I’ve always been of the opinion that they keep us frightened enough not to complain about funding of security services. Not necessarily the armed forces but the rest of the stuff.

It’s noticeable that whenever spending cuts are mooted for said security services that all of a sudden a ‘credible terrorist threat has been scuppered by our heroic services’ is spread all over the news and their empires are safe for a little longer.

I’m pretty sure the intelligence services knew, but Joe Public didn’t. It didn’t hurt to keep us scared of the Red Menace.

Typically simple Russian approach to the problem actually, they were always good at that. I’m reminded of the money that NASA spent trying to get a pen to write in space/zero gravity. The Russians took a pencil….

quite correct if anyone rememmbers the red square parades of the sixties and seventies ( it was practicaly the only news reports to come out of the secretavie communist russia ) but it worked !! it was quite an astonishing and frightning display of hardware and streangth.

A display of hardware yes, the display of strength was a little misleading as the waves of aircraft simply flew a large circuit to fly past again.

I read an interesting book once, written I think around 1913 by an economist who said that capitalism was doomed. He then went on to explain why. There was no political angle, just simple (well, not so simple..) maths. Everything he predicted is happening. Can’t for the life of me remember what it was called now.

The basic tenet was we all become richer, we all need to consume more, the rate of consumerism is exponential, when we reach the limit it all goes pop. There was a bit more to it than that obviously.

Let me just say that I know nothing about Bagby (was going to go there for the first time the other weekend but rain stopped play) but it seems to me from the little I’ve read and heard on the grapevine that it’s a bit of an own goal. While of course suppporting any airfields’s right to continue, isn’t it incumbent on the owners/operators to make sure that everything they do, down to the last dotted i and crossed t is squeaky clean? We all know how nimby this country has become, God forbid anyone should be enjoying themeselves.

I still wish you the best of luck of course and will support your right to fly from there.

I think you will find the same in any public sector service Moggy. I work for an un named County Council, at the sharp end as a service provider and I seriously reckon they could get rid of half the jobs at County Hall and no one would notice the difference. Every month the latest job vacancies are published in an in house publication. Jobs such as ‘Diversity Outreach Co-Ordinator’ on 35K with benefits. Just what the flip does a ‘Diversity Outreach Co-Ordinator’ do, how did we manage without them, and why do they need ‘Assisitant Diversity Outreach Co-Ordinators’?

This is just one example of the ludicrous jobs that are created. I’m sure as you say it fills offices with well meaning and earnest paper shufflers, but when it comes at the expense of front line cuts my ire gets irate.

This clip isn’t funny because it’s close to the truth, it is the truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A&feature=relmfu

‘A Fall of Moondust’, Arthur C Clarke. Have the ‘Book Thief’ by Marcus Zusak lined up. I bought my first graphic novel last month. I was wandering around Salts Mill in Bradford and came across a marvelous book by Shaun Tan called ‘The Arrival’, a surreal book about emigration. Not a word in it.