As I have blogged before Outback Australia is the original destroyer of reputations. A natural vehicle Terminator. The latest big name to go under is the Mercedes Benz G Wagon. As the film shows had it not been for the convoy mechanics and air support the team would have perished. So don’t try this on your own!
p.s The sole Mil Spec G wagon in the convoy behaved perfectly. The Australian Army have just ordered 2000 of them. Seems they know a thing or two.
A compelling raison d’etre piece on the importance of democratically controlled monopolies on violence, by the Chief of the Netherlands Defence Forces General Peter van Uhm:
Whilst they might have all the fun surely this proves that Norwegians are utterly bonkers!
I have to say that despite the amazing numbers this looks pretty anodyne, particular when you compare it with what Ken Block does.
And the driver is very brave indeed driving at these speeds without, it would appear, any PPE at all: no helmet, gloves or overalls! And I don’t think he’s even wearing a seat belt.
I just love what Ken Block does with cars. How does he do it?
Jezza…eat your heart out!
Tired of Britain’s got Talent? Find the stuff boring and unexciting?
Then tune into India’s Got Talent for something completely different. Tame nutters!
OMG!!!
In a rather astonishing prediction General Richards, Chief of the Defence Staff asserts that:
I should have thought that this is would apply only if we win; by no means a foregone conclusion.
I must say that I am starting to have serious concerns about the geopolitical understanding of our senior military leaders who seem to be living in a colonial time warp.
Jolly good show chaps!
Despite the best intentions of Ron Dennis and Luca di Montezemolo and the aspirations of teenagers this only goes to show that the majority of people who buy supercars are nothing but idiots. The only criterion that you have to meet is being rich. Imagine if Civil Aviation worked like that!
This piece of South African Kit would be ideal for dealing with aggressive drivers in German cars like the one today in his Audi Uberwurst who came within 2 feet of my rear bumper at high speed with Xenon lights blazing because I dared to pull out to pass an Army Landrover when he was at least a quarter of a mile behind me!
Whoa! I like this. If it can land it can take off and you can probably fly it from your iPad.
Think of what you could do to BMW drivers with all that firepower!
I feel the need the need for speed (and a little birdie).
Ferrari have announced the death of Sergio Scaglietti the legendary coachbuilder for the company. Best known for the Ferrari 250 GTO he was creator of many cars from scratch and builder of many Ferraris and one of the greatest car designers of all.
May he rest in peace
Owen Barder, the prominent development economist, has posted this on http://www.owen.org/.
The nice thing about Owen’s blog is that it is both whimsical and serious at the same time. Whilst he blogs about matters of huge importance he is never didactic and always amuses.
David Cameron’s Mansion House speech has threatened to create a diplomatic row because he did an impersonation of Julia Gillard, the wonderfully articulate and erudite prime minister of Australia.
Well all I can say is:
Strewth mate the sheila’s more touchy than we thought.
Judge for yourself:
Toyota have just released a version of the the legendary Land Cruiser just for Australia. The Big Country is harsh and unforgiving. Only the strongest survive. Range Rovers, Discoverys and Mercedes Benz G-Wagens wilt and die as the Outback pounds them into submission, breaking their suspensions and ruining their power trains. 90% of 4WDs in the Outback are Toyota Land Cruisers! And for good reason….they are just about the toughest thing this side of an Abrams MBT.
The Land Cruiser GX is specially built for Oz. This is not the Land Cruiser of Surrey and Bridge of Allan providing Young Mothers with the idiotic notion that their darling kiddies will be safer in a big vehicle on their half mile trip to school.
No this is a real Land Cruiser with vinyl mats, vertically hinged rear doors and a snorkel designed to go where none can go. This is a tough mutha for a tough country
Forget the ill-fated and rather pathetic Wallabies. There are other great Australians in sport this weekend.
Casey Stoner won the Moto GP World Championship:
Mark Webber shared the limelight in winning the F1 Constructor’s Championship with fellow Red Bull team member Sebastion Vettell:
And the Kangaroos demolished the Kiwis – how sweet that must have been!
