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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Channel 4 News reporter, Paraic O'Brien, stood in the stygian gloom of Kyiv to tell us what enormities the Russians had been committing lately. He used the phrase 'war crime' repeatedly because the Russians were targeting Ukrainian power sources. I mean, come on, what's that got to do with waging war? It's a war crime, he told us bogglingly, for Ukrainians to have to cook in the dark. Who'd be Russian, eh?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Zahawi wrote: |
When I was Chancellor, I saw a preview of what Boris 2.0 would look like. He was contrite & honest about his mistakes. He’d learned from those mistakes how he could run No10 & the country better.
With a unified team behind him, he is the one to lead us to victory & prosperity |
I am sure Boris was contrite and honest. But these are built in Boris design flaws, ie flaws you cannot change. You simply have to make a judgement about whether his qualities outweigh the flaws.
It is a do you still buy a sports car, despite the fact you know the sun roof doesn't retract and you can't open the boot without the engine running, type of scenario.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I had a Zoom argument with some lefty members of my family on this very point. I posed the question carefully, "Setting aside the peccadilloes and misdemeanours for a moment, did Boris do a reasonable job as Prime Minister?" Their anti-Borisness simply didn't allow themselves even to reach a judgement. Which in my judgement is
| "Yes, even if if his trumpeted triumphs about 'getting Brexit done' and 'being first with the vaccines' and 'leading the anti-Russian Ukrainian coalition' are much overdone and a bit flukey." | |
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Grant
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Boris is a useless twat. He shouldn’t have shut down Britain or helped the Ukrainians, and as for mending the economy, he hasn’t a clue and doesn’t even care.
But I hope he wins just to annoy the media.
Wouldn’t it be funny if he comes back and the economy bounces back following the increase in interest rates? Then England wins the World Cup.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In judging these matters, you have to divorce your own views as to the wisdom of policy matters (I share yours to one degree or another) and decide on his ability as Prime Minister in terms of the job the electorate had given him to do. In this respect I would judge Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson as successful, May and Truss as unsuccessful, and Gordon Brown an Undecided. When it comes to the next PM, it appears that the pre-judgement (in terms of Tories and the next election) is
Johnson: successful if he stays in office
Mordaunt: unsuccessful if she stays in office
Sunak: undecided.
So far as winning the World Cup is concerned: (a foregone conclusion of course). Yes, Prime Ministers always drape themselves in the flag -- though not, alas, the Union Jack nowadays -- but it will be embarrassing
if it is Penny ("Is that the one with the round ball?")
if it is Boris ("I gave you the Olympics as well").
if it is Rishi ("Pater refused to let me play with those rough boys at school").
If Gordon Brown comes back (as leader of a caretaker all-the-talents administration) it would be hilarious rather than embarrassing
Brown: "I'll gie yer a head-job if you mention it ag'in."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A typically curmudgeonly report on an American security system for checking people going into venues, airports etc. It had a patchy record for detecting knives over five inches long, said Newsnight in outraged tones. You're right, said the company sheepishly (they had somewhat concealed the fact). So what? sighs M J Harper. Who gives a monkeys about knives? We lose one, they lose one. "...and certain kinds of explosives." Yeah, well, as long as the bad guys don't know what sort, that's a risk I'm prepared to take. I doubt they will.
Newsnight huffed and puffed about overprecipately doing away with the 'very expensive current system of human checks and the consequent long delays' -- Newsnight & Co are always highly hairshirt about these matters -- but what they didn't mention is that humans miss knives, guns, explosives, all sorts. So let's save on money and queuing time by ditching one and adopting the other.
I bet they end up using both systems and making us turn up four hours early.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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For most threats eg explosives, drugs, folks trying to fly with contageous diseases etc, sniffer dogs are remarkably effective, they just can't detect knives.
Human intel and/or Sniffy the Wonderdog will always be more effecitive than bag scans done by bored staff.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well, let's have a think about it. Not only from an AE perspective but from a personal one since a great many of my jobs have been as a security guard in one form or another.
| Human intel and/or Sniffy the Wonderdog will always be more effecitive than bag scans done by bored staff. |
Almost anything is more effective than 'staff'. It is not so much that they are bored as ingenious. Security systems are designed by security specialists, they are signed off by company execs, they are designed to show that 'something is being done' and they always work perfectly 'as specified'. Unfortunately they are operated by people who have all day, every day (and night) with nothing to do but think up every way possible to make their own lives easier, not what they are guarding safer. There is no career pyramid in the nightwatchman industry and there are always ten other jobs if you get fired for dereliction. See M J Harper's "great many jobs".
