"The long term impact of the Internet" - how Lady Dame Jane Pauline Neville Jones' Fan club got to think about it

The Ditchley Foundation is one of those curious, reserved bodies that have much influence but who remain little known and their purpose even less understood - although they have a very elegant, clear, well illustrated and informative website.

Founded and funded by the donations of Sir David Wills and based at Ditchley Park in north Oxfordshire which he acquired in 1953. It , "organises private and highly focussed conferences of senior international experts to address issues of transatlantic and indeed global interest."
For readers here , one of the most interesting this year was held the weekend of June 1st - 3rd on the subject of , "The long-term impact of the internet" which was chaired by Mr Tim Gardam.

"Ditchley’s style and programme provide an opportunity for brainstorming unique in international affairs. Small invited groups of about 40 distinguished men and women are brought together from senior levels in the worlds of politics, business and industry, academic life, the civil service, the armed forces and the media. Conference subjects are carefully chosen in response to new international challenges arising from issues of concern to democratic societies. Conferences stress open, informal discussions that reflect personal thinking and take place under strict rules of confidentiality." says the website.

It would be fascinating to know who attended and what was said at that particular secluded chat. Mr Tim Gardam is of course Principal of St. Annes College, Oxford. A product of Westminster School, Gonville and Caius (Double first) BBC, inventor of Newsnight and Timewatch, and also once a Director Channel 4 who undertook for Tessa Jowell a study of digital TV in Britain.

The Foundation has a list of Governors constituting both the great and the good and many members of the Lady Dame Jane Pauline Neville-Jones Fan club - indeed, surprise, surprise she is one of the Governors. As is Sir Rodric Braithwaite , GCMG once our Ambasador in Moscow whose dulcet tones we so frequently hear on the BBC along with Ms. doe eyed ex Home Office, Director of Liberty Sami Chakrabarti, Oxford know all quasi historian Tim Garton Ash, Peter Hennessy, Peter Mandelson, the mysterious Dr Matt Ridley, Sir Crispin Tickell, Baroness Warnock, and that ever present psephologist Sir Bob Worcester.

..and it seemed like only yesterday that Clarence Mitchell of The Media Monitoring Unit (MMU), part of the Cabinet Office's Central Office of Information (COI), is considering how to add blogs and forum entries into its regular summaries of public policy coverage that are distributed to government ministers.

Hang on it was yesterday ...Government blog "monitoring" - first step to regulation, censorship ...

Now there is a coincidence.

You may be wondering what the picture of Clementine Churchill is doing here - well Winston Churchill when wartime PM used Dytchley as an alternative to Chequers in the war and the Dytchley website has some fascinating pictures of the GOM. This is the caption to the one above...

Clementine Churchill and Viscountess Cranborne in the Library. Viscount Cranborne was the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs 1940-42, and both he and his father, the Marquis of Salisbury, were allies of Churchill and staunch defenders of white-dominated administrations within the Empire.

Kazakh oil / National Energy - Russia - China - India and territorial / economic dominance

The Kazkah government looked set to approve by the end of December the China International Trust & Investment Corp (CITIC) . bid to $1.9 billion to buy the Kazakhstan oil assets of Canada's Nations Energy Co., The deal is dependent upon several approvals including the waiver of pre-emptive rights of the Kazakh government, which last year amended laws to give it first option on the sale of mineral resources and possibly on corporate deals.

It is further evidence of China's ruthless quest to hoover up oil supplies, to meet their massive growth in demand.

CITIC is reported to be planning a "medium-size'' oil refinery in the Mangistau Oblast region when they have found some strategic Kazakh partners.

CITIC quoted in Hong Kong rose 1% to HK$1.62 , their biggest gain in a year.
www.cnpc.com.cn/english/

However Russian news service Interfax reports (16th Nov) from (old) Kazakh capital Almaty (pic of Statue of Indpendence) that Energy and Natural Resources Minister Baktykozha Izmukhambetov told a committee of the Kazakh parliament that the proposed sale should be blocked and

"We should, or rather I should in the first place, take urgent measures to stop this agreement over Karazhanbasmunai,"

Karazhanbasmunai is the unit of Nations Energy that operates the Karazhanbas oilfield in western Kazakhstan.

Kazakh Channel 13 TV reports (BBC monitoring 16th Nov) that fear of Chinese expansion is today's political fashion. MPs who recently had an outburst of China phobia are setting the tone for xenophobia. Some MPs say that if China continues to buy out Kazakh oil, the republic would soon become merely raw materials appendage to Beijing.

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) acquired Calgary based PetroKazakhstan Inc. in a US$ 4.18 Mn (HK$32.6 billion) deal on October 26th 2005 which bought them the Karazhanbasmunay bloc, the second biggest (known) production asset in Kazakhstan and co-operation with KazMunaiGaz to operate and manage the PK project. It was said at the time that oil hungry India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp was also in the bidding. (see connection to LUKoil below)

Part of the deal involved the development of the Darkhan field in the North caspian 60 Km south of Bautino in working waters of 3-5 metres which is said to have 480Mn Tons of fuel equivalent.

