Weapons of (cheap) precise destruction

Earlier this summer Southampton University showed a small model aircraft that had been 'printed' with a 3-D laser sintering machine.

An iPhone gas GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, a camera and far more processing capability than a space shuttle had.

It doesn't take an Asimov type visionary to see where this is going.

Very soon it will be possible to have a cheap precision guided weapon that can be assembled as easily asa a model aircraft.

You could have swarms of them on the battlefield, or just one or two with a terrorist or criminal.

This is going to change our world, and also make put assassination back on the agenda in a way it hasn't been since the 19th century.

See also this economist article here.

This type of drone technology also has large implications for our armed forces and even police. In short the RAF is doomed as a Biggles flying club.

The Politicians

So how much blame belongs with the politicians for the recent riots ?

The newspapers had fun with the by now annual game of get the leader to return from holiday early. Though to be fair it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel given the ammunition of the euro / US / and London riots.

It seems that something is amiss to have too many key senior office holders out of rye country at the same time. A lesson to be learnt perhaps, though wasn't Nick Clegg supposed to be minding the shop ?

But that's a side show compared to the game of pinning the blame for last weeks breakdown of law & order on anyone other than the flat footed plod.

Theresa May - as Home Sec the buck really should pass her desk first. She has been one of the more confident performer in the coalition, until this event. She came home early from her holiday and has good relations with the police, or at least as far as I can tell. But she is not a visionary leader, she is one of the technocrat types who have risen in politics. Thanks goodness she's competent but she can't overcome that lack of long range vision and purpose. She has barely done enough to redeem herself for that almost unforgivable conference speech all those years ago. In short she's just not up to the leadership job that's required here.


Ed Miliband - with his family schooling in Marxism RedEd is just blind to what going on. His world view says it can't happen. He reminds me of those spectators at the Oval in Douglas Adams Hitch Hicker's Guide to the Galaxy stories whom refuse to see the space ship land in front of them as they have no conceptual framework to hand it on ( similar rumours exist about the native Americans being unable to see the first European ships in their waters ).

What RedEd does understand is that the public are scared, angry and ready to ditch the liberal moral relativism that he and his professional politicians leftie chums have been busy trying to establish as the consensus. RedEd is playing for time - he doesn't care as he doesn't understand and indeed can't understand the issue, but he does understand its consequences hence his opting for the long game of reviews, inquiries etc - which he hopes the Lefts superiority in pundits and control of the BBC agenda will allow the public's attention to be refocused and to be told and believe that something other than the mass break down in law and order due to criminality actually happened. Ed Miliband is thus an enemy of the common people and will do his best to do great harm to this nation. The good news is that the nation is surely not insane enough to let him.

So this leaves us with David Cameron to save the day ( I'm sorry this is serious stuff so the Lib Dems just don't count ). He knows how to react - tough sentences, clear condemnation, a little slow on the holiday return test, getting in help from the US to provide a counter balance to our politicised ( by Labour) police force, even sounding tough on the Human Rights Act ( which is a virtual golden calf as far as the Godless left and confused Lib Dems are concerned ). But here's the problem - David Cameron doesn't have the philosophical framework to hang all this on based on his previous leadership ( yes there will be clever spad's who can put together a set of quotes to show how wrong this is - but we all know David Cameron is another manager, much less of a visionary leader ).

If this had happened on Margaret Thatcher's watch there would have been no need to listen to her make a speech on the steps of downing street - we would have known what she thought, and what she was going to do - and even have a shudder when we think of the fate of those who might get in her way for getting it done. ( Yes she'd have made the speech also - but it would have just confirmed what we already knew about her and her vision ).

David Cameron has vision deficit syndrome, and that is a terminal condition if untreated in a political leader. Personally I doubt he will do anything about the Human Rights Act - or at least anything meaningful. And if he can't do that everything else will just fall.

If I hadn't just had such a great holiday down on the coast of Dorset and in the heart of Devon I'd be pretty depressed by now thinking about this.

Its a sad fact often repeated by fellow commentators on twitter and blogs that the current crop of leaders just don't seem to up to the job.

I suspect part of the problem is that their criteria for success was getting those jobs in the first place, not what they could do with them.

I'm afraid on the London Riots/Looting I'm with Damian Thompson - this is just the beginning of a breakdown in English society that not even the leader of the Conservative party understands or is ready to tackle. ( And this blog is still officially a Conservtiave supporting blog, written by a paid up Conservative party member. )

The police

Its quite clear that last week was a public order disaster.

Its also clear that many people who thought the police would protect them were bitterly disappointed, whether a small shop owner who has their livelihood stolen or the women forced to hand over their wedding rings in restaurants that were terrorised by rampaging gangs.