Well if the Wallabies couldn’t the Kangaroos could.
That’s the other game with a Rugby ball in case you’re wondering. A game beloved by down to earth northern men.
None of your Rugby Union public school Nancy boys here. These are real men!
Just back from our annual trip to Tuscany for a week. This year we had the pleasure of catching up with some old friends from Melbourne – Phoebe and Santo – who by happenstance were staying in Creti, Val di Chiana no more than 30 miles away. So we were able to spend some time with them at their villa:
We had a wonderful day in Pienza for lunch and later in Bagno Vignoni, the Medici spa town:
All in all a great week!
LR (TATA actually) are showcasing a potential successor to the the macho mil inspired all-purpose Defender.
Should appeal to those who want to minimise “blue on blue” friendly fire incidents.
Just now after suffering a huge and uncharacteristic lull in sport, Australian athletes are enjoying a bit of a return to international pre-eminence.
In tennis Sam Stosur won the US Open in fine style beating the legendary Serena Williams and so becoming only the second Australian after Margaret Court to win the title.
In Cycling Cadel Evans surprised the the world by winning the Tour de France; the only Australian ever to do so.
In motor cycling Casey Stoner is dominating the Moto GP title race and looks like becoming champion.
In Rugby Union the Wallabies stung the All Blacks by taking the Tri Nations Crown for the first time in 10 years and are hot faves to take the World Cup as well.
And Australia’s cricketers are showing a resurgence in Sri Lanka.
Now for the Olympics and the next Ashes series!
There is a new champ on the block with full bragging rights having set the fastest production car time round the Nordschliefe circuit at the Nurburgring. A Lexus LFA has bettered the record, previously held by a Porsche 911 GT2 RS, by 4 seconds; a whopping margin at the Nordschliefe. So that’s another one in the eye for Herr Uberwurst. BTW Toyota also set the fastest time in an EV earlier this week, nearly as fast as the Lexus!
Siemens is launching an iPad controlled gizmo for managing your home appliances. Let’s hope that it is not vulnerable to Stuxnet, being a Siemens product!
Well they didn’t…the Queen’s Own McKamikaze Highlanders, QOMH, 23 Bn Royal Regiment of Scotland really do exist:
Time for a change. Black is boring. And for you Holden lovers this is what an FJ (my first car in Melbourne, the World’s Most Liveable City) would look like if it were built today. Please GM, pretty please….
Rejoice! Another new primate has been discovered, this time in an unexplored part of Brazil.
It is described as a type of the exquisitely named titi monkey. What other new species lurk in darkest Brazil?
David Coulthard shows that an F1 car plus an American dirt road equals the ultimate fun
Canada has just announced that it will restore the names Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Canadian Air force and Canadian Army.
The traditional names were originally dropped by Trudeau in a petulant display of anti royalty. All true Canadians will rejoice at common sense breaking out. No longer will the Canadian military create collective sniggering from others.
Modern militaries are now all joint services and as the Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and Yanks have shown traditional names in no way hamper this and indeed provide a source of inspiration and pride to veterans and serving members alike.
Welcome back Canada, we’ve missed you.
And you thought the technology of Minority Report was way in the future. Well you were wrong. It’s here now and looks incredible:
Sick of getting pulled over in your Evo VIII with a boring whoop whoop then you need to emigrate to the good ‘ol US of A where the cops beat box:
I’ve blogged about the legendary Ken Block before. Now he’s conjured up the ultimate hoon machine
Don’t try any of this at home!
This wonderful footage of the terribly endangered Amur Leopard was shot in the Kedrovaya Pad nature reserve in Eastern Russia using a remote HD camera.
The Amur leopard is on the brink of extinction and footage like this can do a great deal to expose the fact and help its survival
It has been revealed that the MoD spent £714.18 getting a pair of non-urgent boots to a soldier in Northern Ireland.
