In the news

Turkish general cargo ship Mustafa Kan...

Great name tho.

Mustafa Kan't.

Well at least it didn't catch fire.

there is a tv show called " destroyed in seconds " that shows footage of a fertilizer ships going up in some harbour in the usa or maybe japan
pretty devastating
especially as it caused sparks and a fire in the 2nd fertilizer ship also in harbour at the same time
which also went up
goodbye harbour

Was that the one in Canada, that EdScoble referenced on another thread some time ago?

Texas City disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster

One of the anchors landed 1.6 miles away...

That was the Halifax disaster but it was explosives.

It is a bit odd as 'kan' translates from Turkish as 'blood'.

I'm pretty sure kan in this instance refers to the turkic word for ruler, khan, which was a common title in parts of the middle east.

Also

Version 1

and Version 3

a lot of anger on both sides, really gutted about the ignorant and expats voting no :(

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-37537252

I'm very disappointed with that :(

I can understand people want full normal punishments, but that was impossible to broker in Northern Ireland too.

I'm not sure about fact being guaranteed seats, again the compromises made to standard democracy in NI still cause problems years on.

In an ideal world etc...but it's not and I hope another solution is found.

I don't know enough about NI but my understanding was the farc were only being given 5 seats out of 300-odd(?).... Not really meaningful from a power POV.

Watching channel 4 news I was a bit disappointed by their description of things like the subsidies and lack of jail sentences, as its not quite that simple.

Knowing people who lost people to the Provo IRA and who still seath when they see folk like Geary Adams on TV I understand how hard it is. But you need to make unpalatable compromises for peace. When viewed in the broad context the farc got totally spanked in the negotiations... It's sad the tiny fraction needed to pass the yes vote couldn't see that.

Uribe accusing others of getting away with murder? U wot m80?

What went wrong here, politics wise, is the grouping of parties in unionist / republican / other, with others given less power and no proper opposition keeping them vs us politics rumbling on.

But FARC having so few seats seems reasonable, I'm not sure about long term consequences as the constitution needs changed.

But the most affected regions voted yes, so no voters going on that this isn't text book perfect justice is a little easy for them!

This Michael Fallon stuff at the Tory Party conference - the defence budget to grow every year, army to pretty much have legal immunity, cadet groups to be formed in state schools...

Petrifying, it's like they're trying to turn us into the U.S.

Or North Korea...

New page fail :(

Yes, early education-era Gove was also a fan of the CCF, (Combined Cadet Force), for state schools. It seems to be a Tory/Free Schools mantra that now has to be adopted by any grouping attempting to open a new secondary school.
Out here in Hillingdon, in the north of the borough, (where a previous Tory Council demolished a previously Secondary Modern school, and sold the land for housing), a generation on, there is the requirement for a complete new 6/7/8 form entry secondary school.
A consortium of other secondary school headteachers, wishing to embark on new careers as property developers, included the cadet option, as a given, in their prospectus.

the return of national service next. closely followed by workhouses. and possibly the birch.

Well, the regular army is under funded - too much emphasis on building aircraft and boats - and I don't see the harm in having cadet groups attached to schools. It's better than going around to schools in deprived areas offering money to kids to join the army, which is what they do actually do in the US.

Don't the army still pay the Public School fees for the children of certain officers? I'd suggest they're not underfunded at all.

And frankly if grown men want to play soldier, they can do it with their own money, not mine.

I can buy the more money for the army argument - the reality is that Putin and others are a very real threat who thrive on weakness - but militarization of kids? Nope.

No idea, but it's not the officer class that's short on the money, it's the regular infantry.

What I read - and I can't retrospectively find the article - is that the military budget is too geared towards building aircraft carriers and the like. The high ranking officer who said this speculated that the idea of fighting a war with troops on the ground isn't as redundant as politicians like to think; that the building of new warships, subs and aircraft was merely a 'show of force' and wasn't strategically justifiable.

I'm cynical here, but is the UK army basically not a proxy army for the USA?

Afghanistan, Africa, Iraq...and on top of that the UK is the second biggest arms dealer. [and may I note those arms dealing companies used to be gov, but are now privatized] Germany does fine with a tiny army.