Most commentators now accept that the TV images of the police standing by watching looting in the early phase of the public order disaster.

Clearly the police made mistakes, very big ones with consequences that have cost at least 5 lives and a massive amount of damage and theft.

But it doesn't seem to be the officers on the ground. They seemed to lack direction from above, not courage or determination.

Indeed their bravery is being used to hide behind for senior officers trying to deflect criticism. Some of the standard debating ploys are being used:

1. detail - you can always rely on using more detail to discredit your critics;
2. imply that your critics are armchair critics- that always works wheel, and ;
   
3. claim responsibility for the parts that worked ( in this case on the technicality that police commanders gave all the orders, ignoring the fact they did so under considerable pressure from politicians who returned from their holidays [ more on that in the next post ] ).

The senior police officers are also trying to have a good crisis of confidence by using it to avoid making efficiency improvements in the way the police are run.

The leadership of the police have lost the confidence of a very large section of the public. Those senior police officers who rose high in the ranks during the New Labour years appear to be the worse.

Clearly there needs to be new leadership to restore trust and reform the police. The government needs to make sure this happens. They must ignore the pleading interspaced with threats from those who served the old order instead of the people.

The Looters

Well the press is having its fun.

We can send people to prison at the whim of the executive - well at least until recent anti-terrorism legislation you couldn't. So the next best thing is to humiliate people in the media.

The millionaire's daughter, the dance student, and the law student. They are going to be punished in the court of public opinion.

But don't get me wrong - they deserve it. My only observation is that this passes for justice now in Britain.

Of course a far higher proportion of impulse looters will have been caught than the harder corps, or at least those not terminally stupid enough to post their photos on Facebook & twitter along with their loot.

So we have a lot of analysis of the under classes in the press, some of it predictable, some very good. I can't do any better, or even delude myself to try.

What I will say is that a hidden world and the mainstream world clashed across the capital and then the country last week. ( Normally this only happens in a moment such as a mugging or burglary - that we have grown used to ignoring, if they even get reported ).

A friend of my wife's over a decade ago walked home with her baby in London and as she arrived home and turned to close the front door a thug jumped in behind her, put a knife to the child and demanded cash. I bet nearly everyone who lives in London has similar stories.

We also know, well those of us not in the fantasy world of left wing politics and its truth denial cult, that discipline in schools and on the streets has evaporated. We know that respect for truth, hard work, parents and other peoples property has gone and envy has taken over. ( As a mental exercise see how many of the ten commandments that little list breaks. )

All that was necessary for the Lord of the Flies act last week was for the police to look like they weren't in control, and then we had the explosion.

Many of the impulse rioters came from normal backgrounds. It is frightening the number of people who lie on their CV, routinely cheat. On TV shows like the apprentice being caught fibbing on your CV is almost treated as a sign of imitative.

This part of society has had a moral regression.

But the shocking stuff is in the jungle of the permanently unemployment, fatherless welfare dependent under class. Their world is frankly frightening. They live in virtual prisons limited to a certain post code that their gang controls ( and don't even start about the initiation rituals - especially for the girls ).

They are the result of the moral pollution that has been washed down from the middle classes that has dissolved the type of society that held things together for them in the past ( things like marriage, respect for parents enforced by the back of a present fathers hand, and people who respected teachers and others - and would take their side without question against their children's ).

And finally let us not forget that their is a political philosophy based on looting - socialism. Most of the political representatives in the areas affected are from the party to support using the state to loot and then spends the loot so ineffectively to make things worse ( mostly this is due to the utter incompetence of many left wing activists - but some do it deliberately to destroy society to bring about the repressive socialist utopia that Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were such fine examples of).

The looters are firstly Labour's children. They are directly the responsibility of the Guardian reading class. They are also responsible for themselves and must take their punishment - but whilst that's happening ( or in many cases not happening ) lets not forget who's mistakes made it necessary.

Here again is another reason for Ed Miliband to hang his head in shame, resign and go away and rethink his life and the hurt his party has caused to others. But he won't as he, along with Harriet Harman, is one of the biggest looters of them all.

Three posts coming

1. The Looters
2. The Police
3. The Politicians

Sent from my HTC

Gove crushes the hypocrisy of Harriet Harman

Fantastic stuff. Harman is a national disgrace.

The government and the mayor have 6 hours to get ahead of the game

Three days of mass rioting shows that this has passed from the ability of senior police officers to control with their current rules of engagement and resources.

Hence their failure now passes the buck up to the layer of government.

David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson need to understand they will be judged on events tonight.

The terms of the law enforcement efforts need to be changed by them in the next 6 hours or they will join in the responsibility for what happens tonight.

They need to consider:

1. Curfews;
2. Army back up for the fire brigade & maybe police;
3. Shutting down the mobile phone data networks in London;
4. More aggressive localised policing ( you can't do it everywhere, but one or two traps to crush disorder might help ).

