Author Archives: James - Page 120
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Condor Blues – British soldiers at war
A very interesting book about the British Army experience from the point of view of two platoons embedded in training the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) in the aftermath of the invasion (so the first half of 2004 approximately). Both platoons belonged to the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, but one was on secondment from the PWRR. From the content of the book it is clear that it was not authorised by MOD as it is highly critical in places. Also none of the main players come out of it looking terribly good, you see their flaws and the bad side as well as the bravery and the compassion in places (as well as other emotions at other points). For example, after a severe contact two of the Iraqi insurgent casualties were found to be carrying ICDC identity cards – which…
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Company Training by Gen. Haking
When in Southport last week I found an antiquarian bookshop in a very small gap between two other shops. It was very much like the fabled 'magic' shops that when you go back to it isn't there. (Although I hope it is if I get a chance to go back, it had a fantastic collection of books, archaeological artefacts and sea shells!) I bought three books from there, but the one that intrigued me most was 'Company Training' by Brig-Gen R. C. B. Haking, , which looked like it had spent some considerable time in the pocket of someone engaged in using it (complete with underlined passages in pencil in places). I'm a sucker for infantry training manuals and this one was pretty cheap because of the battered nature of the cover (although internally it was fine, personally I view the…
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Family Mystery pt.2
Following on from my previous post (Family Mystery) on this subject I realise that I hadn't updated the blog to show where I'd got to. More details on my family history is on the web at Some judicious asking around by my cousin on some of the genealogy forums he frequents got some interesting ideas. On checking the marriage and death certificates of James Kemp & Ann Dewar's children it became clear that there were a lot of inconsistencies in the details of their mother's details and of her parents. In particular Duncan Kemp's death certificate is interesting because he died in 1891, just after the census (an interesting story which I will write up separately). His mother was listed not as Ann Dewar, but as Isabella MacDonald. At first we thought this might just be a coincidence and there…
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Economics of New Colonies
I often play in Jim Wallman's hard SF games set in the universe he's created. I've been thinking about how new colonies get set up and the sort of funding they need. There is a lot of infrastructure required to build a viable colony on a new system. Firstly you need to survey it to find a good spot with a reasonable confluence of resources, mining sites, farming space, fresh water, building land and a suitable area for your drop zone and spaceport. Once you've done that some cheap housing, utilities, early resource processing plants and factories for essentials have to be built. Once you get to that point you might just start exporting valuable things, although you'll still need to import lots of essentials, not to mention more people. I reckon that it is a minimum of two years…
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Collaboration
For some people collaboration is a dirty word, with connotations from those who collaborated with the nazis in WW2. Not for me though, I think that it makes for a generally better outcome than trying to do everything oneself. However it does have its downsides. You often need to compromise, other people may have more time than you and drive things faster than you'd like, and perhaps not in the direction you'd choose. That said, good collaboration gives you more than you could have achieved on your own. Where has this sudden enthusiasm for collaboration come from I hear you think. Well its not a sudden enthusiasm, but a timely articulation. My OU course (B301 Making Sense of Strategy) has just entered the collaborative block. Do for the next four weeks or so we need to work as a group…