See http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/%C2%A3700-bill-to-deliver-soldier-boots
A bit steep really. Surely it would have been cheaper to fly a civil servant to Ulster and deliver them by hand! At least the MoD can account for them unlike the £6Billion of unaccounted for kit!
I wonder what other gems of procurement are waiting to be exposed?
The Rainbow Toad of Borneo has been rediscovered after 90 years.
Who knows what else may be lurking believed lost.
OR ??
The BBC is carrying an item on complaints by salmon fishermen about commercial rafting companies on the Tay disrupting their fishing.
This raises the interesting question as to who owns the countryside. Not who has legal title but which of the many stakeholders has the most say in what happens to the the countryside and how it should be utilised. Traditionally game interests, particularly in Scotland, and farmers have been the most powerful voices in this debate. But as new ways of commercial exploitation have evolved, such as tourism and recreation, many of which are becoming more economically important, so the old assumptions about primacy give way to today’s debate about who can benefit the most.
Although I don’t know the figures it is conceivable that commercial rafting does or could generate more economic benefit on the Tay than fishing. In which case, given that the two activities appear to be mutually incompatible who should hold sway? And if it be the rafters should they tell the fishermen to bugger off which is what the fishermen seem to be saying at present to the rafters!
Truly a knotty issue. I don’t envy the local authority rule makers!
Have you noticed that, of late, the literati and public celebrity know alls have starting using the expression “on the planet” rather than the much loved and traditional term “in the World”.
E.g.. The Blue Whale is the largest animal on the planet.
As a by-line this is probably logically incorrect as the only Blue Whale on the planet is a dead one, a deceased one and so not one at all.
Mass movements like this are usually driven by fashion and initiated by, yes you guessed it, political correctness. But I am puzzled as to why “in the World” would be politically incorrect.
Our Earth is but one of the planets in the Solar System so to say “on the planet” is not only imprecise but suggests that the matter relates to the Earth as a planet where it is at best primus inter pares in relation to the rest of the Solar System. Using the term suggests we are but one amongst many and so not really all that important (maybe that’s the political incorrectness; thinking that we are important).
When I last looked I don’t recall that there was actually proper evidence that life exists anywhere else in the entire Universe. Admittedly there is much speculation and wishing and hoping it might be true by many, and solemn declarations by people who should know better that life must exist elsewhere because there are billions of bits of elsewhere. But no evidence.
Only Earth is “the World” so we should celebrate its, and our, uniqueness by getting rid of the vacuous phrase “on the planet” by summarily executing all television presents who mouth it without thought (pour encourager les autres).
And by doing so restore the Blue Whale to its rightful place as the biggest animal in the World.
So if you want to save the World tell everyone you know, including politicians and media types that up with this we shall not put.
Monster Tajima is the first person to do Pikes Peak in under 10 minutes. This is what he saw…a really scary hill climb. Forget the ‘Ring this is absolutely the outer edge of reason for road cars:
Pikes Peak hill climb is still one of the most challenging events in motor racing. No one has ever done it in under 10 minutes until now. The legendary Monster Tajima finally did it after trying for many many years; in a 900hp beast bearing the most passing of resemblances to a Suzuki SX4. Here’s the preamble video:
The Ningaloo Coast in NW Australia, one of the longest near-shore reefs on Earth has acquired World Heritage Listing
Amongst the wonders of Ningaloo is the best Whale Shark viewing area in the World.
The bi-annual Paris Air show is one of the premiere aerospace events ……in the World (as Jezzer would say). Here are its highlights in a minute courtesy of Defense News.
And here’s an F-16 beat up:
This is a headline being trumpeted by the Telegraph. Judging by some of the quotes in the article it’s a fairly mild clash. Military rebellion isn’t just around the corner. The PM can sleep comfortably in his bed without fear of a visit by the SAS or whoever is currently tasked with what the KGB used to refer to as “wet work”.
The substance of the “military chiefs” concerns is entirely reasonable but the public airing of them is not. These disagreements should be resolved in private. Making them public suggests that the service chiefs are entering the political arena, one they should and must keep clear of.
