RE: EU Enlargement Process…In or Out!!!

Okay, my tuppence worth:

1. Turkey – I used to argue that Turkey should not be allowed to join because it was poor. But some of the future members are also poor so I guess wealth is no longer a pre-requisite for membership. However, Turkey still has severe human rights issues and morally, they should not be allowed to join.

2. Cyprus – it depends what Greece does. The Greeks really need to go out on a limb and defend Cyprus within the EU. Maybe Cyprus would be better becoming part of Greece? I’m only advocating that as a shortcut to EU membership. I think the US will pressurise the EU to be nice to Turkey, which is why the Greeks need to assert some counter pressure and stand up for their cousins. Greece also needs to be really friendly to Israel (even defend Israel at EU summits) becuase Israel and the US are the same thing anyway.

3. Eastern members. There was a sketch in the British satirical magazine Private Eye recently. It parodied Silvio Berlusconi (I assume it was him!) complaining:

“All these countries can’t join. They’re not nearly corrupt enough!”

So there you have it. Being poor=OK, being corrupt=absolutely fantastic. Hating democracy-wonderful, when can you join?

RE: Pornography! ! ! !

Saab,

You’ve taken a rather puritanical viewpoint.

How does porn break up marriages? Do you think it depepends what type of porn – I mean, hardcore or fetish stuff, or the things you see on the top shelf of WH Smith?

RE: Red Hot Chili Peppers

They’re good but always no 3 or no 4 on my list. The Zephyr Song is quite chilled out, but classics like Californication are mood changers too.

RE: ATC prog tonight

I saw it the other day on Wings.

An avaerage programme. Good to watch, but it wasn’t a documentary. It was more of an advert for how good ATC is. Typical wings programming really.

RE: Sirocco Aerospace orders TU 204s!!

The best of luck to them. I’m surprised Aeroflot didn’t buy many.

RE: Blugh!!!!

If the E-series are more powerful than the C-series (sounds like we’re discussing a Mercedes!) does that mean the C-series has a longer range, on account of presumably burning less fuel?

Or does the E’s greater power apply only if you actually gun the throttles, like when taking off?

RE: Good luck SkyCruiser!!!

I’m sure we all wish the best of luck to Skycruiser.

I have a question about psychometric testing though. My firm (not in the airline business) uses it to screen grauduate recruits. It seems to work OK, but I think that is because our partners (I work for a partnership, sadly I’m not a partner!) take it all with a large handful of salt.

Psychologists and even worse, HR people conducting these tests, will tend to have a certain “ideal” employee in mind. Trouble is, you then get a bunch of people with pretty much the same qualities and needless to say, you end up with a narrowly skilled workforce. If you can imagine that one person does all the recruiting for a company…it is possible that only one type of person will be hired.

For that reason (and also becuase I hate mumbo jumbo) I don’t generally rate these things. But they seem to be common place with airlines.

What are your thoughts on these – do you think they are useful, or do you do them because you have to? I place myself firmly in the latter!