Author: bravo22c

Here’s one that may surprise one or two of you, though it shouldn’t, given what I have written in these pages before; I do not agree that that Rsole Assange should be extradited. ‘Well, well,’ I hear you exclaiming, ‘what’s brought that on?’ Simple, really, the Swedish authorities have submitted a european arrest warrant. I have opposed this shoddy piece of bureaucrap since its introduction on the grounds that it allows for the arrest of a British Subject for an offence which may not have been committed in Britain and, moreover, which may not be an offence under British Law. There’s more

… of your point of view.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationpicturegalleries/8194297/The-clean-up-operation-in-Parliament-Square-and-Oxford-Street-after-student-protests.html

I had a sparrow-fart start on Monday and I walked out without my camera. These were taken on my Blackberry, so they’re not the best pics I’ve taken. I hope you get the flavour of the place.

I’ve been in Tblisi this last four days, (Pics coming,) with the other senior security managers – so all trained investigators of one background or another – from East Europe. As you might imagine, both the Assange and the Dewani cases came up a couple of times in discussion over a few bottles of absolutely top notch Georgian wine, and champagne, which I can whole-heartedly recommend.

The consensus on the Dewani case was that there is a definite whiff of fish in the air and the husband certainly has some questions to answer.

As far as the Assange case goes, the consensus was that we would treat the allegations by the ladies concerned quite seriously and, given the apparent facts, we would launch an investigation, so we would all be on-side with a decision by the UK courts to extradite him to Sweden.

As far as the leaks are concerned, there was much scoffing at the Septics information security regime. We analysed what had happened as far as we could with the information to hand, and measured how it has apparently been done – how the information was leaked in the first place, that is – against our own information security procedures and rules. We do not believe that any Company employee, even an IT Admin, still less an outside hacker, could get access to such a spread of information in the first place, let alone assemble such an extraordinary amount of classified information spanning such a wide spread of subject matter without tripping alerts in the security admin systems. (As you can imagine, being a tobacco company, it has been tried 🙂
Continue reading “Comment on two cases.”

Another excellent day for England – the moment of madness from Strauss aside, that is. You have to say that Australia look pretty woeful at the moment. England have scored 800+ runs for the loss of their last 3 wickets. Cook has scored more runs between dismissals than any other English cricketer. What’s the forecast for tomorrow – England 700 -odd by close of play and this match in the bag, or a traditional collapse early on and Australia into the driving seat for the first time. Might be an all-nighter for me tonight 🙂

My Granddaughter’s ballet class – she’s four and as scatter-brained as any four-year old. Typical little girl – loves pink. When I bought her a computer for her birthday, the main technical specification was that it had to be pink. (Fortunately, Sony Vaios come in pink.)

She does love her ballet class, though – I think the concentration shows 🙂 Though I’m not quite sure why she is, apparently, being tortured.

Continue reading “Just had to share these”

I was only in Sofia for a day, so I didn’t get much of a chance to take photos, but I did snatch just a couple.

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is the biggest Orthodox Church in the Balkans – that’s real gold on the roof…

“Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world”

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.”

…

This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

So, now you know.

I was going to add this as a comment on my last blog, but it’s too long.

Councils use anti-terror powers to check for dog collars
Councils have used anti-terrorism laws to try to catch people donating goods outside charity shops and to make sure dogs are wearing collars. and there’s more

I read an interesting Stratfor piece the other day about Moldova.  Some of you may have difficulty in locating Moldova on a globe, but what is happening there is of interest to me because a large percentage of the counterfeit cigarettes that are sold in Romania – and shipped to the rest of the EU – are made there.  A link to the article, – a general piece, not about cigarette smuggling –  is below, if you might be interested.)
One sentence from the article stuck in my mind: Wanna know what it was?