What's Gordon going to do?

So, Gordy's been across to Afghanistan to visit the troops in Camp Helmand. [I'm sorry but can they not call it something other than "Camp" - Base for example - Camp Bastion just puts bad thoughts in my mind]

He's promised new kit to help them deal with Improvised Explosive Devices. Hope it's a touch more successful than the Chinooks that are still sitting in an air conditioned hanger in Wiltshire.

In the mid 90's the MoD (Civil Servants who "manage" the UK military - all 100,000 of them [that's civil servants not army - there's about 109,000 in the army]) ordered 8 Chinook Mk3s from Boeing. They were for deployment with the Special Forces [SAS etc]

Anyway, to save costs the MoD decided that it could install it's own avionics software. This software from Boeing would have boosted the cost from £259m to a tad over £300m [remember these figures, I'll be testing you later]

However, we could not write software that worked, which meant the choppers could not be certified as airworthy -they could fly but only when there was not a cloud in the sky and definitely not at low level.

In 2004, as the demand for choppers in Afghanistan rose, the MoD admitted their failure and went back to Boeing to ask them to fix the problem. There were 30 months of negotiations and a final estimate of £215m was reached an in-service date of 2012 was agreed

However, as time passed, the pressure to get them in to service increased significantly and in March 2007 the MoD cancelled the previous project and asked that the Chinooks be "reverted" back from the sophisticated model originally required to the standard "Utility" model. This had a "ready for service" date of 2010 and an estimated cost of £53m. By November 2007 the estimated cost had risen to more than £90m.

All this time, (2001 - 2007) the Chinooks languished in their climate controlled hanger in Wiltshire, needing weekly inspections and a more detailed check every 2 years - costing £560,000

What an almighty cock-up - and still the Civil Servants took their salary and gold plated pension contributions, no one was fired and no one resigned. They did not even get a telling off and a slap on the wrist as far as I am aware.

Where do I apply?

So when Gordy says he's going to improve things, I tend to wonder how he's going to do this - suggestions on the back of a postcard

A Coincidence to far?

I find it interesting that these new proposals come to light after the Prince of Darkness, King of all he surveys, Mandleson has had a meeting with one of the largest media moguls in the US. A coincidence too far?

Although I do not condone piracy, the media companies only have themselves to blame. They have failed to adapt to the new models of delivery provided by the internet.

Also, this does not take in to account that a lot of the money they claim to be losing is mythical. I would bet that the majority of pirates download music and films that they would never pay to watch – if that’s the case, it’s not really lost revenue. The money was never there in the first case – the sums claimed to be lost are reached by extrapolation not through research in the real world.

Sadly, they want to keep the world locked in their past where they control what we see, what we hear, when we see it, when we hear it, how we see it and how we hear it.

The internet has blown all of that control away and yet the old views persist. Why should I pay nearly the cost of a full blown CD package to download music of inferior sound quality, with no art work, no packaging, no distribution logistics and with at least one link removed in the profit chain (retailer) only to find that the file I download is locked to one delivery device – reducing my freedom to listen to the music wherever I decide – in the car, on the home Hi-Fi, on my PC, on my MP3 player etc.

Why can’t they embrace new delivery media and offer me a choice of quality on a sliding cost scale so audiophile quality would cost the equivalent of a CD (less packaging and distribution costs) all the way down to the type of quality suitable for a mobile phone speaker for peanuts.

On the film front, why can’t I have a selection of download qualities – really low res for my phone, better res for my PMP or iPhone, VHS quality for those of us more interest in content rather than quality, DVD quality and finally Hi-Def.

If media were presented in this way, I’m sure many pirates would migrate.