manpower problem: the whole point of RIMA is to do with a brigade what you would previously have done with a division.
Where the plans become unstuck is that they are looking to pay for the improvements by cutting back on ships and heavy armour, rather than by investing new money. The theory that "we won't really need heavy armour" looks rather odd at the end of a year in which British Tanks again acquitted themselves with distinction in the Iraqi desert. A properly considered defence review would have recognised that the so called 'peace dividend' at the end of the Cold War was foolishly cashed in and recommend increases in defence expenditure commensurate with our new position as the world's number two. Tony Blair famously 'got it' after September 11th (indeed with his interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone he was ahead of the curve), but sadly his government has not. While Blair recognises that we are in a war, the Treasury continues to pare back Defence expenditure as if it were peacetime. A sense of priorities is badly needed on this issue so that we do not flub this golden opportunity to supercharge our armed forces, and greatly increase our impact on the world stage.
posted by James
A man of no shame
Look at this reaction to the capture of Saddam, and guess who it is:
"I guess he supposes it's a good thing to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Well, I knew it was a good thing on that day, day one."That would be John Kerry, who'll be withdrawing from the race for the Democratic Nomination for President the day after next month's New Hampshire primary. At one point Kerry could have justified that statement - after all he voted for war, but having spent the past several months claiming "BUSH LIED!" and that he was "duped" by Bush into voting for war, he has no right whatsoever to do so. That he tries to score points from the successful outcome of an operation he's been actively undermining for some time now shows why he's not fit to be President.
posted by James
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Quo Vadis
There's a scene in Quo Vadis, when the emperor Nero is told that for all the thousands of lives he has had cut short, for all the victims of his butchery when the time comes he will lack the courage to kill himself. I thought of that when I heard that Saddam had failed to use the pistol they caught him with.
posted by James
2 AKs, a pistol and $750k
What a great day! One observation: after the decades of power, the hundreds of thousands of armed men who once hung on his every command, the tanks, the superguns and the nerve gas; Saddam's final hideout was less well stocked than a militia compound in Montana.
posted by James
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Fantastic
This headline reads like a parody, but its actually true: "Kerry blaming Bush for Kerry's own bill"
posted by James
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Sorry (2)
Perhaps I should have made that 2 weeks, as I have lots on this week as well!
posted by James
Monday, December 01, 2003
Sorry
Posting will be light this week as I am quite busy.
posted by James
Saturday, November 29, 2003
Spotted...
...written in the mud splatter on the back of a British Telecom van in Oxford today:
George W Bush welcome to UK.
Chirac go home.
posted by James