KazMunaiGaz produces about 16 % if Kazakh oil output. It controls 65 % of Kazakhstan's oil transport routes and 100 percent of gas transport pipelines and in 2005 produced
65 million barrels with revenues of t US$4.7 billion (Ђ3.8 billion), 31.4% up on 2004.

Overall Kazakh oil output , says the Oil Ministry, is planned to grow from the current 1.3 million barrels to 3 million barrels a day by 2015, according to the Oil Ministry.

CITIC , quoted in Hong Kong rose 1% to HK$1.62 , their biggest gain in a year.
http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/search?q=Nursultan+Nazarbayev+embraces

Readers might remember Lord Patel posting about Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's ambitions on Thursday, April 6 2006
Nursultan Nazarbayev embraces Mother Russia ... and Putin

"Russian state-controlled media, including the RTR television channel and Radio Mayak, report Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s recent three-day visit to Moscow as a potential turning point in Putin’s struggle for control of the Caspian Basin’s oil and gas reserves...."

or

Monday, March 27 2006
Hashim Djojohadikusumo sells Nations Energy to Vagit Alekperov

"Vagit Alekperov told me over the gaming tables in Northern Cyprus that he has his eyes on Nations Energy – a price tag of $2.5Bn is attached. Expect news any day he said."

Two lessons :
1. President Nursultan Nazarbayev plays a long game.
2. So does Hashim Djojohadikusumo and his Indonesian pals, owners of National Energy Ltd (until December)
3. Don't hang around gambling tables and expect to be told the truth, the whole truth .....

A 962-kilometer (598-mile) Atasu-Alashankou pipeline completed in December at a cost of $800 million transports crude to China National's refinery in Dushanzi, close to China's northwestern border with Kazakhstan. Russian state owned Transneft have announced the intention to export 7 million tons (51.3 mln bbl) in 2007, to China on this route. Only this week have Transneft announced the final part of the pipeline from Russia to China with the first leg from Taishet in East Siberia to Skovorodino near the Chinese border to be completed by the end of 2008 for which China will pay US$400 Mn.

Totally secure. How do you feel ?

Anteon is a General Dynamics company Delivering End-to-End Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) compliance. General Dynamics is a huge supplier to the military in the US - why should you be interested ?

HSPD-12 ? ...on August 27, 2004, the President signed HSPD-12 “Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors” into effect. The Directive requires the development and implementation of a mandatory, US Government-wide standard for secure and reliable forms of identification for Federal employees and contractors.

Forthcoming deadlines include:

* October 27, 2006 – Commence FIPS 201, Part 2 compliance ; requiring the use of identity credentials for all new employees and contractors consistent with the Part II of the FIPS 201 Standard
* October 27, 2007 – Bring all existing employees and contractors into compliance including verification and/or complete background checks

Anteon claim their solutions are fully integrated, interoperable solutions that are both mobile and tactical, making drive-up credentialing (that means checking) and rapid onsite response available wherever and whenever you need it.... sounds just the thing a Gubment needs.

Get a brochure ....Mr. Ray Donahue.VP (703) 813-8453 rdonahue@anteon.com

Anteon (UK) is located on Newark Road Peterborough with 12,000 sq ft of office and training accommodation and 23,000 sq ft of engineering floorspace. The website claims the company

"Design, build, integration, supply and refurbishment of deployable and shelterised (WTF?) systems. The development and supply of biometric credential systems. Supply of imagery exploitation software and IT systems integration. Training and maintenance on supplied products and services."

Anteon (UK) have developed the Veri-cool system for fingerprint registration of schoolchildren (yes fingerprint) which can help combat (?) truancy and improve school efficiency with fast (?) simple student attendance registration, this also integrates with powerful software for:

1. Enrolment

2. Class Registration

3. Automated Guardian Alert
...identify absentees of a typical school in seconds, Detailed Parent or Guardian contact information is displayed for contact via SMS text, email or telephone in the fastest way possible. Using a UK network for texting provided by Netsecrets, a Parent or Guardian can be contacted in under 20 seconds, and they then have the option to call or text back to the school to confirm receipt of the message.

4. School-wide Absence Module

Probably most interesting is that Anteon (UK)/ Veri-Cool is a Technical partner to Capita Education Services who claim a client base of over 22,500 UK schools of which at least 5,000 use the latest .net software fully compatible with VeriCool readers and software.Paul Coase, Business Manager will tell you more 01733 296877 - sales@vericool.co.uk ... so far it doesn't seem to include Time & Attendance data for staff, teachers, cleaners, secretaries etc.,



"With the VeriCool suite of software there are no swipe cards and no one can steal your student's identity as their digital signature is unique to them, and them alone."



See what Impington Village College experience has been with the system

Now wasn't the CEO of Capita (founder 1984) one of the folks ... Rod Aldridge ....(see pic) who lent (£1 Mn. at least) money to the Labour Party and coincidentally was nominated for a peerage ? No worries, when he rsigned he said, "There have been suggestions that this loan has resulted in the group being awarded government contracts. This is entirely spurious."

So that's alright then.

PS. When you think the people who voted to allow all this, vote by filing through a doorway to be counted by human beings, who handwrite their attendance and then calculate the votes manually. Wunnerful thing technology.