Lisbon Treaty - Time to Give HMG a Wake-up Call vote UKIP

The Lisbon Treaty - What is it all about:
Well the Treaty we are told is designed to 'streamline' the functioning of the EU -
Well read it for yourself here (only 479 Pages) Consolidated treaties As a cure for insomnia excellent, but perhaps reading the Wikipedia Entry will be less of a chore.

No then here is a very brief summary:
Quote:
Prominent changes introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon include:

• Reduced chances of stalemate in the EU Council through more qualified majority voting
• A more significant European Parliament through extended co-decision with the EU Council
• Reduction of the number of Commissioners from 27 to 18,
• Scrapping of the pillar system
• Creation of a President of the European Council
• Creation of a High Representative for Foreign Affairs for greater coherence and continuity in EU policies.
• make the Charter of Fundamental Rights (human rights provisions) legally binding.

Unquote

Now your all finally clear on what this treaty means for us the individual, let us move on:
Now that Eire has rejected the Treaty, it should be dead, but Gordon Brown it appears is determined to continue ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. He has even got it through the Lords, despite some reasoned arguments for delaying ratification (OK there were some less reasoned arguments as well).
Sorry Prime Minister you cannot ratify something that has been demoncratically rejected by the voters in an EU State!

I watched, initially with some interest David Cameron and Gordon Brown having a face-off on the Lisbon Treaty at Prime Ministers Questions and my mind wandered off the rhetoric and began to think of ways British Electors could voice concerns over the Governments policy are regards the Lisbon Treaty in particular, but the more general policy of its willingness to handover sovereign powers to the European Commission. In fact some aspects of this have a certain irony as this Government has 'talked big' about devolving power to the regions, whilst handing power to the European Commission, an organisation which is increasingly viewed as both undemocratic and untrustworthy.

I had better state I am not actually anti-European as I believe that many of the pan-European institutions, especially those dealing with Technical Matters and Standards and plus cross EU co-operation on many important matters such as Policing and Security have been and continue to bring positive benefits. The less politicians are involved the more efficient and effective these institutions seem to function as they are staffed by those with the Technical Knowledge and Practical Experience required. Although Political oversight is necessary these work best when Politicians don't get involved day to day and the issues being dealt with are technical, or cross-border procedural.

I do believe it is better for the United Kingdom to be part of the EU, than not. What I am increasingly concerned about is the growth of the European Commission as a Sovereign Entity can ignore the wishes of the electorate of Member States and can still workaround the wishes of the European Parliament.

So I want the powers of the European Commission be reduced rather than extended and it should only be able to introduce any legislation after it has passed acceptance by both the European Parliament and then the agreement of all Ministers of Member states.

So what can the concerned British voter do. Well unless a bye-election called in your constituency, in which case register a protest vote against the Government (even if traditionally you were a Labour Voter), but for most of us it is a case of wait patiently until June next year and then do something that in the past too many have avoided doing - Vote in the European Elections. Then regardless of party affiliation, or loyalty vote UKIP.

Enjoy the wave of shock horror that will then pass through the Westminster Village, but also discover that the European Parliament can have meaningful debates on matters that affect us!

Safety Test Failed, Not if we change the Paperwork

The Armed Forces Minister and Head of the Royal Navy publicly apologised on the 12th June for grievous "systemic failings" that led to two Royal Navy Crew being killed by an underwater explosion whilst working on Oxygen Units aboard HMS Tireless which was on exercise off Alaska last year.

This apology followed as the result of the publication of the report from the Board of Enquiry which detailed failures in:

• acquisition
• manufacture
• transport
• storage
• stowage and logistics management

Which covers just about everything. Except the report didn't stop there as it concluded the MoD had a:

• Lack of Understanding
• Lack of Quality Control

So in Summary the Ministry of Defence was incompetent.

But it does get worse:
The inquiry discovered some of the units were left in the open at the dockside for up to two weeks before being installed in the submarines, and that other oxygen generators which had failed manufacturers' safety checks may have also been put into service.

In the ministers statement, he included the following:
Quote
"I am extremely sorry, particularly to the families of those who lost their lives or were injured." The board of inquiry found that 996 "self-contained oxygen generators" used in Royal Navy subs had been found to be faulty and subsequently brought back into service. The paperwork relating to them had been altered"
Unquote

Ah now we move from incompetence and negligence and into a whole new ball game called : Criminal Mismanagement and Falsification of Records (in this case Safety Related).

One assumes Criminal Proceedings with be brought against any Civilians involved and Court Martial for those serving in the Armed Forces.
Sorry I am was being naive for a moment, no the reality will probably be the culture within the MoD will not change, the guilty will go unpunished and the MoD with its part-time political Master will continue on their merry way, apologising when its failures kill service personnel, because apologising doesn't cost money, whereas doing what is required does!

