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Showing posts from October, 2017

Kent's Fortitude failing?

It's astonishing that Kent's role in D-Day with Fortitude South the feint to an invasion of Calais helmed by General Patton is so ignored in East Kent by Visit Kent - even Liberation Route Europe instigated by Martin Schulz EU president and recent German Chancellor candidate. Musch as Wellington's Waterloo HQ in Ramsgate, UN monument and film star Will Hay are as neglected as Kent's Beatles and Stones concerts or Van Gogh gallery. Surely new street names of Fortitude North Close and Fortitude South Close and General Patton Drive are needed. If not Sword, Gold, Omaha, Juno and Utah streets - indeed POTUS JFK's elder brother Joe Jr. killed over Sussex in the first experimental drone raids on V1 sites in France. And perhaps I am wrong but UK is the only nation that's failed to commemorate USA support in WW1 and WW2 (or Sikh and Asia allies as Thailand and Japan) with a Woodrow Wilson Avenue or Franklin Roosevelt Boulevard. Perhaps East Kent can redress th...

The business of academia is failing UK?

Luke Johnson's ode to capitalism in his Sunday Times Animal Spirits article last week is right on the money in its concern over the weak quality of UK universities and Business Schools. Hopefully the coffee and cake guru (and cancer with his ICE Cancer School - surely NASA's DNA work on the P53 cancer gene for Mars 2030 flights is calling out for his dynamic efforts in UK?) in his new professorship at King's Business School will be able to help resuscitate UK business learnings in academia. And why shouldn't King's Business School rival Harvard or Yale or Stanford? Oxford and Cambridge and LSE may be excellent universities in general but few would rate their business schools. Kellogg School of Management university could do better half-asleep in lectures. Indeed with UK universities punching above their weight in both the Times and Sunday Times university leagues where is the UK MIT, or even UK RAND and UK DARPA? Surely the latter a shoo-in for King's al...

Besides Cambodians, are we all Belgian now?

Certainly Belgium in terms of military defence writes Alastair Campbell, former press secretary of PM Tony Blair, in the latest issue of The New European newspaper. And Campbell even press-gangs Lord West the former head of the Royal Navy into his argument that Tory defence cuts would result in a keelhauling if undertaken by Labour. I imagine that's possible in a narrow party political sense. But isn't the wider issue one of the competence of the military and MOD and military-industrial complex? The political parties and politicians don't fumble the ball over Caribbean Resilience or secretly nuking Disneyland before the Trident renewal debate or aircraft carriers without planes - that's the military and MOD. The politicians have issued the orders and the military as with Rear Admiral Burton can either carry them out effectively and efficiency or be marched around the parade ground, epaulettes ripped off and sword snapped over the knee, and out the gate they g...

We are all Cambodian now - even Boris. And ASEAN. And Hillary Clinton.

The Tory party conference ended with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson citing Cambodia and the Khmer version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (Neak Neng Klay Chea Sethey if your Khmer is rusty) as well as painting the Labour Chancellor John McDonnell as a modern Pol Pot. Clearly the curlywurly-haired Boris is stuck in the 1970's of Johnny Foreigner, Nazi punishment beatings at Colditz or Eton, and the watermelon smiles of apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa or Caribbean tax havens - along with Corbyinite socialism of nationalising monopoly services such as trains and utilities. Hardly doing Modern Britain nor Future Britain any favours. While the Labour conference also cited Year Zero in the IPPR thinktank presentation on Future Britain. And with his Johnson and Johnson hat on, shouldn't Ambassador Woody – not Boris - be the first American to carpetbomb Cambodia - with condoms and vaccines to rollback HIV and TB rather than Agent Orange and napalm. JandJ is a world-leadi...

Dodgy lawyers and judges - and lowering the Bar

Dodgy lawyers are hardly something new in society. The liar-for-hire almost a prerequisite of the job description. Even Shakespeare urging a cull of lawyers. Clearly something has gone wrong though in the UK Justice System - the expensive network of courts and clerks that lawyers and barristers and judges rely upon to make their living is broken. Not just the absurd million pound fees - essentially the courts as a lawyer ATM to issue and costs they like - Lord Grabiner of One Essex Court once again cited in yesterday's Sunday Times as "the apogee of weak corporate governance" for his role in the BHS scandal. Secret shareholders for a UK plc – Grabiner resigning and followed by an exodus of senior management. Dynamic MP Frank Field cited previously being after the whale of Philip Green (now paying £363M of the BHS pensions leaving only £1BN or so missing) as well as the sprat of Dominic Chappell who bought BHS for £1 from Grabiner-Green. The scandal of payments for...