They also need to counter the argument the left are trying to make by telling the left that this is their fault due to the failure of morality in London.

They've got six hours to make decisions that could make a difference. They need to speak to people on the streets to understand what this means to them, as well as the police repeating their common purpose diversity trained brain washed lines.

Three days of looting

There are clearly problems with policing in London.

The failure to get a grip means some senior police officers need to be sacked.

If this isn't stopped then political heads will be required also.

As for the crimnal gangs in our midst they need to be confronted.

If we still have the riot act then it needs reading and curfews enforcing for some time to come.

It may be time to bring the army onto the streets.

As for the BBC/Guardian/Ken Livingston Labour types trying to make excuses, they need to be made to understand that they have created the feral and criminal mobs who lack morality and common human decency.

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The #SillyWeek roundup

Draft #1 - because I know I'll miss stuff:
Spotted in the wild:

• John Ward -See-Three-Blair-Oh
• James Higham - Dolphins sixth sense
• Chuckles - The Guyness test
• Welshcakes Limoncello - Fresh Supplies for Sooty
• Harry Hook - Australian Tuna Tossing
• North Northwester thinks sequels are silly.
• Harry Hook again - George Lucas tributes.
• Welshcakes Limoncello - Teaching ? A silly choice in Italy
• A brief - and somewhat confused calendar entry
• Tory austerity responsible for stranding of pilot whales
• Fiscal responsibility

So have I missed anything ( can't link to your Karate lesson Pvt Hook due to the kids checking Dad's blog issue ) ?

Today, a day in #SillyWeek

Hi all,

A Silly week round up is overdue- I was distracted with other things yesterday, but is probably going to be on Sunday.

Today I'll mostly be driving up and then down the M6, now how Silly is that ?

Hope your having fun....

MiaS

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#SillyWeek Tory austerity reponsible for stranding of pilot whales

#SpinningForTheTUC_Uncut today announced that the evil Tories and their kitten murdering refusal to create a debt crisis and destroy the lives of our children by enslaving them to debt have directly lead to the death of a pod of pilot whales just off Scotland.

The Pilot Whales, all members of the RMT, stranded themselves in protest against Austerity and to show their support for #RedEd and his Trade Union owners.

The BBC will be running this story on Evil Tories on Today ( 6am, 7am, 8am leading items ), radio 5 live, BBC News channel ( repeating each 30 mins ) and a special aren't the Tories evil edition of Newsround.

#SillyWeek: Mad Dog Al Nutter to lecture US & UK on fiscal responsibility

Dr Al Nutter, the Mad Dog of the desert, launched one of his 5 hour rants on Liabyan TV from an undisclosed bunker, but still sitting in his electric golf cart berating the US and other western infidels on there failure to balance the book.

Dr Al Nutter pointed out the following keys facts during his wide ranging lecture that also seemed to keep returning to the theme of hiring models and paying them to sit mostly undressed to hear his lectures on moral living:

1. When he had committed acts of terrorism it had been "fully funded". He had never needed to borrow money from the Chinese to they pay them back again for the rare earth metals to put in some decadent over the horizon fire and forget Western guidance system.
   
2. Even now, despite the efforts of the evil NATO he was more solvent than the entire Western world, just based on his Swiss bank account and a pile of Gold ( you can't trust the dollar these days ) he has buried away in the great desert.

Dr Nutter offered to return to the London School of Left Wing Economics, from which his honoury doctorate was purchased, and deliver another Dead Marxist lecture in memory of the Unions choice of leader of the Labour party there to explain how this "paying your way" thing actually works.

He only asked the Mr Ed Balls be kept out of the audience as he was as mad debt denier and completely beyond reason.

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PS Just in case you don't get this - none of this is real, except perhaps the bit about Ed Balls ...

First innings

Strapping on the pads of #SillyWeek the following adventurous bloggers have walked up to the crease ( no baseball puns here - its not the Apprentice you know ):

The Tapeworm Diet - why have I never heard of this.
And so it begins - some word definitions.
How To Green Your House & Destroy The Planet - Jonathan Porritt look away now.
Not even trying - even google translate doesn't help here.
The origami bank has ...
The Aussie take on the work of their defected to the US son - very good, the sort of humour thats missing from our screens.
Just to show the Italians treat everyone the same - by closing when you go on holiday there...
Being a splendid Steam Punk - somehow missed in the first draft


Publicity on

Calling England
They're Joking. Aren't they.
Orphans of Liberty

Let me know in comments or with email (here ) if you have contributions ... going to have to dream something up myself shortly.

#SillyWeek place holder

I haven't forgotten, but will update you later on tonight ....