Eire Votes No to the Lisbon Treaty

The Lisbon Treaty forms a replacement for the EU Constitution, which was rejected due to Referendums in France and Holland resulting in a majority for rejection.

The Lisbon Treaty has been described as the 'Stealth Version' of the EU Constitution. The Government in the UK 'weaselled' its way out of a British Referendum (as it was only promised for the Constitution not its replacement) and other EU Governments have also avoided putting the Treaty to their voters, it was left to the Irish, whose Government had no choice under the Eire Constitution but to hold a Referendum, to effectively give voice to the grave concerns of, I suspect a majority of voters in the main EU Countries.

The Eire Referendum result should, under EU Rules mean the Lisbon Treaty is dead. But not only are EU Officials working hard to keep it alive (and having already, prior to acceptance started the implementation process), but the majority of Member Governments seem desperate to ensure ratification of the treaty goes ahead.

Only the Czech President it appears understands the EU Rules and has publicly stated that 'The treaty was finished, since any further ratification was impossible'.

I am extremely concerned that having 'ducked and dived' their way out of a UK Referendum British Ministers seem determined to continue ratification of a treaty which cannot actually be implemented under EU Rules. I find the HM Government stance on this totally unacceptable.

This Government avoided a Referendum because they feared they would not only lose, but lose heavily and yet at every opportunity they praise British Democracy and 'snipe' at other countries lack of democratic government. Bunch of hypocrites.

Bournemouth Aviation Museum Closure

Update 28th October 2008
See Post Bournemouth Aviation Museum Reopens

Original Article
I maintain a list of United Kingdom Aviation Museums I want to visit and so far haven't. This has become almost masochistic as there is now an even longer list of UK Aviation Museum I wanted to visit, never did and cannot now because they closed. Admittedly most of these were small andwere probably unsustainable as organisations, but over the years a number have been major collections, and each closure resulted in a pang of regret.

The closure of the Bournemouth Aviation Museum and the organisations ongoing attempts to retrieve the situation has made me annoyed. In part because Bournemouth Airport has a very important place in British Aviation History, because the collection whilst not huge contains some important exhibits and finally because this situation, despite a lot of effort reached the point where the Museum Closed and is now 'homeless'.

Now Bournemouth Airport is currently owned by Manchester Airport Group which is owned by a group of Councils in and around Greater Manchester. Manchester Airport maintains a the 'Viewing Park' which includes a Concorde and restored Trident 3B, plus a forward section of a DC10, so they cannot be entirely Aviation Heritage unfriendly.

So what happened at Bournemouth. Well firstly the Museum did only have a short lease, which the Airport decided they could not renew because of development plans affecting the Museum Building and surrounding land. Whilst the development in this area, is apparently provide a new Car Park, it is part of the Airports Master Plan and whilst I am sure being replaced by a Car Park really irks the Museum Team, this should not be an issue. The Airport and Museum principals held many meetings once the non-renewal of the lease was advised in an attempt to find alternatives within the Airport Perimeter. But all to no avail.

The Museum had to go and by a set date and that is that. Well this is when I do get a trifle annoyed. I accept the Airports Commercial Interests come first and that they have provided the Museum with 'Some wriggle room', but if they really wanted the Museum on their land would have been looking at how they could have included it in the master plan and consultations should have been ongoing when the lease was signed.

Secondly although MAG trumpets their Community friendly credentials at no stage have they appeared to have considered how they could mitigate the Museums Problems in relocation, After all the Museum is a registered Charity with a high dependency on volunteers, plus it has exhibits important to UK Aviation Heritage and in some cases very significant to Bournemouth Airports past, plus it was an educational resource, all of which should give high ranking in the MAG Bournemouth Community Projects Fund. Whilst other Airport Tenants have assisted, or at least tried very hard to assist the Museum in the lead up to the final eviction date, the MAG Management at Bournemouth other than offering the aforesaid 'wriggle room' have provided no practical help. (If I am wrong I will unreservedly apologise).

Whilst it is obvious the new Museum Trustees are making progress in finding a new home, and have at least local Political support for their efforts, they are inevitably going to lose most if not all of the revenue from this summer. Volunteers and equipment loans can cover a lot of financial holes, but funding and survival are irretrievably linked and maybe this is where MAG should help. After all they are part of the continuing story of Bournemouth Airport and therefore this is their heritage too!

Well time will tell, but unfortunately I am not optimistic that MAG will assist financially and although I believe the Museum will survive it will take a long time to recover, plus there will now always be a feeling of resentment between the Museum and MAG, which will fester for many years. MAG is certainly well within its legal rights. The Museum did make an assumption that the lease would be renewed. But was there consultation between tenants and the Airport over how the Master plan would affect them, if so it is apparent the current Museum Trustees were not party to any consultation.

