Libya No Fly Zone?

A gradual pressure increase for Gadaffi to leave, with "military action" not being ruled out.

That probably means a no fly zone, no doubt US enforced. Be interesting to see what Britain can add to that, no carrier for a (token) Harrier presence, RAF from Malta too with Tornado or Eurofighter?

But a great illustration of the needing to have a balance in defence, as you can never predict the future threat precisely (despite all the projective studies all the defence organisations must get funding for).

Walk: Extended Run Route

First attempt at run since August! No R3 crescent-crescent.

R0 0.15km (Past traffic lights to before left turn)
R1 0.2km (Back to traffic lights)
R2 0.15 km (Bus stop to second T-junction)


Grand total 0.5 km Represents 11% of the route of 4.66 km.

Discovery Launch

Last launch of Discovery, good link on the BBC to the launch with mission control commentary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12573413

Still an impressive site any rocket taking off, even though the space shuttle was always a bit of a mish mash of a vehicle.

I can remember the seeing the first launch! Several aborted attempts but at Primary School lessons were stopped so we could watch it on television.

Defence Review

Liam Fox felt it necessary to have a article in the Telegraph today defending that the defence cuts have not gone too far and we can still react to the unexpected. Despite the fact that the rescue operation is being done by a soon to be de-commissioned ship. He also waxes lyrical about the capability of the new carriers - and conveniently forgets that they are more than five years away.

Next is the "fourth biggest" spender on defence argument. I think he could do much better by ensuring that is met by "value for money", too often we throw money at contracts that are under valued and then run into painful spending overruns.

Libya

Our foreign policy, if it can be called that, of bringing Libya/Gadaffi gradually in from the cold has back-fired. It might have been the right thing to do all the time the Colonel was making the right noises and becoming less extreme.

More worryingly is the weaving of this leader into the finances of Europe - they run a soverign wealth fund - based on oil proceeds that perhaphs could have been better used directly in Libya itself. Also the son Saif seems to have tried to make himself look more respectable in society and academic circles.

Still it would not be the first time that our leaders have seen the flash of cash, the promise of contracts and kind of forgotten the ethics and done deals they maybe should not have done. Blair calling the Colonel during the current crisis just shows the level of contacts he must have had.

U turns

With the dropping of the planned forest sell off after a short public campaign the government is now seen as week for listening and dropping their policy.

It is a fine line between not listening (as with Thatcher and the disastrous community charge) and being seen as making poor policy that does not survive any sort of scrutiny.

Maybe the complete dropping of the policy makes the government look weak, but it definitely should not stop them from listening in future - even though it is not such a media story it is likely more appreciated by the electorate.

Bike Ride: Village Medium Route

8.5 miles, 13.6 km, time 48 mins.

The medium route, with the steep hill before cycling down to the village, and returning through Peak Lane. The hill did not feel too bad, and I got round in a good time.

DL360 G6 Photos

Getting back to setting up and configuring my server, had the case off to look inside and here are some photos.

Need to get a battery pack for the P410i controller, some RAID operations that I want to practice are not permitted unless the controller has this. My one gripe about this server is there do seem to be a few things that are optional extras, making purchasing slightly more tricky but it is not a major complaint.

Ballmer Click Interview

The BBC tech programme Click online interviewed Ballmer post CES and although they clearly had an agenda to show that Windows 7 was not really tablet ready they did expose a significant corporate blind spot.

Ballmer was very defensive about the OS being easy to use on a Tablet. But what I cannot work out is why Microsoft, the pioneers of tablet in the early 2000s simply are not market leaders here. Why is Windows 7 lagging, surely it must have been seen as a strategic thing for them?

Then the news of the Nokia tie up, with some economics commentators saying they have never seen such things go well.

The Big Society

Cameron is back in the news pushing this idea, I just do not think it has enough legs to go beyond the odd political speech to gap fill more important things.

This makes it feel like a "back to basics" type campaign which ends up backfiring and not achieving much.

Far better is the chance to divert talk from cuts to value for money. We are spending X or service Y how can we get best value for our money. People would support that and it would be the holy grail of public service reform.