Latest issue of J-Wings states that the following aircraft meet the specs of the F-X programme:

> A new variant of the F-15.

A little more info, J-Wings labeled this the F-15FX. Text suggested an aircraft based on the new Singaporean F-15s.

Thanks, this is very interesting.

Do you have any more details? In particular why did the Rafale and F-35 not meet the specs? Are some of the specs known?

I am surprised to learn that SH and Typhoon met specs but not Rafale?

I can imagine (i.e. guess) that F-22 did not meet spec because it is not available on the export market, and F-35 will not meet spec because it will arrive too late.

Why did they not consider Gripen NG? 🙂

Or is one of the requirements two engines?

I can’t give any more details, as my Japanese is atrocious – my wife confirmed the basic push of the article (which I had guessed).

As to specs – I think twin engine has to be a strong consideration, but whether it’s a requirement, I don’t know.

I don’t know about the first point, I think the Westminster government would have had a tough time over it but like any other political scandal or rough patch it would have died down after a few months to a year! I don’t condone violence but the sheer numbers and equipment that a Free State Army aided by the British could have produced would have decimated any Unionist military opposition in a matter of weeks. Also could you imagine fighting for an Ulster to remain part of Britain when Britain is fighting to get rid of Ulster, no. It would have caused a major political and military scandal but it would have died down. After all, are the British Army still getting hammered about Dresden or the Americans about Hiroshima or do you think there will still be fierce debate over Iraq in 5 – 10 years time?

That seems pretty unrealistic – don’t forget the mutiny by Army Officers at the Curragh in 1914 over plans to send them to deal with trouble in Ulster. Also, Home Rule was extremely divisive in Great Britain – with massive gatherings supporting on both sides. If what was to become Northern Ireland was forced by arms into an all-Ireland state that they didn’t wish to be a part of there’d be ructions in Britain.

Also, considering what transpired by having a significant number of Nationalists in Northern Ireland, do you not think having the same situation in an All-Ireland State would lead to more of the same?

As for mixing of the traditions in Northern Ireland, theoretically yes but in practice there is little. The government is really keen to push this idea of mixed leisure centres and other activities that are not separated by religious lines. There is also the Odyssey Centre which is a massive leisure complex with a cinema, bowling and many food outlets all under one roof. That seems to work well but as people tend to go with their friendship group they tend not to mix with other people much!

School wise there are many schools that are mixed but usually in name only and continue to be overwhelmingly Catholic of Protestant. A friend of mine who lives in Glengormley on the outskirts of Belfast told me that the school he goes to recently got made non-denominational however any Catholic students entering faced severe bullying and intimidation and were forced to leave quickly after arriving. So we still have some way to go before integration in the educational institutions is perfect. On the bright side we are no longer throwing patrol bombs over walls at each other….much!

I guess it’s a start, not surprised at the Glengormley story. Personally I’d have all schools integrated – but toleration would not only take time, but also direction and realism from the top.

all the best.

I think that if Britain had given all of Ireland home rule in 1921, we would continue to have a united Ireland to this day, yes there would have been massive opposition from unionists, no doubt armed, however if Britain supported the official army (as they did in the Free State’s civil war of 1922-23) the unionists would have been defeated and would just have to grin and bear it until they realised how great a united Ireland was! Even if Britain stayed out of it, I think the sheer numbers of IRA men vs unionist paramilitaries would have won the day! Again just my thought!

Well, Northern Ireland was a part of the Irish Free State for about a week in 1921, until they exercised their treaty right to opt out.

As to the rest of your scenario, there’s no way Britain would have been able to support a Free State Army fighting Northern Unionists – any Westminster Government doing that in those days would be committing political suicide.

Also, looking at how both states grew apart from each other – the South becoming a Dominion, then a Republic in all but name, then a Republic; the North becoming more insular there’s no way a United Ireland would have been stable – mainly because neither side was willing to accept the viewpoints of the other side, let alone give concessions to them.

As an aside Speedbird, is there any mixing of the ‘traditions’ going on in Norn Iron these days? Whilst I grew up in a middle class area in Northern Ireland from the 70s, the only contact I had with Protestants, save for my neighbours, was when I went to a local Technical College to repeat my A-levels. It was quite an eye-opener, as I had previously attended a Christian Brothers School – courtesy of the segregated education system in the North.

FrankVW,

There was an interesting paper out recently that used Watt’s information and found that the badly sited weather station had a cooling bias, and so couldn’t be responsible for a warming bias:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html

The North Pole blog post shows how easily scientific reports get misreported, as it is titled:

“Greenland glaciers – melt due to sea current change, not air temperature”

BUT, nowhere in the quoted news release does it state this, in fact – quite the opposite:

While melting due to warming air temperatures is a known event, scientists are just beginning to learn more about the ocean’s impact — in particular, the influence of currents — on the ice sheet.

As to the Daily Mail article, it seems to be just a rehash of the stories posted by ATFS_Crash at the start of the thread, and just as eroneous. I mean, look at the claim:

“Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995”

That is just wrong – because admitting that the trend is not quite statistically significant is not the same as saying there is no warming. Absence of rock-solid stats for one thing does not mean another option is certain.

As an aside, statistical significance requires 95% confidence that the trend is caused by what you’re attributing it to. In Jones’ case he says it’s just below the significance level – so he’s only around 90% sure that the warming is man-made from 1995. That’s pretty good in my book.

Apologies in advance to Speedbird, whom I think this question is mainly directed at, but I’ll chip in my views on the subject here.

That’s a hard question – if partition had not been on the table in 1920 there would have been civil war in Ireland, but Unionist vs. Nationalist, as opposed to the Republican vs. Free Stater Civil War which happened. The end result would probably have been a Northern Ireland and a Southern Ireland – with much fewer Catholics in one, and much fewer Protestants in the other. Northern Ireland would probably have been smaller geographically too.

Personally speaking, I think Partition was the best of all evils available at the time – but the real damage done after Partition was the neglect shown by Westminster to the treatment of Catholic UK Subjects in Northern Ireland – neglect that lead directly to the Troubles.

As for persecution of Protestants in the Republic, they did suffer from discrimination and violence too – but as their numbers were much smaller there were not as many incidents. Noticable cases were the ‘Mayo Librarian’ case in the 30s – AKA ‘Protestants need not apply’ and the ‘Ne Temere Incident’ – AKA ‘You may be Protestant, but your children will be Catholic’. Even in recent times there has been violence against Protestants – in one case I know of in a small Co. Donegal town some Protestants were assaulted and had windows smashed when someone put it about that they were giving money to a loyalist organisation – which is a pretty ludicrous suggestion as there’s nothing gained by Southerners giving to loyalists – they’re not going to end up in a magically expanded Northern Ireland!

I think fuller quotes from the BBC Source will prove enlightening:

Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

Note that Phil Jones doesn’t admit to any global cooling, despite what ATFS_Crash asserts.

For those who are interested, there’s a good explanation by analogy as to why readings become more statistically significant given a longer measurement time span HERE