Heritage can be good for Business and Business can be good for Heritage, but far too often in this country the two collide because neither thinks ahead.

Losing the Bournemouth Aviation Museum completely would almost certainly bolster other collections as exhibits would transfer across, but inevitably some would be lost. The real loss would be the link with Bournemouth's Aviation past and once its gone, it can never be brought back.

Data Center Outage and the Contingency Plan Cannot be Implemented!

In the late afternoon of the 31st May (16:55 CDT) The Planet's H1 Data Center in Houston Texas went off line due a power failure.
Not I hasten to add any old power failure, as the The Planet System and Network Status Forum explained:
Quote:
This evening at 4:55pm CDT in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room. Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no customer servers were damaged or lost.
Unquote:
For any company the above would be a challenge to both Contingency and Business Continuity handling, but 'The Planet' is not just any business and Data Centre H1 is not just any Data Center. 'The Planet' is a major Web Hosting Company and Data Center H1 was 'inherited' when it merged with Everyones Internet (EV1) which was formerly RackShack. and was the original RackShack Data Center, which means its server farms include many legacy systems.

So this situation was not just an internal problem for 'The Planet' but a very serious Business Continuity Problem for the 7,500 Customers with a total of 9000 Servers depending on this Data Centre..

Could things get any worse? - Oh Yes it can!
The Building is evacuated, the Fire Department are in charge and even with the fire out they will not allow implementation of the Back-up Power Plan for safety reasons and finally they won't let staff back into the Building.

The company did what it could in the first few Hours after the explosion:

• It started to alert Internal, Contractor and Supplier teams and began moving them to site
• It start to alert Customers via Forum and Automated Voice Service and through one Customer Portal (the other was hosted in the affected center and was down).

Because of the confused situation and without being allowed into the building to assess damage, the first meaningful information could not be posted until 4 Hours after the incident.

From then on the company posted updates either to a 1 hour base schedule, or more often whenever there was 'breaking news,.even if the news was bad!
For many updates there was little to report, but the temptation to make rash promises was resisted.

This policy of NOT raising Customer expectations too high was proved the correct course when it was discovered the damage to power cabling was even greater than suspected. By lateral thinking, plus the use of additional generators and 'blood, sweat and tears' step by step recovery moved forward.

You can look at Bulletins to Customers - Current to Oldest here:
The Planet H1 Maintenance Updates
or in Oldest to Current here :
The Planet System & Network Forum

Whilst 56 Hours later recovery was not fully complete the CEO felt able to issue this audio statement: Doug Erwin, chairman and CEO of The Planet

Fifty Six hours without service is for a company dependent on internet sales a disaster and a lot of customers are obviously angry and concerned, worried sick about their business, but 56 Hours is a lot better than some original estimates of 5 Days.

Whilst The Planet is going to have to deal with the aftermath of this incident in terms of Customer claims and possibly litigation, I believe that Operationally and from a Customer Advisory Viewpoint the Company did everything it should and could.

It is rightly proud of the 24 Hour a day efforts from its staff many brought in from Dallas and the speed and effectiveness of Contractor and Supplier teams also working 24 Hours a day.

Whilst Operationally I admire the company's management of the incident, I am concerned that there maybe some questions over Contingency Planning and Risk Management including Safety Inspection Policies.

Whilst Web Site and Server Hosting is lucrative it is also extremely competitive and therefore the possibility of mass migration of Customers to a fall back site, or dispersing them across other data centres was never part of the equation for handling this incident and I suspect would not be an economic proposition (although offering it as a premium option could possibly make sense).

However I do think that during the 'lessons learned studies' some consideration is given to looking at how all the 'single point of failure' situations (not just electrical) can be mitigated, not only in H1 but across other Company Data Centers .

I also hope that the legal eagles allow The Planet to share the results of the investigations and studies industry wide as this is NOT about a marketing war, it is about safety and customer confidence that its Web Site, which for many is the core of the business is well protected.

Initially some 'The Planet' customers may feel moving to another host is the answer, but would they be able to handle a similar problem any better than 'The Planet' and would they the Customer be willing to pay the premium required for mirroring across Data Centers to provide guaranteed fallback! In most cases probably not

Throughout the industry worldwide today, there is almost certainly the feeling that 'thank God it wasn't us' and then the depressing thought: 'this time'.
There is probably one group of people seeing a 'silver lining; in all this: Insurers, who I suspect are already drafting new improved Business Continuity Insurance for Internet Dependent SME Businesses.

The Idle Man.
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