LOHAN packs bags for SPACEPORT AMERICA! The traditional portentous drumroll and fanfare of trumpets has added timpani and a throbbing bass synth crescendo today as we announce that the planned launch of our our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission has been relocated to New Mexico's Spaceport America. This shock news comes at the end of an epic …
with just enough of 'la cinta roja' to scupper the best laid plans of mice, men and playmonauts!
At least the land of the free look likely to let you blow some stuff up in their bit of the upper atmosphere, and you can try some of the lovely craft beers whilst you're there, for research purposes of course!
Bring on the Merch and let's get this thing done. One credit card standing by.
... seems an opportunity lost for Spain to share in the sheer joy (not to mention scientific research) of the LOHAN effort...??? Oh well, New Mexico tends to be lovely this time of year, or at least in a few months from now... and then there is the craft beer aspect...
Yep, my credit card is ready... and yes I am a U.S. citizen FYSA!
Well being an island didn't do us (UK) any harm, then we had to dig the bloody chunnel and the rest is history (or the rewriting of it). Pah!
At lest in the US they will be allowed a decent powered vacuum cleaner to collect the pieces if Lohan has the miss fortune to do a Beagle. Soon we won't be able to buy anything with more suck than an old smoker (mea culpa) after 10 cough 5 flights of stairs by Brussels diktat. Pah again!
No, you can have as many pointless obstructive little local laws as you like, that's called subsidiarity. It's only the big, important, laws that are made by Brusselbourg, because obviously the provincials can't be trusted with them. Divide and Conquer, it's a very old principle.
Governments worldwide are daft with regulation. Even in Australia if I wanted to make rcandy propellant (Potassium nitrate + Sugar) I too would need a commercial licence to manufacture explosives, which is odd given that mix just burns vigorously and doesn't actually explode.
I know him. Our planning application for a house in a poxy village in the middle of nowhere is still on hold after a year. Another resident knows him even better, he's been asked to provide an environmental impact study for his desire to build a garage onto his house. To get an idea of how ridiculous this is my brother-in-law keeps his cows inside the village boundary and the milking shed is built onto his house, everyday he marches the cows from the cowshed to be milked. Also chickens, geese, turkeys and a variety of other un-identifiable presumably cross bred fowl wander the streets.
Oh, and it's no good naming and shaming these bastards nor the townhall they work in because they take great pride in what they do. I suspect they have awards for the one who creates most frustration.
Nothing to do with LOHAN but I've been wanting to get that off my chest for a long time.
I've been in Spain for nine years. Sadly I still cling to the British notion that government official should do their jobs without "incentives".
By that I do indeed mean the odd bottle of Carlos Primero, rather than a gun to the head, which is an attractive notion sometimes.
An admirable desire to stick to your Anglo-Saxon guns, Lester, but do you ever succeed in getting anything done through the local bureaucrats (particularly out in the wilds of Gredos)? To be fair to our Spanish friends, the pay for a lot of their government jobs isn't great and kind of assumes that earnings will be topped up with 'tips' - rather like waiters in the UK.
>The problem is they have too many "job for life" funcionarios.
Oi, that's my wife and sister-in-law you're talking about and both of them already get a damn sight more than a living wage, more than me as well. I'd suggest getting rid of the bone idle ones and cutting the salaries of the remainder. Actually for at least one year they did get their extra pay suspended. A few of our clients are state concerns and the work ethic has to be seen, they wander in late, disappear for breakfast, return for lunch, spend all afternoon chatting and drinking coffee then leave as if they'd arrived early. Incredibly as they have taken the oposiciones these are supposedly the best of the bunch.
I agree, Lester, but (let's face it) it ain't going to happen any time soon - think what it would do to (already sky-high) unemployment. A lot of Spain is quite close to the old Soviet system of "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us". Shame, when the country and people are so lovely.
I think I see your problem:
> Ministry of Obstruction declined to authorise the Intercommunity transfer of explosives, citing local law
There are two points to appreciate. The first is that Spain's version of democracy makes everything illegal unless explicitly permitted. The second is that if you don't like the local laws, just go down the road - they'll be different there (repeat until you either find laws that you like, or run out of road - in which case, prepare the ever-effective and still extremely popular plain brown envelope)
A friend decided to import his venerable old Land Rover. This involved taking it down to the local MoT (in Spain: ITV - run by the government, not a local garage) testing station and starting the process of having it registered. The individual there had never seen a Landy before and duly pronounced it to be a Lorry (pretty obvious really: since it had 4 wheels and seats inside) and therefore would cost €12,000 to "process" and would have to be re-tested every 6 months - it being a "commercial" vehicle 'n' all.
Rather than do the typical brit thing of stumping up and grumbliing a bit, he took to to a different ITV station, in a place just a leeeetle more wordly (where the donkeys have straw hats) and duly got it declared a car and subject to the usual domestic arrangements for transferring to a spanish registration - which only required the payment of several hundred €€€s and was brown-envelope free.
The caveat being, that while local laws are both arbitrary and geographically inconstant (and interpreted by individuals with neither the qualifications nor the motivation to make an informed choice) they can - and frequently are - revised without any warning or notification. Worse than that: they appear to be capable of retrospective revision, with fines payable for transgressions that come about due to changes - even if things were done legally under the "old" law.
P.S. There isn't one single Ministry of Obstruction, all the Ministries serve that purpose.
No, no no! You've got this wrong. Only an idiot would program their autopilot to avoid trees. If you tell the aircraft that their are trees, it will find them! This is a cast-iron law of aviation. You simply whistle quietly to yourself, muttering, "Trees? Trees? No, none of those round here." Then hope it doesn't notice.
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