Scotland

As usual, I am not offering political views as such on the EU issue, but pondering the process and rules.

It seems Scotland and Northern Ireland may both be interested in staying in the EU. It seems some in the EU are not keen. It seems that either of them breaking off from the UK would then be stuck applying like any other country to join the EU.

However, things are not as simple as when considering a legal entity in a contract. I mean, what is the UK as a party to these international treaties exactly? How is a country defined? After all, they change all the time in subtle ways.

So thought experiments:

• If, say, the Isle of Wight decided to leave the UK, the rest of the UK would still be the UK and still be in the EU (for now). That seems obvious.
• So what if Wales left? After all, Wales was one of the countries that came together to make the UK a new entity. Would the UK vanish and cease to exist if Wales left? Or would the" residual" UK still be valid and be the UK, and still be the "entity" that is (currently) in the EU?
• How far could it go? I mean, could Scotland and Northern Ireland join forces, and say they are "the United Kingdom" and that England and Wales are "leaving" the UK, but the residual UK that is Scotland and NI are still the UK and so still members of the EU with no need to renegotiate anything or make new treaties?

Maybe that is far fetched, but let's try a few more...

• What if NI merged in to Ireland? Would that be OK? Would Ireland remain the same entity as a party to treaties and the EU, just bigger, and hence be, as a whole, an EU member still with NI?
• What if Scotland decided to join Ireland? Would that be too much and mean Ireland is no longer the same thing?
• What if a country in the EU now changed its name, e.g. Ireland become the "Celtic Union", and then let Scotland join them as a new combined country and part of the EU member formally known as "Ireland"?

Really, how does it work, and who actually decides? All of the above scenarios are, in theory, no concern of the EU, as they are internal to the various countries (unless EU treaties already contain rules on merging with new countries or splitting).

If I was the SNP I would be asking these questions in all seriousness though.

After all, if Scotland was allowed to “join” Ireland as an EU member, they could operate a “devolved government” system which basically means they are only there for the green card, I mean EU membership, and not really in bed with each other.

Heads or Tails? Who are your friends now? #EURef

I have not posted a lot on the EU. Indeed, the next day I posted that I would not say a lot on the analysis of the consequences as so many others will be doing that. I also made a comment on the only qualifications to be a voter being that you could spell "X" (something that others pointed out is not actually a requirement!).

I did not actually say which way I voted, and whist it may be obvious to some, I don't plan to.

However, I am really quite concerned at how divisive this whole issue has been, not just in terms of the country but families and friends. It is quite scary really.

Before the vote I was involved in a few discussions with friends. I think it is fair to say that we agreed that there was no real way to know the best way to go, and that probably we will never know which was best in hindsight (in the long term). There are interesting arguments based on the lack of knowledge, like "if we don't know what will happen or which way to vote, you vote for status quo, as what know what that is like now, and it is tolerable even if not ideal, and maybe can be fixed". There are arguments like "If we were not in and we voted you join, would we go in?" Possibly not. Sadly neither of these are actually helpful in making an informed decision, and all of the information we can see is speculative propaganda, and to be frank, in some cases, outright lies on both sides, or so it seemed to me.

Basically, my point is that democracy is clearly not going to work in this case. Don't get me wrong, democracy is pretty much the best we have and overall it works well. It is fundamentally a means to mitigate civil war, something from which almost any other system of government can suffer all too easily. But in some cases, and I could say this whichever way the vote went, democracy is not rational, simply because almost everyone voting did not actually have the experience or qualifications in politics or economics to know the way to vote. The fact that the vote was so close bears that out to some extent. Sadly a system of "rational government", which avoids the risk of civil war, does not really exist, as far as I know.

The one thing I am absolutely not saying is that people are idiots, or that the people that voted one way or the other are idiots. I am not even saying people are racist as I do not expect that people are generally (though a few in the news clearly are). What I am saying to some extent is that we are all not quite idiots, but, uneducated and uninformed, on this specific topic. To be honest I am not sure anyone is an expert in this as nobody else has done it before. This means we all voted on gut instinct or propaganda influence.

What this has led to is some serious talks with a good friend of mine that voted a different way to me, and I really think he is sensible and rational, enough not to let this ruin our friendship. It is however, a lot closer to being an actual issue than I expected. Some long text and talk conversations.

