A splendidly indignant Peter Hitchens is fulminating about "Dave" doing the talking (telling the military to shut up and do the fighting), while the war dead from Afghanistan are to be sneaked out of the back gate of RAF Brize Norton when it takes over from Lyneham (a few weeks from now) as the arrival point for the fallen.

They will then be routed down side roads to avoid nearby Carterton – a town almost exactly the same size as Wootton Bassett – and make their way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford along A-roads and bypasses. There'll be a small guard of honour near the hospital entrance (there already is) but somehow or other the cortege won't go down any High Streets, thus avoiding what has become a media circus.

View full article here

This is a fantastic story Richard... Someone should make a film about it...

They could call it... Oh I don't know...

How about, something off the wall like

Fitzcarraldo.

Oh errr...

The Newsnight episode is up on iPlayer ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b0129srz/ Go to 27:40. The Kajaki clip starts at 32:00.

Typically, Urban has some good nuggets, but the framing is absurd ... he makes it out to be a "visionary scheme" gone wrong. In fact, it was never a realistic proposition. There is a documentary tonight which, presumably, continues the error.

Visonary scheme...? Maybe if the visions had been due to an ingestion of magic mushrooms or LSD... But this is supposed to be the reality of a modern politician's mind. I am looking forward to the documentary Richard, the taster neatly packages all of the follies of "modern" government. The turbines were shipped by that wonderful organisation that we know and love... Crapita. There was an assumption of what people wanted, they didn't ask.

Also, interesting to note that in this snippet, the "project" was deemed very important, but of course did not take into account that in five years, the whole project will founder due to the drying up of every river to the south of the Himalayas ... We are being globally warmed don't you know... Ha ha.

If only we could send our politicians off in a dustcart for recycling - or, better yet, for landfill!

RE Kajiki dam project - there was already two functioning turbines weren't there? The cost and effort in getting the third turbine there would have been better expended on clearing the Taliban from the electricity grid.

RE Wootton Bassett - a change of route will not prevent people wanting to line the roads in some fashion. I wonder how the Police will react.

Although I don't get the Wootton Bassett thing* I don't think the Government quite know how do deal with it either. The usual way is to smother things in officialdom. Bring it into the fold and displace the genuine public mood and behaviour with a homogenised version that has Government approval. In moving it to Brize Norton they are running away. Hardly the sign of a mature bureaucracy (as in wise rather than age). Take it on the chin. It is what it is and it was made by the people for the people.

* Beyond friends, family and colleagues it appears to be quite mawkish.

OT I know but look




http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/Defen ... chArmy.htm

I agree with that ... Wootton Bassett had long got out of hand, and had become a media circus, with people travelling hundreds of miles to line the streets. It had lost any spontaneity and become Dianaified.

The point about Kajaki is that it is out in the wilds ... securing the transmission lines would be all but impossible ... certainly not without entirely disproportionate cost. Whereas this ...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... ar/4273386

... tucked away in the base at Kandahar, would be a much better bet.

It turns out that British forces were under-resourced in Afghanistan.

How about Carry On Up The Kajaki? (Two Ks so twice as funny).

Edit: How many people know about the 56 bodies buried in Kennington Park after the air raid shelter was hit by a single bomb on 15 October 1940?

Seems the BS machine is in full flow. Generals say they were under-resourced, shock!

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... ar/4273386

... tucked away in the base at Kandahar, would be a much better bet.
Wasn't this very similar to a plan a few years ago to install Nuclear Submarine type reactors instead of building big stations as now? If one of these could power up a small city,then a few of them could power up a lot more,also they could be built in this Country by Rolls-Royce.

It would make enormous sense ... and also endear the base to the local communities ... they would then be seen to be contributing something positive.

No one's going to place nuclear plant - even one with good passive safety features - where it's a land based target in an active conflict.

Not a problem if you can put it on the back of a low loader and take it with you when you leave.

Wind turbines. Funded from the DECC, Dfid and Defra budgets so not sucking up MoD money. Throw up lots of them and plumb the locals up to it then when the taliban shoot at them or blow them up the locals have an infrastructure they may want to protect. Could've had them with remote cameras and sensors on as well providing a chain of observation sites. Wouldn't need to be the mahoosive ones we get lumbered with over here either. Something made like a Bailey bridge but vertical instead of horizontal.