Posts by Roy Stilling 64 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2007
The difference is that National Rail is privatised and want to squeeze as much profit as they can from their data, whereas TfL are a public body and open their data as s public service. In any case, the app author licences the Tube map from TfL so they do get some revenue from the app. So everyone's happy.
If it can be enforced against people like the bunch of Spanish tourists blocking the entrance to the Victoria line at 8.45am the other day, taking photos of each other.
Or perhaps we should issue commuter licences (you'd have to sit an examination that covers things like letting people off the train first, and looking for AND FOLLOWING the "keep left/right" signs) and ban non-holders from the Tube at rush hour.
So why have separate services at all? Why not do as the Canadians have done and combine them into one armed service?
Much as I respect the history and traditions (rum, sodomy and the lash included) of the RN, I do wonder just what the point of the navy is these days. It's not like we have an empire to defend any more, and the scraps we have left are hardly assets (I shouldn't be surprised if it would be cheaper to buy every family in the Falklands a repossessed house here in Blighty and give the islands back to the Argentinians than pay for the garrison). Defending our lines of supply? Well maybe, except that don't have a merchant marine any more so we're dependent on foreign hulls to supply ourselves anyway. Stopping piracy? Er, our sailors aren't allowed to arrest the pirates for fear they'll claim asylum...
No, apart from the strategic nuclear deterrent and coastal protection, it seems to me that the only point of us keeping the RN is so we can lend a hand whenever Uncle Sam wants to beat someone up in some far-flung corner of the globe, a bit like the toady member of a gang who puts the boot in once the gang leader has decked someone. It's debatable whether even the Americans will be able to afford the sort of go-anywhere reach they have for many more years, so it does strike me as strange that we still even aspire to it.
Well in my party* an activist is someone who does something active in the party, from delivering leaflets occaisionally to canvassing at election time to serving on party comittees to standing for elective office. I used to be an activist, serving as a constiuency party secretary for a while, but now I am a non-active member.
Some people such as police staff and more senior local government officers and civil servants are deemed to be in "politically restricted" posts and cannot be activists for ANY political party though they can be non-active members.
* The sandals, beards and woolly hats one, as opposed to the BNP which is the jackboots, toothbrush moustaches and steel helmets one.
...that I no longer work on a mobileco's online shop, 'cos I'd be buggered to know how this requirement could be implemented online.
I suppose at least the mobilecos have a high-street retail network where you could go with your ID to verify your online purchase, but then why bother buying online anyway?
But how's an operation like Amazon supposed to do it - have the delivery bod check your passport on the doorstep?
Can we have a fasces or swastika icon for comments on stories concerning the UK's onward march to fascism please?
The "EU flag", officially "the Flag of Europe" was first adopted by the Council of Europe* in the early 50s. Back then the Saarland, a coal-rich region of Germany on the French border, was an autonomous state occupied by France and which had its own representation on the Council. When it came to designing the flag, it was proposed to have one star per member but France wanted to count Saarland as separate, and so have 15 stars , and West Germany argued it was really part of Germany and so there should only be 14 stars (Germany subsequently got the Saarland back a few years later).
So they then decided to have just 12 stars as "the number of perfection" (12 hours, 12 apostles, 12 signs of the zodiac etc). In other words the sort of fudge that has characterised European relations ever since!
* The Council of Europe still exists and is quite separate from the EU. In fact the European Convention on Human Rights which the Daily Hate-reading classes love to froth about so much was adopted by the Council of Europe in 1948 (and largely written by British jurists) and so pre-dates the EU altogether.
Whilst in general I think Twitter is useless, the political party I belong to (OK, I admit it, I'm a Lib Dem) used it to send out news to members via SMS, and in particular to send live election result updates at the most recent couple of local elections. As an election junkie, I'll miss that.
Mine's the one with the "Paddy Ashdown for PM" badge.
That here Lewis is disparaging the Raptor and Eurofighter as white elephants, and over on Trousers Brown Counterpoint: Is Gordon right? <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/13/trousers_brown_counterpoint/> he's telling us we shouldn't be buying gas from the Russians as they'll use the money to finance their all-powerful war machine.
So which is it Lewis?
"Moscow uses the cash to sustain the only military-industrial complex which can give the Western one a fight, meaning that the West must keep spending money on staying ahead."
So? Putin's Russia may not be a land of milk, honey, democracy and a genuine free market, but it's not the Soviet Union anymore, even if its air force still has red stars on its planes. The Soviets were a threat because up until Gorbachev just enough of their leaders still believed their own propaganda or at least felt they had to pay lip-service to it.
Putin's Russia doesn't have that sort of ideological baggage. Yes they want to be left alone to run their "managed democracy" as they see fit without Western interference, and yes they're grinding the heel on the Checens, but that's because rightly or wrongly they see Checnya as part of their territory.
If Putin really did want to restart the USSR, he could have absorbed Belarus in a moment any time in the last eight years - but he hasn't, much to Lukashenko's disappointment. And as for the idea that the Russians might want to head west again - why on earth would they when - as you say - we're such excellent customers for their oil and gas. It seems to me that the more we buy Russian gas the safer we are from them as they're hardly going to threaten their best markets.
Is that it was largely written by British lawyers immediately after WWII to show Johnny Continental how to avoid repeating the recent unpleasantnesses perpetrated by the likes of Messers Hitler and Mussolini.
Of course it was assumed that we Brits knew how to play by the rules, and so we didn't bother to enact the ECHR into law for decades until the HRA which led to us being hauled in front of the European Court more than any other signatory state.
But do mariners still get taught hwo to use them? I recall reading that the US Navy had decided to stop teaching its officer cadets such techniques on the grounds that GPS is ubiquitous. I'd love to believe that our dear old Senior Service wouldn't be so stupid as to follow suit, but seeing as the RN thought that the USN's Windows for Warships was a jolly good wheeze I'm not so sure.
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