HOWTO appear prime ministerial: first, be the prime minister

December 30, 2011 in politics

Here’s a question for you. Obviously it’s too much to ask that national newspapers provide a critical view of polling methodology. And there are obvious problems in criticising a poll your own paper paid for on the front page. So bloggers will probably just have to do it. But here goes. To what extent is [...]

Protection…

December 18, 2011 in corruption, crime, cultures of war, economics, logistics, London, networks, politics, press, special relationships, Tories

Update: I originally didn’t want to publish this because I didn’t think it was good enough, but I hit the wrong button. Anyway, Alistair Morgan read it and thinks one of the premises of the whole thing is wrong. Namely, the weapons were going in the same direction as the drugs, not the other way [...]

Can you hear me now?

December 4, 2011 in 4GW, civil service, command, engineering, GSM, history, stupid procurement, surveillance

Well, here’s a contribution to the debate over the riots. The Thin Blue Trots’…sorry…Police Federation report has been leaked. Among the failings highlighted by the federation, which represents 136,000 officers, were chronic problems, particularly in London with the hi-tech digital Airwave radio network. Its failings were one reason why officers were “always approximately half an [...]

I am a Guardian reader. You are a Telegraph reader. They are Sun readers

December 4, 2011 in press

Jamie Kenny says: Come to think of it, the only papers which their readers would miss are the ones which have have managed to establish their names and the word ‘reader’ as a social type: which is to say the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Mail. John Band argues that this is also true of [...]