Tanks

I went to the Tank Museum yesterday and took some pictures.

Challanger

It was interesting to visit the the week following the fall of Kabul; it makes at least one of the exhibits look a bit vainglorious. It also reminds me that I didn’t finish my story of the future of the Royal Armoured Corps from Boris’ defence review. It all makes me wonder about whether NATO can survive, and yet again, whether in areas of defence policy we see another dimension of the stupidity of Brexit.

There’s more to learn; on one slide they observe how the Army is always preparing for the last war. Reinforcing that I note that Tanks were invented during WWI in a Navy project, that like so many stories, the adoption in this case of the Tank was adopted by odd balls and that their was significant opposition bypowerul conservative (not Tory) factions in the Army, to the extent that during WW2 the Army fired Major General Hobart, and had to bring him back. Hobart, was not born into a military family and was assigned to the Royal Engineers; he became the Deputy Director of Staff Duties (Armoured Fighting Vehicles), he later became Director of Military Training and was the founder of the 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats. There are many more examples of the slow adoption by the Army of the necessary tactics and technology, perhaps I’ll look them up and write something, if its not been done (I am sure it has).

As one walks in, the first exhibit talks about the design trilemma, of armour, firepower and mobility, a theme they revisit in commenting on a number of exhibits but if one recognises that the best tanks of the WWII were the US designed Sherman and Soviet T34, it becomes clear that cost, and manufacturing simplicity were also key. While tank on tank the allied tanks were inferior to their opponents, the allied forces had more than enough because they were simpler to make by design and the allied manufacturing capability was so much greater.  …

Right to a fair trial

judges gavel

For reasons, which to my friends will will be obvious, I feel the need to post the text of Article 6 of European Convention on Human Rights.

ECHR Article Six

  1. a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interest of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.
  2. Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law.
  3. Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights:
    • a.  to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him;
    • b.  to have adequate time and the facilities for the preparation of his defence;
    • c.  to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing or, if he has not sufficient means to pay for legal assistance, to be given it free when the interests of justice so require;
    • d.  to examine or have examined witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him;
    • e.  to have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court.
 …

Not an option today

Own Jones, reflecting on the debate in Parliament, writes in the Guardian, “Even the crisis in Afghanistan can’t break the spell of Britain’s delusional foreign policy“. A crucial quote is, “The former prime minister is a fantasist: Britain has not had a foreign policy independent of the United States since the 1950s“. He then catalogues a series of what will come to be called war crimes by US & British forces. We went there because the USA invoked NATO solidarity and have left because again the US people got tired of foreign wars. The British Govt, was not consulted. The fact is as others have pointed out, the US is no longer a reliable geo-political ally at least for the UK, and possibly not for NATO yet the world remains dangerous, the UK needs Europe and needs the EU. Another reason that Brexit was a mistake.

Very well alone

I have copied the picture from the Guardian, in which it was originally published, they republished it in this article, “Lost empire: it’s a myth …” which looks at the historical revisionism showing the efforts the then Empire and nascent Commonwealth contributed to the UK’s “finest hour”.  …

Afghan Refugees II

I need to watch the Parliamentary debate on Afghanistan yesterday, but I have been busy helping JCWI (Joint Committee for the Welfare of Immigrants) and Another Europe is Possible in developing their responses.  I wrote something on my blog, focused on refugee assistance, although I called for the Govt. to suspend and rethink the Borders Bill. Here, overleaf, are some links and tweets suggesting actions that can be taken, if only retweeting or sharing; also statements from Lewisham Council and Labour Councils ....

Afghanistan, and now?

Afghanistan, and now?

Afghanistan is now dominated and controlled by the Taliban. This has happened a week after the US withdrawal. Joe Biden announces that the mission was never about “state building’;  let’s hope the people of the NATO nations learn that NATO can never act as such a force, and that ‘liberal interventionism’ is recognised as the oxymoron it truly is.

The pictures of those seeking to leave Kabul are heart rending and I for one feel impotent and partly guilty at the same time.

We owe a duty to the people of Afghanistan that want a better life and the first thing to do is consider our national refugee policy and how we welcome them. First we need to let them in, and second to stop sending them back.

We need to welcome them, and ensure that they can live, love and learn. This will involve changing our approach to a number of immigration policy issues.

Priti Patel’s Borders Bill, which arguably breaks international law on the rights of refugees, must be suspended, and the Immigration Act 2014 needs, at the least, major revision. This isn’t a debate on quotas or points and the hostile environment makes it impossible for immigrants to live; we should be proud that refugees want to come here. I’d add that some of my immigrant members are shocked at the injustice they face at work and the lack of remedy. Britain was meant to be famous for fair play.

I’ll leave the foreign policy lessons for another time. …

Fair Pay!

Fair Pay!

The press are full of stories about Google looking to reduce the pay of those who continue to work from home as the public health restrictions are lifted. This is unjust; if there’s one lesson learnt during the pandemic it’s that essential workers are under paid, but the idea of the world’s most profitable companies trying to restore/boost their profitability by reducing the wages of their workers is, while not unexpected, pretty appalling. In the UK, this may open an employer to equal pay suits.

Google claims to be a global talent company and it would surprise me if they don’t pay the market rate for the job wherever! I know that Sun Microsystems, in its last few years came to the view that the talent market was global and set up HQ offices around the world with Labs in Grenoble and St. Petersburg and a location in India. It bit them the arse when they came to close the offices, French redundancy consultation laws are a bitch … we could do with some laws like that. (In fact a game I played with my US managers and peers, was asking which country in Europe is it hardest to fire people in, and they all thought it was Germany. The answer was in fact Italy, where the comrades went on unofficial strike. Germany was 4th, after Italy, France and the Netherlands.)

Marxists argue that employers will seek to pay the minimum wage with crudely speaking a floor of the replacement cost of the labour; they also argue that all the value is created by the labour and that it’s the appropriation of surplus value is the driver of the class struggle. Classicists argue that now that labour has transformed from animal effort, there is a supply and demand for skills and experience and there is an equilibrium grate of wages. I suppose the cost to commute vs the born cost of provisioning the workplace are factors in determining replacement cost and/or the supply curve, but they are also part of a 21st century trend of dumping cost elsewhere. Let’s note that when employees work from home, Management save the cost of office space.  Here the employer is seeking to reduce wages by clawing back the employee’s travel to work costs and also make savings by reducing its office costs.

You need a Union, see also Less money for working from home? at GMB London General X58 Branch …

On proscriptions

Before the NEC meeting at which it agreed to proscribe four organisations, a group of their members issued a statement.

 …

Tyranny

Tyranny

The Labour Party only has three rules.

C1.X.5 which say the NEC has final interpretation of the rules

C1.VIII.3.A which says the NEC can do what it wants to enforce the rules

C1.VII.1.C.ii which says the GS can assume delegated powers from the NEC and pass them on.

This is Tyranny. …

Community creates value

Community creates value

Cory Doctorow comments on Games Workshop’s latest legal initiative against its fans, I chose some quotes from the article, including the allegation that they behave like sociopaths and created their IP in exactly the way they're pursuing others for. I conclude with, the probably not original statement, "Open source campaigners have always argued that community creates value, here's another battleground where it will be tested.".