Just to complete the circuit, the whole thing works a treat! Attempted breaches of security are so rare that they all work 99.9% of the time and when they don't it will be down to personnel failings of a kind that could not be foreseen. He was having a slash and his oppo had nodded off because he was moonlighting during the day with another security firm (the money's not great). Or both of them were in the pub with the perimeter keys turning them in the security clock every few minutes and the desk phone on transfer.
None of the above applies to airports and venues, the only things anyone worries about from a terrorism point of view. But we all have experience of them...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What's the problem here? Clearly the parrotted questions about whether you packed your suitcase yourself etc etc are a bit on the ineffectual side.
Terrorist A: Here's your suitcase.
Terrorist B: Cheers, catch you later.
Terrorist A: No.
Woman at Terminal 4: Did you pack this suitcase yourself, sir.
Terrorist B: It's funny you should ask me that... |
But since these interchanges are wildly expensive and hugely inconvenient, they presumably serve some purpose. Then there is the moving belt going through the curtained dubry. Again...
Wouldn't you swap all that for turning up half an hour before, like we used to, and wandering past some high-tec scanner, like we didn't used to? Actually you probably wouldn't because you are habituated to being reassured by that array of human resources and you are also habituated to American outfits promising you the earth from the latest technical advance and delivering the moon.
As I am always arguing, the only real solution is to accept being killed by terrorists as like being struck by lightning. Not something you can do anything about but not worth staying in to avoid and certainly not worth worrying about it happening to you on the off chance. That does carry the corollary that the media mustn't go into a lubricious frenzy every time somebody is struck by lightning thereby putting the screaming abdabs up the rest of us. So forget about that one.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The response to the Report on the Manchester Arena massacre told us a lot about what why we always get these things wrong.
1. Front line staff are always rapid to respond, always brave, always this, always that -- it's what they signed up for.
2. The higher-ups never know what to do, it's the first time it's happened on their patch, why should they?
3. There is (almost) no point in running large scale training exercises, they tend to promote complacency because they are never like the real thing -- most of all in coming out of the blue.
4. The government has cut anti-terrorism resources because there hasn't been much terrorism lately. It's a good thing.
5. And, please, don't spend half the time interviewing grieving parents, rehashing mawkish tales of who might have survived, showing more footage of the grisly aftermath. It gets in the way of considered technical judgements.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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It's a long report, but some of the gist is something like, they had prepared and trained for a Paris 2015 or Mumbai 2008, with groups of marauding terrorists, so some agencies didn't deploy their front line response staff as they believed they might have got shot. It turned out it was not a Paris 2015 or Mumbai 2008 so this was a mistake.
cf School shootings where officers calmly wait outside for back up.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| cf School shootings where officers calmly wait outside for back up. |
No, it happened once out of several zillion occasions and they got .. er ... slaughtered for it.
But your main point is a sound one. There is no such thing as an act of terrorism. There are acts of terrorists. Unlike the police or the security services, terrorists are engaged full time and exclusively on terrorism. They will always ring the changes faster than their opponents have any hope of predicting what they will be.
Plus there is always the danger that if new measures thwart any given modus operandi, terrorists will switch to more effective ones. The Twin Towers could be said to be a reaction to not being able to hijack planes conventionally. But 9/11 also demonstrated the shortcomings of relying on reactive measures. It is said that America spent a trillion pounds on invading Afghanistan to dispose of Bin Laden. Much cheaper just to clear away the rubble, bury the dead and get on with life as if nothing has happened. Nothing like it has happened.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Shoigu has ordered the abadonment of Russian forces from the West Bank of the Dnipro River around Kherson. This is going to be difficult and costly as they are going to be under enemy artillery fire. Presumably they are hoping to regroup the remains of what is left, along with their army on east, to defend the dam.....as this is the important one that supplies water to the Crimea.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Ukrainians, uncritically quoted by their lackeys in the western media, keep on saying this is a Russian trap, which seems ridiculous to me but excuses their plodding progress. I can't see how the Russians can hope to keep the Crimean water supply unless they control the western bank of the Dnipro.
But then I can't see Crimea is much use to them without it. As I have been saying since Day One of the war, this is the verpunkt -- not Kiev, not Kharkov, not the Donbas, not Mariupol, not Odessa. Whether it is the verpunkt for war or peace remains to be seen but, given the mentality of Russia, Ukraine, the USA (and a bit NATO), I fear the worst.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The news that Ukrainians were 'taking little interest in the World Cup' plus Welsh performances at Qatar underscores what a shame it was that the latter knocked out the former. No, really, I'm not just being Dim Cymraeg (on this occasion). But it couldn't be helped.
What could be helped was Russia's absence and since we have seen from Iran what world cup pictures from abroad can do domestically it would be nice to hear what the situation is there. Presumably every Russian football fan knows it is going on, so it cannot just be airbrushed from the airwaves. But I know how I would feel.
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