In partly this is down to me - I am not that good at working out when people will be upset by something or not. I am sorry about that. I have perhaps a less conventional sense of humour and so I have liked or retweeted some things I found amusing without thinking whether someone else seeing that would be offended by "my views" inferred by association with the article I liked/retweeted.

When I have strong views, I'll let you know! Right now I have some views on the way things are going, and concerns about them, but I don't have any thoughts that any of my friends, or colleagues or customers have been idiots! That would be silly, and, well, "not logical, Captain". Even my views on where were are now are concerns, not anger, and are around the more technical aspects of "what will happen?" and "what can we do?" not "who's fault was this?". I always try to be pragmatic.

So please, let's all get over any personal attacks, tackle the issue at hand, and work on the way forward. Yes, right now, we have not left, and yes, that is not 100% certain yet, but seems very likely. Even if/when we leave, what that means is up in the air. Heck, we could leave EU, and re-negotiate identical terms with every EU state and so be status quo if they tried hard enough (not likely). What is likely is that if/when we leave a whole load of EU rules (like them or not) will move in to UK law and be just as hard to "fix". They may even be harder to fix than if they were EU regulations, as our own government do seem to be fighting their own people with laws like the IP Bill (something I do have strong views on). Maybe we should have a referendum on the IP Bill :-)

So, please, can we move on and not have a go at friends and relatives who voted the other way - it is almost as bad as getting cross because someone flipped a coin the other way and that is just daft. It is almost as daft as deciding your friends on who likes Marmite?!

P.S. I think I am really lucky - I can debate issues with my friends and resolve issues like this, which I think I have, but I know many people that could not do so and would have a life long rift in friend or family relationships over this. Now that is scary! It really is like if you had a referendum on Marmite: Like or Dislike.

Daft question

During the count, a friend asked if the result was like normal elections where the majority may vote one way in total but when done by constituencies the vote could go the other way.

Some of us found it amusing, and explained that it was a total count and not on constituency lines.

But now it seems things may not be so clear cut. Yes, the referendum was a straight count, but it is just a big opinion poll and not anything with any legal force.

Parliament ultimately will vote on this, and already, some MPs are saying they will vote based on the way their constituency voted. This makes sense given that an MP is there specifically to represent his constituents. Surely that is exactly how he should vote?

So we may yet have a crazy situation of the referendum going one way but the actual vote in parliament going the other.

We should all be used to this as number of votes overall has never been directly related to number of MPs and hence number of votes on any issue in parliament.

We'll have to wait and see...

The death of the land line?

My wife and I had a 25 year renewal of vows this weekend (I don't blog everything, any family wanting to see the pictures, just ask).

On Saturday night the family had the lodge at Peckforton Castle, and Sunday morning the girls were there getting ready. The whole area has really poor mobile signal, even outside, and the lodge had no wifi! It was meant to have wifi but something was not right (and no, I could not fix it).

This was something of an inconvenience. We had people arriving on the Saturday night to other hotels and people arriving all Sunday, and we were trying to keep in touch, check when people were arriving, try and get a message to someone to get some cufflinks as James forgot them, and so on. A total lack of any workable Internet was a pain. Even when I went up to the castle when the bride got ready I had no communications with the family in the lodge.

It was only when I considered writing this blog post this morning it dawned on me. There was a phone in the lodge. I just had not really occurred to any of us to use it to contact people!

To be fair, most of the communications did not want to be the type of interruption of a phone call, they suited a message which could be read later.

But this really does show how massively times have changed in just a few years. It has not been long since a time when there were no text messages or even mobile phones in popular use. Just a generation ago the phone in the lodge would have been the only communication one would expect to be able to use.

Clearly the land line is on the way out, replaced by mobiles and non voice communications.

Leaving the EU

Not a lot I can say. Started the day with something along the lines of "Holy fucking cow"!

I cannot really contribute to the analysis of what is happening today and what will happen next. There are a lot of people reporting that in a lot of detail.

Democracy is all very well, but sadly the only qualifications required to vote are that you survived to your 18th birthday, can find the polling station, and can spell "X".

