Author Archive.

Caught red-handed

Posted by on June 23rd 2011 in In the garden, Rambling on...

Recently there's been a spate of burglaries around here. Notices have been put up in shop-windows and other prominent places, advising the public to be alert and vigilant. We're out to catch the thieving bastards one way or another.

With this in mind, you can imagine how I felt about an hour ago when I was sitting in the kitchen having a well-earned cuppa and I heard somebody moving about on our back yard and trying the door-handle. I looked up and through the patterned glass I could see a shadowy figure the other side. I grabbed the nearest defensive item (a decent bit of rough-cut 2-by-2 left over from a recent DIY job) and made my way slowly and silently to the door...

The intruder was still there. By then my pulse was racing and the adrenaline was kicking in.  I jumped up to the door and flung it wide open, knocking the intruder to the ground (the door opens outwards). Jumping though the doorway I shouted something profane at the prostrate figure before me, and took up a stance a sensible distance away from him while holding the 2-by-2 in a state of readiness in case he got a bit shirty.

He was a bit dazed and didn't look much of a threat so I backed off a bit and let him get to his feet. When he reached into his open shoulder-bag I tensed a little but I relaxed and was somewhat amused when he presented me with this:


(Click it)

He said he wasn't injured so I sent him packing after showing him the front door (complete with letterbox slot) and the front gateway, and after telling him to refrain from trespassing on our driveway to gain illegal access to our back garden via a gate with a "PRIVATE" sign on it.

Per Ardua ad Astra

Posted by on June 21st 2011 in In the News
Tags:

For some suitable background music while reading this post, feel free to turn your volume right up and set these four tracks running: 

Battle of Britain

Dambusters March

633 Squadron

Royal Air Force March Past

---ooo---

 

Yet again the top brass tell it like it is and yet again they'll probably be ignored by the Government:

 

Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant has told MPs that intense air operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East are placing a “huge” demand on equipment and personnel.

In a briefing paper delivered to senior politicians and obtained by The Daily Telegraph, the RAF’s second in command said morale among airmen was “fragile” and their fighting spirit was threatened by being overworked.

Many areas of the RAF were “running hot”, he warned, while the servicemen’s sense that the nation valued their efforts was being undermined by the Coalition’s defence cuts.

The Air Force was also now finding it difficult to recruit staff, he said, with many specialities understaffed by up to a quarter.

In his conclusion, Air Chief Marshal Bryant — whose full title is Commander in Chief (Air) — warned that the ability of the RAF to deal with unforeseen emergencies would be rapidly “eroded” if the Libyan campaign went beyond September. “Two concurrent operations are placing a huge demand on equipment and personnel,” he said.

Source

 

I'm beginning to get a better handle on this matter. Presented to Parliament way back in October 2010 The Strategic Defence and Security Review (.pdf) clearly underestimated the probability that new military conflicts (other than those in Iraq and Afghanistan) would arise. It is entirely possible, of course, that there was a complete disregard for any warnings that may have been issued by the intelligence services (there are precedents). Whatever, it's hard to believe the Government's claim to be supporting the armed forces in the currently-widening theatre of ongoing intensive operations.

 

Basically, the Government's line in October was:

We've cut the budget, we think that we can cope with the current situations and with a little bit extra on top, but beyond that, we're fcuked;

and now it's

We appreciate that our servicemen and servicewomen are willing to lay down their lives for the alleged greater good. As a reward for their unselfish commitments we'll under-fund them, under-equip them, cut their pay and slash their pensions.

 

It's all going to hell in a handcart. Or at least it would if the Government hadn't nicked the wheels to patch-up another Snatch Land Rover.

 

 

Perhaps we'll have to bring these back into service:

Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (image source)

Checkmate

Posted by on June 17th 2011 in Rambling on...
Tags:

Am I the only person that thinks it rather odd that the word "Firefox" isn't pre-loaded into the British English Dictionary Add-on for the Firefox spellchecker?

I know that it isn't feasible to include every word and acronym, but not including your own product name does seem to be a bit of a fail.

Furthermore, I'd have expected plenty of techie terminology to be in there too, but it ain't so. Here are some words and abbreviations which I expected to be listed but which don't merit inclusion:

 

On (or possibly off) yer bike!

Posted by on June 16th 2011 in LMAO!, Video (YouTube, Vimeo etc.)

LMFAO at this:

 

Brilliant!

Premium chat line

Posted by on June 16th 2011 in Car stuff, Discounts, Rambling on...

When my car-insurance renewal docket arrived last June I was so bemused by the hiked premium that I rang the insurers to check the reasons for the increase. After I'd listened to the explanation I was put on hold [cue the music] while the assistant went in search of a supervisor, and when the conversation resumed I was offered a 10% discount which I gratefully accepted.

Anyway, one year on and this year's premium was due. I did the usual exercise of finding the best like-for-like deals via the various price-comparison sites out there on the interwebnet thingy. The results weren't good - prices are much higher this year due to interest-rate hikes, the global financial meltdown and all of the natural disasters that have led to huge insurance claims.

Eventually this year's renewal docket arrived and to be honest when I was opening the envelope I was expecting to be faced with the 10% back on AND a huge premium increase. Imagine my surprise when I found that the premium had gone up by much less than I'd been expecting! In fact, it was such a shock that I decided to break out the plastic and pay for the whole year in one hit as opposed to by DD as I usually do. I phoned the insurers to sort the details and just as I'd calculated I saved having to pay about 43 quid in credit interest. During the conversation, and with no provocation whatsoever from me, the nice lass I was dealing with said that she was going to put me on hold for a while [cue the music again]... after a few minutes she came back and offered me a discount of just over 11%.

Sweet!

I do realise that I'm probably not getting any preferential treatment, and that other folk who make the call will be offered discounts too, but it does make me wonder how much other folk miss out by letting their renewals go through on auto and not bothering to make that call.

My thanks go to Rhona for sorting this for me.

Told you so

Posted by on June 14th 2011 in In the News

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope and Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward clearly know what they're on about, if the Government won't listen to them there's little chance that they'll listen to anyone else:

In an unprecedented attack, Sir Mark also made it clear that the decision to axe the Harrier jump jet and Britain’s last aircraft carrier has undermined the war effort against Colonel Gaddafi. He said it would have been far cheaper and more effective militarily to fly from HMS Ark Royal, rather than launching air attacks from bases in Italy. Sir Mark said the loss of the combination that won the Falklands War has had a ‘corrosive’ effect on morale.

Embarrassingly for ministers, Admiral Stanhope believes the Navy is almost stretched to its limit even though it has only four warships involved in the Libyan conflict. These are the destroyer HMS Liverpool, the mine clearance vessel HMS Bangor, a Trafalgar class submarine and the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean off the coast. HMS Cumberland, which played a key role evacuating scores of Britons from Libya, recently returned to Britain to be decommissioned on June 23 because of cuts to the defence budget.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward says the Falklands ‘are now perilously close to being indefensible’...

"... what the politicians won’t tell you is that Mount Pleasant was, until recently, equipped with only four ageing and ineffective Tornados – the same attack aircraft that have made such heavy weather recently of providing air support in Libya. When they were needed at short notice, only three of the RAF’s 135 aircraft were ready for action. Apparently these Tornadoes have now been replaced by four Typhoons, about which there have been many rumours of too few trained pilots, inadequate spares and poor ability in aerial combat. Neither type of aircraft has any anti-ship weapons systems, which would be vital against any invasion by sea."

Source

Pretty soon, HMS Liverpool will be gone too.

I keep thinking of Private Frost's words in Aliens...

 

"What the hell are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?"
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