Once serving generals become political our trust in their neutrality and objective reasoning withers. Unlike places like Libya we live in a democracy where war is an extension of policy by other means, not a way of life. The government makes the decisions and where necessary the military acts. My country right or wrong – that is one of the facets of the Faustian Bargain entered into by all warriors. And besides generals, admirals and air marshals make great military leaders but usually lousy politicians (The Duke of Wellington notwithstanding).
Now before you dismiss me as a bleeding heart liberal I would remind you that I am one of the greatest supporters of the military having been a soldier and an airman too. In fact my friends ridicule me for it. But I am an even fiercer democrat by instinct.
Sir Stirling Moss has finally retired
What can I say about the Greatest Living Motor Sportsman that hasn’t already been said?
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
Trying a new look called “Awesome” which seems a bit of a hyperbole. But it fits my present mood exactly.
The only permanence is change.
AS you know I have been a great fan of IE9 which seemed to have the right balance of speed, functionality and looks.
But alas it always seems to turn to tears in the long run with MS IE. Of late I have found, for absolutely no apparent reason, that there is a most vexing situation where IE9 won’t render videos correctly, throwing them off axis to the left and unable to be controlled and filling up the left hand side of the screen with rapidly flashing ads that appear when the mouse is scrolled. After much deep thought and empirical analysis I discovered that there is a fundamental incompatibility between IE9 and the Flash Player v10.3 but only on my laptop. The other computers in the house (three) are all fine.
Totally unable to rectify the problem with the usual system restores, uninstalls and reinstalls I have given IE9 away and gone to Firefox 4.0.1 which seems to have done the trick. Chrome lacks the functionality I want although it is quick and Opera is utterly incomprehensible!
I had used the Beta version of FF 4 but that had all sorts of problems (as one would expect with a beta build – doh!). The release version seems [so far] to work fine, is compatible with Adobe Flash 10.3 and solves all the problems.
You can download it here
What is it with Microsoft? Why can’t they have stable products resistant to the vagaries of ghosts in the machine?
Why does the BBC persist in honouring Ratko Mladic by continuing to call him General.
BBC News - Ratko Mladic declared fit to face Hague tribunal
Mladic is simply a thug and does not deserve the title.
Its been a good month for tracking down the evil people of the world. First Osama bin Laden and now Ratko Mladic who is currently being extradited to the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
The killing of Bin Laden, in circumstances which only those who were present know, denied the full course of justice but did have the effect of removing a dreadful terrorist, responsible for thousands of innocent deaths.
The capture of Mladic, the Bosnian Serb architect of the massacre of 7,500 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica will enable justice to be done and be seen to be done.
Unfortunately there are many others in many countries still at large and perpetrating their own brands of evil
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
How’s this? Like having your own mini MV-22 Osprey without having to tilt the wings. Is that cool or is that cool?
For all the gory details see:
PistonHeads Headlines - Chrysler Engines For Maserati Saloons?
A Maserati with a Chrysler engine…surely not! (calling it a cinquestella doesn’t fool anyone Mr Mopar). But wait it’s worse…a Maserati with a diesel ? Could this really be the end of civilisation as we know it? Not so much Stealing Beauty but rather Flushing Beauty Down the Toilet.
Owen Barder, the development economist and Director for Europe at the Center for Global Development in DC (whom I had the pleasure of working with in DFID), has just produced a witty and surgically precise piece about the scions of the the “ruling class” trying to actually do things.
Read the piece at Owen’s interesting and informative blog. It’s worth the read. Summons up the world of Nancy Mitford.
Are you a gadget freak? Have you got them all? If so this one’s for you.
Pioneer's Discussion Table . Soon you won’t be able to live without it or the $37,000 USD you paid for it (plus the shipping charges). But hey think of all the fun you’ll have figuring out what to do with it.
This is a Western affliction for which the evidence is strong:
(and there are probably lots of others)
Why is this so? Do we really believe we are better than the opposition or do our intelligence people simply not know what’s going on? And why, in the face of this sort of evidence, do we fail to learn?
