The problem with GPS.

Next week I’m going to a meeting in my local Town Hall to learn what NATS are planning to do to the flightpaths around Glasgow Airport.  Big changes to save fuel and pollution is their headline.  (Will our ticket prices be reduced if less fuel is used?  No, I don’t think so either.) 

Anyway, NATS Holdings, formerly National Air Traffic Services and commonly referred to as NATS, are the business that boasts of being the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services.  Each year they handle 2.4 million flights and 250 million passengers in UK airspace.   In addition to providing services to 14 UK airports, and managing all upper airspace in the UK, they provide services around the world spanning Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. So a big important business.  And big on keeping our skies safe.

So why is NATS going full steam ahead for GPS based systems?   

Reflect for a momnet back to last June when more than 20 ships on the Black Sea noticed something odd about their satellite-based navigation systems. Instead of being at sea the systems said they were actaully on land.  Instead of their true positions well away from Russia’s south-west border, each ship’s GPS placed it inland at Gelendzhik, a small airport terminal!  

Now, if ships can be miles away from where they thought they were, imagine a plane being disorientated. 

Remember the problems the USA navy has been experiencing with apparently invincible ships hitting commercial ones?  Then there was the US Navy plane that crashed into the ocean southeast of Okinawa, marking at least the sixth apparent accident involving a Navy asset in East Asian waters in 12 months.  

GPS being interfered with? 

One does wonder if our reliance on the ColdWar satellite technology is an accident waiting to happen.

One more thing Sir Vince.....

Too many older people who voted for Brexit were "driven by nostalgia" for a world where "faces were white" Sir Vince Cable also said today at his party conference. 

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds awfully close to calling 17,410,742 Leave voters racists. 

Sir Vince believes he knows better than 17,410,742 voters.

The Lib Dem leader said today that the votes of the older generation had "crushed the hopes and aspirations of young people for years to come."  Quite hysterical language I dare to suggest. 

17,410,742  million people thought quite the opposite.  That free from the EU they will have greater chances in a bigger world.  His suggestion that because younger people voted to stay is easily countered by the notion that older people are wiser through years more experience and know how bad the EU is to those who transgress it.  See what they did to Greece, Italy and Ireland.

But clearly Sir Vince isn’t really a democrat.  He prefers to think his opinion is more important than a majority of the electorate.  Perhaps that is why his party is in such a state.

Foreign powers

Tony Blair, John Major and Jeremy Corbin.  Two former prime ministers and one who aspires to be pm.   

One does wonder if any are the agents of a foreign power such as the EU.

Does John Major despise the people of the UK? It looks like it.

So John Major thinks British people have “every right” to reverse a democratic vote with further referendum.  No Sir John, they don’t.   That option wasn't on the ballot paper.  

His words are all the more remarkable when you consider that when he thought the Remain camp had it in the bag, he said somthing rather different.   

“There will not be another referendum on Europe. This is it.”  Yip, Sir John Majors own words on 29^th May 2016.   

After he was elected to office I didn’t hear anyone say there should be a right to a second vote to try and oust the Conservatives from power.    

Nor when Tony Blairs government was elected.  What the people do have a right to is, at some time in the future, apply to re-join the EU.  

But that two former prime ministers should be so unwilling to accept the democratic will of the people of the UK is, to put it mildly, unsettling.