In the news

Sorry, totally hypothetical scenario. The correct answer is Special, obviously. (Or the odd Winter Warmer, especially on Xmas Eve.)

And yet ex IRA member Maria Gatland, a gun runner who was not a
child but a full grown woman, and who said "I agree with the shooting
of British soldiers and believe that the more who are killed the
better" ended up Tory Councillor for Croydon!

https://twitter.com/traciewayling/status/1104109669239410691

Now it's largely out of the news again, but it seems not much has been done about the Windrush scandal:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/07/home-office-windrush-fund-only-helped-one-person-by-end-of-2018

Also worth mentioning that she has now lost her third child.

I don't even know what constitutes a political scandal any more. Maybe this sort of thing used to be swept under the carpet more and people didn't resign for such cases in the past, either, unless it was somehow made public, but it's scandalous even without the baby's death--Javid clearly didn't properly investigate what Bangladesh's position was about this, and that alone is a very serious error of judgement.

With most of the current cabinet, including the Prime Minister, I have no idea why they're considered politicians, let alone senior politicians.

There are a huge number of tragic ironies in the case, the starkest is that Javid sacrificed a British baby on the alter of his own ambition to be PM, determined to show that a man from a minority background could be just as vile as the gammon he'll need to vote for him. Yet they never will - he can never be white enough, no matter how racist his actions.

I thought may sat on the windrush panel when they where instigating deportation.

Would rep. Spot on.

I'm not sure the comparison to driver on cyclist incidents is particularly apt. The main difference being that the only person he was likely to kill by this dangerous flying was himself. Tragically, he managed to kill 11 people and miraculously not himself.

From what I've read, it appears he started the manourve from such a poor altitude and speed it was almost impossible for it to succeed. This seems particularly odd because he is without doubt an experienced and highly trained aerobatic pilot.

His explanation is that it seems inconceivable that he would have done that were his mind functioning properly, and the jury have decided that they cannot say that beyond reasonable doubt, he is incorrect in that argument.

Its a crazy case. I certainly expected him to be found guilty, but Ive also been baffled at how it happened, if there was no mechanical failure. People this experienced tend not to just crash.

nailed it.

His explanation is that it seems inconceivable that he would have done that were his mind functioning properly, and the jury have decided that they cannot say that beyond reasonable doubt, he is incorrect in that argument.

Gets a bit philosophical here, but if we can claim the benefits of 'normal operation' of our own minds, I'm not quite sure how we can dodge accountability should there be a seemingly temporary glitch and things go wrong.

People this experienced tend not to just crash.

On a long enough timeline everyone crashes.

On a long enough timeline everyone crashes.

Spoken like a true honey badger.

I'm baffled that he was found not guilty. In the absence of any other reason for the failure, he is at fault. There's a simple checklist to show whether or not it's safe to begin a particular move or routine, and he failed to follow it. If I did the same while trying to practice a stall in a Cessna, crashed and killed someone, I'd be 100% at fault for not doing the right thing. Just because he's that highly trained doesn't absolve him, it makes it worse.

1+1=3

Sorry, had a brief cognitive impairment right there.

all this talk of plane crashes.... ethiopian airways flight from addis to nairobi crashes yesterday / overnight

157 dead, pretty horrible. I used Ethiopian quite a few times and thought they were very good.

I agree with a lot of this. I think if he can't prove he blacked out or whatever, the assumption has to be that he was at fault. His expertise and training does not absolve him, but it highlights how odd it is for him to make these seemingly obvious mistakes.

In terms of liability, there is still the question that if someone has a heart attack, out of nowhere, while driving down the motorway and kills someone, are they to blame? Or is it just an accident? In this scenario he's trying to claim the latter as his defence, but can't prove he had the heart attack.

In your stall practice comparison, it would be similar if, after crashing you claimed not to remember anything, and it to become apparent that rather than starting the manourve at say 5000 feet, you inexplicably did it at 1000. Your argument may be that you must have had some kind of cognitive failure as to do that on purpose would be crazy.

Tragic. Plane was almost brand new, but its the second fatal crash involving this model in less than six months- 737 Max 8.

In the past you could put an African airliner crashing down to old planes and poor maintainence, but not sure that's going to be the case here.

@radar may have more insight on this

the square plate killer...

"the squiller"

who want's to be first?

Judge convicted for taking money from companies running private prisons. In return, he made sure young offenders were sent to jail instead of pursuing other options.

Thing is, the justice system in many U.S. states works this way anyway. He's been done for going freelance.

It's like that Morgan Freeman film.

Nobody can undercut free labour, so the warden gets rich off the businessmen paying to keep the road-building contracts.

More American justice here:

https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1103809139900407808

I'm sure it would be more insightful than anything I could offer, but...

Lion Air Flight 610 had problems with it's Angle of Attack (AoA) sensors and the preliminary findings of the investigation were that this problem made the plane's anti-stall system think it was stalling and respond by repeatedly pushing the nose down. It seems the pilots were fighting this system when it crashed.

This system is called a "Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System" or (MCAS) and is new on the 737 Max. It's needed because the engines on this model are larger than on previous 737s - because the plane is longer and therefore larger - so they're in a different position: higher and further forward on the wing.

This destabilises the aircraft in pitch at higher angles of attack, so the MCAS system is needed to deal with it. In plainer English, the aircraft is aerodynamically unbalanced, so Boeing created a software fix to deal with it.

The problem was, Boeing hadn't told Lion Air about it, so Lion Air couldn't have told the pilots.

There are many who argue that making planes which can't fly well without needing software to compensate for what could be described as fundamental design issues isn't such a good idea. But if Boeing were going to do that they could at least have made sure this "feature" was well known to anyone flying the plane.

Nobody knows what caused the Ethiopian Airlines crash, but it dived into the ground shortly after takeoff in a manner worryingly similar to the Lion Air crash. So there is unsurprisingly speculation that the MCAS system could have been a factor.

There are many who argue that making planes which can't fly well without needing software to compensate ...

Chilling :(