Author: Mike

It seems that whatever good you try and do in this country and it involves  getting one over on the government, they will go out of their way to get back at you.

With Joanna Lumley’s magnificent victory for the Ghurkhas still fresh in our minds, it seems that the Government is to axe one of the Ghurkha battalions as part of its upcoming Armed Forces budget cuts!

Seems very strange to me as on the one hand we seem to be ready to send more troops to Afghanistan to back up the effort out there and here we are getting rid of some of the best fighting me in the world.

Another fine example of a government that has not got a clue about running the Armed Forces of this country.

Roll on the general election.

NatWest recently revamped their online banking website design and today there seems to have been a lot of phasing emails around encouraging customers to log on and check their own NatWest new customer forms.

How do you decide which is the real email to use, especially when they all seem to be addressed direct to you.

Take a look at these two email inserts (via Screen Snaps) I received … which one is correct?

The answer is neither!!!

You should never click on a link in any email irrespective of who you think it came from if it involves banking or any other sensitive content – in fact I never click on any email link unless I have requested the email and know where it comes from.

The only safe way is to go direct to the web site of the bank etc. and log on using your own log-in and password details. That way, you’re not going to get diverted into the hands of the phisherman!

By the way the real NatWest email in on the right.

I’ve just finished watching the Jackson Tribute on Sky News. Yes, I am a fan of his music.

What at a lovely memorial, so fitting and I bet a total disappointment to many of the journalists covering the event, who were looking for something else.

Carried out with great dignity and many poignant great speeches, it was a fitting tribute to someone who despite his various demons cared more about the world, than much of the world cared about him.

With no adverts interrupting it and no benign commentary, it kept my attention through out the whole service, for that is what I think it was. He deserved this much and more.

To borrow a phrase from ABBA, thank you for your music.

With news that Chief Police Officers of some UK Constabularies are not only being paid well over the £100,000 mark, they are now at the receiving extra payments to cover such things as Stamp Duty, Sky TV packages and retention package’s topping up basic salaries to near £200k levels.

How perverse, when we still read of the ongoing deaths of  British Soldiers including Lt Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, in charge of similar numbers of troops that some Chief Police Officers  manage and leading from the front which was not a desk! His pay according to MOD pay scale charts, £63,927.36 to £74,022.60! There seems something very wrong with this picture.

The UK seems very happy to pay someone who pushes paper around a desk to attain government specified targets much more than someone who daily puts their life on the line to carryout life threatening tasks from the front, whilst at the same time still trying attain government specified targets!

This needs to be sorted out and soon. A UK national scale of pay needs to be introduced for all UK Chief Police Officers, I would probably not include any extras/bonuses either, especially for performance. If you do your job according to the definitions, then you get your pay, if not; then find another job.

Will anything change? Not while local Police Authorities have the power to arbitrarily pay anything they want.

Pure Gold

• This is a picture of an octopus. It has eight testicles. (Kelly age 6)

• Oysters’ balls are called pearls.  (James age 6)

• If you are surrounded by  sea you are an Island. If you don’t have sea all round you, you are incontinent. ( Wayne age 7)

• Sharks are ugly and mean, and have big teeth, just like Emily Richard son. She’s not my friend no more. (Kylie age 6)

• A dolphin breaths through an arsehole on the top of its head.  (Billy age 8)

• My dad goes out in his boat, and comes back with crabs. (Emily Burniston age  5)

• When ships had sails, they used to use the trade winds to cross the ocean. Sometimes, when the wind didn’t blow, the sailors would whistle to make the wind come. My brother said they would be better off eating beans. (William age 7)

• I like mermaids. They are beautiful, and I like their shiny tails. How do mermaids get pregnant?  (Helen age 6)

• I’m not going to write about the sea. My  baby brother is always screaming and being sick, my Dad keeps shouting at my Mum, and my big sister has just got pregnant, so I can’t think what to  write. (Amy age 6)

• Some fish are dangerous. Jellyfish can sting. Electric eels can give you a shock. They have to live in caves  under the sea where I think they have to plug themselves into chargers.  (Christopher age 7)

• When you go swimming in the sea, it is  very cold, and it makes my willy small.  (Kevin age 6)

• On holiday my Mum went water skiing. She fell off when she  was going very fast. She says she won’t do it again because water shot up  her fanny. (Julie age 7).

  Technorati Tags: Comedy

After what many people would say is a good age Robert McNamara has died!

Remembered more for his tenure a USA Defence Secretary and his roll in raising  his countries deployment of  troops to Vietnam from 600 in the early 60’s to over 530,000 by February 1968 than other aspects of his life. Robert McNamara personally guided, some say set, the policies of both Kennedy and Johnson as they tried unsuccessfully to ‘win’ the Vietnam War.

However, after doubts set in about sending so many troops to Vietnam, he fell out with the Johnson administration and after serious disagreements in late 1967, he left to become the President of the World Bank.

Why my interest? I was in the Royal Navy during the latter stages of the Vietnam War and although the UK was not directly involved, we visited a number of the USA coastal bases dotted around the Far-East and saw the effect it was having on the various countries of that region.

Robert McNamara was indeed a controversial person during his time as US Defence Secretary, but later on in life begun to questions some of his decisions about that conflict.

If you don’t know much about him or what he did, here are some interesting resources:

• The Fog of War – The Official Site

• The Fog Of War – What Wikipedia says!

• What the Guardian Says – A good Piece

• Times Online Obituary – Some interesting content

• Robert McNamara – The Wikipedia entry, this is bound to change in the coming weeks

• In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam – Good book to read

• A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam – Probably the most in-depth and accurate political analysis of the Vietnam Conflict.

As part of his review following on from the recent MP’s expenses scandal Sir Christopher Kelly – Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life – is suggesting that MP’s that need to have a house close to Parliament, adopt the same process that the Ministry of Defence uses for personnel stations in the London area.

Can’t see anything wrong with that to me. The rental money then goes straight from the MOD to the landlord and not into the deep pockets of the MP’s. Of course there would have to be some very good safeguards in place to make sure these rules could not be broken.

It will be interesting to see how this story runs over the coming months, however I bet some of the MP won’t be too happy about this potential change.

The FBI have released transcripts of their final interrogations of Saddam Hussein. The Independent Newspaper have some interesting excerpts here.

Makes some good reading. But I bet that haven’t released all the good bits as yet.

With deaths still on the rise in Iraq, despite various pull outs by some of the forces, Associated Press have collated a detailed list of countries that have lost member of the various Armed Forces in the Iraq Conflict since March 2003.

In order of list of fatalities:

• USA – 4,322
• UK – 179
• Italy – 33
• Poland – 21
• Ukraine – 18
• Bulgaria – 13
• Spain – 11
• Denmark – 7
• El Salvador – 5
• Slovakia – 4
• Georgia – 3
• Latvia – 3
• Estonia – 2
• Netherlands – 2
• Thailand – 2
• Romania – 2
• Australia – 1
• Hungary – 1
• Kazakhstan – 1
• South Korea – 1

Staggering numbers and I’m sure that these won’t be the final numbers as this conflict continues to drag on. Source: AP Report

For those of you interested in images from satellites, NASA has just updated their ASTER image data base. ASTER has been photographing hundreds of locations around the world from cities through to river delta and forests.

This one example is of the volcano on the island of Cape Verde, various resolutions are available if you wish. It might not be as interactive as Google Earth, but you can learn a lot about the world resources from these images. Enjoy!