RE: Europe’s Worst Airport?

1. LHR – just plain awful. T2 has the lowest ceilings I’ve ever seen, the air conditioning is poor, bad choice of restaurants and no connections between terminals.

2. Liverpool – statue of a traitor (and named after one). Also the queue to get to the departure lounge is as bad as LHR and you have to walk to the aircraft, usually in heavy rain.

RE: Iraqi Invitation

I’m a little uncomfortable with the consequences of ousting Saddam:-

Iraq would quickly fragment because of the power vacuum.

Southern Iraq would go for self determination – a nation of Marsh Arabs, who have no idea how to run a country.

Eastern Iraq would take advantage of religious similarities with Iran and try to join up.

Northern Iraq and other bits would fall apart – some areas would go for independende, some would befriend the Turks, some would resent this and attack the Turk-friends…

The Turks might let the Tigris flow again for certain of the tribes but not for others…

Basically the complete disintegration of stability is a possibility. What’s preferable – oppressive stability or anarchy??

The US usually favours oppressive stability in the majority of cases.

RE: Quiz

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-08-02 AT 08:00 PM (GMT)]BE is part of Walker Aviation.

Jack Walker is dead; his stakes in WA and Blackburn Rovers are still flying around with the executors. Same with Antler Property.

Also, I’m not sure about the Spruce Goose – I guess it wins on a technicality. The Bristol Britannia was a regular and frequent biggie. I thing the Bristol Brabizon flew a lot more than the Spruce Goose too – that thing had the proportions of a 747!

RE: Your fav place in the world?

South Africa.

In particular, areas around Cape Town such as Stellenbosch and Franschoek.

Australia is nice, but I only went there for 6 days so I can’t really comment.

Also Bahrain and Dubai.

RE: US to cut miliatary aid to Taiwan if China Airlines gets 330

It does seem wrong, GD.

It is also against WTO rules and even if people are being ruthless, they must play by the rules. A US/EU trade war is a possibility anyway, because of the steel tarrifs amongst other things, and I am a little surprised at the US stance. It’s only going to up the ante.

It also goes against the grain of capitalism. State subsidisation of industry is a big, bad thing which the EU has been trying (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to put an end to. The US seems to be going the other way though, and throwing money at US industry. This distorts competiton and encourages an obviously uncompetitive Boeing to continue being inefficient.

Not only wrong, but also a short term position to the detriment of long term competitiveness.

RE: Australia’s refugee problem

Sorry, wombat – not a typo, I just misread you post on the exchange rate.

I know that most of the Aussies I know in Melbourne, grumble about the immigrants. The thing is, they grumble in my presence which does imply that they regard a white Englishman in a different light to Afghans, Asians etc.

For my part, we have a lot of Aussies and white South Africans in the UK now. These people are usually quite welcome, as opposed to – say, Afghans, Asians or Kosovars. Although they are technically immigrants in the same was as each other, the Aussies/S Africans are percieved differently. That may be because they are white, but then again Kosovars and Albanians are white also.

More realistically, it is because of ancient connections and history binding our countries together (eg. family ties, common traditions, trade). You can’t just regard all countries as the same, even when one country is a historic friend and ally whilst the other has nearly no connection whatever with us. It’s like the Irish; we don’t need any passports or anything to go to Ireland, but everyone else does. It is based on a long histroy together (though maybe not as friendly as with the Aussies!).

RE: Eugenics : the thread

The qualified personnel issue arises from lack of a formal recruitment framework. If you’re going to sort out the corruption and inefficiency, you need quality people. “Bright eyed boy” with his electrical engineering degree is decidedly not what I mean. I am in the middle of my accounting training contract, but my company absolutely insists on all applicants having a degree before they are accepted as trainees. All the work we do is completely reviewed by people who are already qualified. We also have to pass our exams first time or else we get the sack. The reason for this is that if we fail, there will be doubts cast over our work (even though all of it is reviewed). I tell you, a degee is nice but it is bugger all preparation for a real world job. To train as any of the professions I listed, a degee is only the starting point before 3-4 years under articles. My point is that the NHS seem to demand less ability and less professionalism than your local firm of accountants.

Money is only half the problem. A newly qualified accountant with no particular specialty gets £35k at the absolute minimum. Add a specific expertise and the numbers shoot right up. Would the NHS pay this? Not on your life.

You get what you pay for, I’m afraid.

But paying for it shouln’t be difficult. I refuse to believe a green accountant can’t be given a living wage if you can pay a consultant £100k or whatever. Maybe that is half the answer – get rid of consultants? I’m sure some expertise will go with them, but when the newly hired accountants sort out the expenses they could afford to hire consultants again.