As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago Know yourself and your enemy and you need not fear the results of a thousand battles.
Clearly we ain’t got a clue. And they teach military history at Sandhurst! Maybe the cadets can’t be bothered listening.
You will recall me castigating the Porsche 918 Spyder because I thought it looked like a can opener.
Well Volvo has gone one better and built a car that looks like a blow heater!
I think I’ll do a regular It looks like a …..spot.
Come back Bertone, all is forgiven.
Measles has the capacity to be apocalyptic and this item is about Measles in Europe, rather than somewhere else unimportant.
We may well be reaping the whirlwind of not vaccinating children. It used to be said that no junior doctor had ever seen a case of measles. Well they will soon. Why is it that we never learn the lessons of the past provided at terrible cost?
Ken Block never does things by halves so when he crashes it’s going to be something special. The finale is worth waiting for!
Just as we have got used to Windows 7 Microsoft are teasing Windows 8 with screen clips like this one:
Will it look different to W7…perhaps not too much. But form follows function and MS are promising lots of new things with much emphasis on the fat server thin client paradigm. So if you haven’t got a Hotmail account you should think seriously of getting one.
This why you need to keep your seatbelt fastened on the ground in a passenger aircraft. How often have you undone your seatbelt before the captain “switches off the fasten seatbelt sign” Well don’t!
Watch the video.
BBC News - Air France jet clips small plane at New York airport
I have previously blogged about the need to replace the now withdrawn Harrier in the close air support role in Afghanistan and suggested that the AT-6 Texan would fit the bill.
Now Aviation Week has an extended video telling more about the idea.
Recently I blogged about the Aston Martin Rapide video Would David Brown Roll in his Grave?
Well here it is in its full awfulness
It’s been a very bad week in sport for me. Australia got dumped out of the Cricket World Cup (Ponting and the team must die), Mark Webber didn’t win the Aussie Grand Prix at Albert Park and today Wasps were unceremoniously beaten 39-3 by Northampton Saints.
The only ray of sunshine was Australia topping the medal table in the World Track Cycling Championship and particularly Anna Meares showing Victoria Pendleton how it’s done by winning three Golds.
Final score Australia 8 Golds, UK 1 Gold. A harbinger of London 2012? Let’s hope so.
Festo, a leader in robotics, has created a robotic bird inspired by the Herring Gull which flies in a pretty realistic way. A bit of a gimmick at present but with obvious military potential.
Whatever next? Engadget has the full story Festo's SmartBird robot takes off with elegance, doesn't poop on you (video) -- Engadget
The Russian SU-30 is famous for its “Cobra” manoeuvre but can it do a Flip?
Raptors rule OK.
You can read all about it here
One of the “bodies” was the EU External Action Service which sounds rather sinister, almost like the EU’s own special forces, and was a “body” that I was not familiar with. So I looked it up and after reading its mandate I am none the wiser. See if you can figure it out:
“In fulfilling his mandate, the High Representative shall be assisted by a European External Action Service. This service shall work in cooperation with the diplomatic services of the Member States and shall comprise officials from relevant departments of the General Secretariat of the Council and of the Commission as well as staff seconded from national diplomatic services of the Member States. The organisation and functioning of the European External Action Service shall be established by a decision of the Council. The Council shall act on a proposal from the High Representative after consulting the European Parliament and after obtaining the consent of the Commission”
No? I thought not. I bet some Brussels senior official was paid several grand to draft this gobbledegook.
Actually the High Representative is a she – none other than Baroness Ashton…..we’re in good hands.
Boeing has flown its new big’un at last, the 747-8. Bigger than the B747-400 and even more graceful the airliner will offer the lowest seat-mile cost of any commercial airliner.
The Airbus A380 might be bigger but the 747 is still Queen of the Skies. Which do you think is more beautiful?
This:
or this:
Get the full story at Engadget Boeing's biggest jet takes flight, promises lowest 'seat mile' cost of any commercial airliner -- Engadget
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