Delicious LiveJournal Links for 9-24-2010

[andrewducker]

• Harlan Ellison says he's dying, plans last convention appearance
  (tags: Harlan Ellison scifi conventions)
• Boys adopting macho behaviours from superhero role models have worse psychological health
  (tags: education masculinity superhero psychology)
• Java Creator James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle
  (tags: java interview oracle sun)
• Fake Twitter bus account confuses passengers. I love this!
  (tags: buses transport funny satire)
• Man eating giant squid devouring fish stocks. Unusually, the comments better than the article. Awesome headline though.
  (tags: squid awesome)
• Political parties claim that we need to make weapons, for the sake of the workers. I am aghast.
  (tags: EpicStupidity military politics uk)
• The Royal Mail: A hedge fund that delivers letters
  (tags: investment pension royalmail uk)
• She Geek: Women and Self-Labeling in Online Geek Communities
  (tags: geek women feminism society sociology online community)
• 95% of population refuse to admit that they aren't straight.
  (tags: sexuality statistics uk)
• Government launches cheme to offer borrowers with a poor credit history an alternative to loan sharks
  (tags: loans banking money politics uk)
• Blockbuster files for bankruptcy in US. Are movie rental stores dying?
  (tags: movies rental TheFuture)

Comments

[andrewducker]

To be slightly fairer, the current MOD is the MOD for the whole of Britain. If Scotland separated from England/Wales/NI then some chunk of those assets would belong to it.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

The MOD doesn't maintain any staff or offices in Scotland though does it?

[andrewducker]

Doesn't matter. It's a part of the UK government, which is jointly constructed of all of its constituent parts, including Scotland.

Just because its head offices are in London doesn't mean that everything it runs belongs to England.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The problem is one of allocating centralised resources.

Let's say that a newly-independent Scotland gets (completely arbitrary figure) 20% of the former UK's armed forces. Now, you can easily earmark 20% of the personnel. Or indeed 20% of the tanks or aircraft. You can probably do 20% of the ships, but now it is gettig rather granular (e.g one destroyer and two frigates at this rate).

But how do you allocate 20% of the infantry training centre? 20% of the flying training school? 20% of the aircraft deep maintenance facility?

My whole time (17 years) in the RAF was spent against a backdrop of increasing rationalisation and centralisation, not just within the RAF but between the 3 services. An independent Scotland would have to generate much of its capacity to train, supply and maintain its armed forces from scratch, because it would be impractical to cut a chunk of such capability from England and haul it north of the border.

(And don't get me started on what happens with large-scale issues such as air defence command and control. At present, fully half the UK Air Defence Region is north of the England/Scotland border - a legacy of the main threat coming from the former USSR. Would Scotland want to remain tied into that radar and tracking network? Would it let England still have the data from the radar bases in the Scottish islands? If Scotland stayed in NATO then presumably this would be taken care of by participation in NATO ACCS. But the SNP wants to withdraw from NATO.)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, this is kinda my point. All of this is going to be insanely complicated, if it ever comes to fruition. It's not as simple as drawing a line down the border and handing everyone new passports.

I'm hoping that the current polling (57% against, 28% for) will remain reasonably steady, and Scottish people will remain part of the UK. I'd quite like to see a referendum though, so that we can get it all over with.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I have a bad feeling the SNP will time the referendum for right bang slap in the middle of the biggest social unrest over the upcoming service cuts, which will result in huge resentment towards the evil English tory government...

[andrewducker]

They'll try for that. But there's still a backlash over the mess that RBS/BoS got into. If we'd been devolved when that happened then we'd be Iceland right now...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Damn right. Hell, we'd probably be worse than Iceland, because don't the SNP want us to join the Euro? So we'd be on our knees begging the Germans to come take control of our economy and bail us out.

And I don't think the Germans are going to be keen to do that for anybody else once the extent of the hellhole they are in having gotten involved in the Greek situation become apparent to the electorate.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Actually, some quite large parts. All of Army personnel management is run out of Glasgow, if I recall correctly.