I Can Be Tasteless, Can't I?
In this instance, thanks to pilot skill versus Ruffian-maintained technology, nobody died, so it's still a viable subject for an Intro.
What am I chuntering about? Why, the Ruffian airliner that had to make a crash-landing in Siberia, thanks to <ahem> total failure of the hydraulic systems. Art!
The Ural Airlines (a.k.s. 'Plummet Airlines) A320 in a field.
Lest you be unaware, no, that is not how Ruffian airliners normally look after a landing. You can't really tell from this picture, but one of the engines also caught fire, just to make the pilot's day realllly difficult. The only way it could have been worse, barring fatalities, is if it occurred on a Monday. Art!
There were 165 passengers and crew aboard the flight, who are now stuck in a field in Siberia after flying home from the resort city of Sochi. Hey, people, look on the bright side, you'll be able to dine out on this story for years to come!
It minds Conrad of that song by some South Canadian slushy balladeer.
"I'm leaving, on a jet plane,
Don't know when I'll be back again.
Flying with Ural, must be insane.
Ended belly-down in a field of grain."
What's even more darkly amusing is that this aircraft is now for the scrapyard, because there's no way the Ruffians can either retrieve or repair it. They'll cut it up in situ and whoever paid the biggest bribe will get to strip out all the components and sell them on. How do we know this? Because the same thing happened to an Airbus 321 outside Moscow, except that was four years ago, when they still had spare parts and maintenance protocols. Art!
Conrad is unsure what the fire-engine is doing here, because surely - SURELY! - they'll have drained all the fuel out of the carcass? Hmmmmm well it is Ruffia, you can't be too sure. Art!
A criminal investigation has been launched, which will find that it was the Ukrainians working with the SAS and the CIA who were responsible, thanks to their sky-swarms of invisible purple unicorns -
Part of the real problem is that the Ruffian airlines cannot get spare parts and replacements for their fleets of Western airplanes, thanks be to sanctions. This has led to components being used long past their safe replacement date, or being swapped out from other airframes being used as spare part parks. There is a supply of 'grey market' spares that come in via India-to-Kazakhstan-to-Turkey-to-Georgia-to-Belarus-to-Ruffia, with a consequent mark-up of 4,000%. Art!
As others more expert in the aviation industry have pointed out, with dodgy and opaque supply chains like this, the risk of ending up with fake or counterfeit spare parts is substantial. The chancers selling such crud don't give a stuff about passenger health or safety as long as they get their cut, in the finest spirit of capitalism.
Some of you may be wondering about those headlines back in August about Ruffian airliners being told to use reverse-thrust because their brakes were inoperable, thanks to a shortage of spare parts. The truth is rather more nuanced than this "Daily Mail" stridency and if you're good you may find out why tomorrow. Art!
Fly Ruffian - the dare in the air!
On A Day With Plenty Of Wet
Here in This Sceptred Isle the weather finally broke and we got rain, rain, rain. The temperature has thankfully dropped so it's not like living inside a proving oven at the moment. Art!
Proving ovens, for those unaware, are extremely humid and very warm ovens where you 'prove' bread dough in order to speed up the baking process.
Which has nothing to do with what comes next. Art!
Courtesy Dan Kitwood
This curious image is a young lady swimming in a 'sky pool' at Embassy Gardens in London, whilst the temperatures were unpleasantly high. Art!
She is welcome to it.
"The War Illustrated"
Time for another glimpse into the world of the Second Unpleasantness as experienced by the Allies, and what the censor would allow to be printed; I think this is why there has been a paucity of pictures about the fighting at Cassino and Anzio, because they were both very bloody engagements. Art!
These pictures show the thuggish-looking Beaufighter in action off the Dutch coast at top and bottom starboard. The unfortunate Axis merchant vessel in the first picture appears to have been hit by at least three Beaufighters as you can tell from the cannon shells impacting in the water. This kind of attack would shred everything (and everyone) above the waterline as 20 m.m. cannon shells are bad news for anything not armour-plated. The bottom starboard photo shows the ship receiving a coup de grace from two torpedoes. At bottom port the Beaufighters have simply dropped a bomb precisely on a small merchant sailing vessel and turned it into matchsticks. This is what you can do with air-power; strangle your opponent's lines of supply. Art!
"City In The Sky"
Okay, okay, now Ace gets to be a guest at the banquet table.
As Ace watched, a curious low, melodic
howling came echoing across the sphere’s interior. The sound an alien beast might make if it
mimicked a cow, she imagined. Seconds
later she began to rub her eyes, worried that being in her spacesuit or at the
very polar apex of the rotating sphere might have affected her sight.
‘Oh! Sorry, that was the warning
call for the night-cycle, Ace. Two hours of twilight, four hours total dark, two
hours of twilight.’
She looked up. Instead of the
darkness of space and the actinic glare of the sun, a band of ebon girdled the
arcology’s inner surface: the transparent panels had been polarised to let only
twenty per cent of normal sunlight inwards.
One alone stood out from the black circle, a pale single panel adrift amongst
the rest of the filtered ones.
Slowly,
tiny lights appeared in threads and patterns overhead, and to the sides of the
sphere, glowing gently like strings of luminous pearls. Irregular gaps interrupted these marching
lines, baffling Ace to begin with. When
larger, wall-mounted lights began to warm up and cast increasingly bright
shadows across the
- well, nearly.
The Horroracle
You may recall Conrad mentioning that Birmingham City Council had gone bankrupt recently, thanks to having bonfire parties where they burned wheelbarrow-fuls of cash, or something.
Well, part of the problem was their HR and Payroll IT system, which was being provided by Oracle. Art!
It was budgeted at £19 million originally. The forecasts as of May this year - THREE YEARS LATE - were that it was going to cost over £100 million and that was 'predicted', so it may not yet be ready for delivery yet.
Conrad well remembers using an Oracle system at the Co-Op and later Sainsbo's, which was dumped in early 2018 because it was incapable of adaptation and had been modified to the very limit. Oddly enough the new Oracle system only lasted 3 years because it was 'on it's last legs' by then, which is a surprisingly rapid decline for a system only 3 years old. Then they sacked us all.
O, good times! At least there was no bankruptcy*.
Finally -
Is it dark already because it's overcast, or because it's early evening, or both? Next you know the clocks will be going back.
O just to let you know, "The Manson Murders" is every bit as unpleasant as I expected, but interestingly it was Roman Polanski, husband of a victim, who was very close to the reason why the murders at his residence had been committed. "A bunch of lunatics" sums it up pretty well.
NOW FOR SANDWICH!
* That we know of, said Conrad darkly.
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