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376 days ago
I was listening to the Radio 4 PM programme this evening and was astonished to hear George Osborne being attacked for having the temerity to discuss the parlous state of Sterling, which has already collapsed by 25% since July. Gordon Brown indicated his displeasure from Washington, DC. Labour rolled out John McFall, the Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee to offer further denunciation. The programme even managed to find an unknown Tory grandee, whose name I forget, to join in the fun. All of this, of course, is designed as misdirection to divert attention from the significant fall in the value of Sterling which does not appear to be abating. I seriously wonder if we will see Dollar parity in six months time. I recall that in "Yes, Minister" Sir Humphrey explained how you "play the man, not the ball" when your policies fail or you are incompetent. This is an excellent example of exactly such behaviour. Osborne would be ...377 days ago
Yesterday evening, the BBC Radio 4 "PM" programme reported that Hillary Clinton was being considered by the Obama transition team for Secretary of State. I was struck by how clever this would be. There have been further reports since. Why do I think it is clever? Hillary is a big beast in the Democrat jungle and her supporters in the Party will not be happy if this is not acknowledged by the new administration. Obama will no doubt feel more comfortable with her "on the inside pissing out" than "on the outside pissing in". She needs to be offered a role with sufficient stature that turning it down would look bad On the other hand, I'm sure that Obama doesn't want her anywhere near domestic policy where he has an agenda to deliver. Ditto economic policy, foreign or domestic. Anything that also puts Bill on a leash would be good news for Obama. All in all, being offered Secretary of State acknowledges her and neuters her in equal ...403 days ago
Last weekend I trawled through all the published sessions to separate out those sessions I was interested in attending from those that I wasn't (it turned out to be a long list of interest). During the week, the Microsoft PDC site switched on the timeline planner so last night I did a second round of filtering to select the sessions that I intend to go to: Sunday 10:00 - 17:45 Agile Perspectives, Industry and Microsoft Monday 11:00 - 12:15 A Lap around Cloud Services Part 1 12:45 - 13:30 "Dublin" and .NET Services: Extending On-Premises Applications to the Cloud 13:45 - 15:00 The Future of C# 15:30 - 16:45 A Lap around Cloud Services Part 2 15:00 - 18:30 Agile Development with Microsoft Visual Studio Tuesday 12:45 - 13:30 WCF: Zen of Performance and Scale 13:45 - 15:00 Project "Velocity": A First Look 15:30 - 16:45 Project ...444 days ago
I have backed Obama since the start of the Democrat Primary season. I certainly hope that the following sentiment is well-founded:449 days ago
I have recently been given the happy news that Charteris are sending me to the PDC in LA. I'm very excited. I had to miss the PDC in 2005 but was there in 2003 and I found it very worthwhile. Benjamin Goeltz will also be going from Charteris. I was hoping to be at the same hotel as the Red Gate chaps, but sadly it was sold out so we will be at the Millenium Biltmore. I will be able to geek out with West Wing reminiscence (the hotel was used extensively as a set in Series 1). We will be going to the Pre-Conference Sessions as well. I'm booked for "Agile Perspectives, Industry and Microsoft".