P.S. Someone took this post as insulting. I was not trying to be insulting, sorry. I think that most people voting on this issue, myself included, lack the necessary experience or qualifications in politics, or economics, to have been able to make a remotely informed decision. We all went on gut feeling or propaganda. That is a problem with democracy, but it is the best we have at the moment.

Droney McDroneface: Day 4 (I passed!)

Well, day 4 is a half day, and we covered a bit on human factors, a planning exercise, and THE TEST!

This is the theory part, and I am pleased to say I passed. The questions were very easy, but a couple I was unsure of as I felt more than one answer may be valid. As it happens I got 5 wrong, and they will let me know which of these next week when the send the certificate. I can think of at least 2 I was really unsure of, but 5 is actually a lot worse than I expected, it means I only scored 91%. Pass level is 70%, so perfectly good, but I am kicking myself anyway, sorry.

The next steps are that I need to practice flying a bit, and we need to make an operational manual. Then I can book in for a practical in a few weeks. Right now I would not pass that, but in a few weeks with a few hours practice, I don't expect it to be too hard.

What I did see is at least three errors in the questions, which I noted :-) They kept referencing Kelvin metres not kilometres.

The good news is Alex passed too, same score.

P.S. Revised (audited) result, I got 94.6%

P.P.S. I now know the 3 questions I got wrong. One was bang to rights, I forgot wind is described by the direction it comes from (bloody stupid system). One question was ambiguous and I did know the answer if only I had understood what they meant by the question. One question did not list any one right answer as all answers were dependant on other factors - I picked one of the valid answers but not what was expected. I hope the improve the test.

P.P.P.S. Seems I actually got one other question wrong too, but I answered as per the course. I.e. the course was wrong, in that it asked the baseline number of satellites in US GPS system, and I answered 24. Apparently as of June 2011 it is 27.

Droney McDroneface: Day 3

Today we covered more on weather, and operational manuals, and some details of the practical flight test.

One of the key things for the PFAW (Permission for Aerial Works) is that we have to produce an operational manual. This includes a volume (1) on the company and the work we will be doing and our various procedures for operation and risk management, etc. A volume (2) on the technical details of the aircraft. And finally, optionally, a volume (3) making the operational safety case for extra permissions, if we need them, such as working closer to people and buildings in congested areas. Volume 3 is tricky to get and may require showing some operating experience, so we are not going to do that yet. Some time next year we expect rules to be relaxed in various areas anyway so may not be necessary.

I have to say that it has not been 100% clear what the course gets us, so it is worth explaining in a little more detail...

What do you get from a CAA PFAW course?

The PFAW is something the company gets, and can then engage pilots that have passed the theory and practical tests. Obviously a lone operator can get the PFAW themselves and be the pilot. Hopefully we (Alex and myself) pass the theory tomorrow, then come back in a few weeks for the practical. Once we have our operational manual we can apply for the PFAW for the company.

Without the PFAW there are rules for small unmanned surveillance aircraft (SUSA), and for a congested area these are quite strict - not over or within 150m of a congested area! Also not within 50m of a person or structure not under our control (30m during take off or landing).

Given that a congested area covers anywhere built up in a town or city or settlement (anywhere that is substantially used for residential, industrial, commercial or recreational purposes) that pretty much rules out getting close to anywhere in a town or city or settlement. Even with permission of all of the home owners near me, I could not fly up by my house as I live in a residential area!

What we get with the PFAW is a basic or standard permission: "The standard CAA permission for SUA/SUSA in the 7 kg or less category allows flight in congested areas to within 50 metres of persons, structures etc. (or within 30 metres if the persons are under the control of the person in charge of the aircraft). This category of SUA/SUSA cannot fly within 150 metres of open-air assemblies of 1,000 people or more where only a standard permission has been granted."

Update: I assume that is bad wording and they do not mean "to within 50m" as 10m is "within 50m". I assume they mean 50m or more, sort of "without 50m" :-)

This is good news as it removes the restriction for a small drone operator operating in a congested area, but leaves the 50m restriction for structures or people not in control. Oddly it also imposes a 30m restriction for those that are (a restriction which does not apply outside congested areas!).

The 50m/30m may not be an issue, assuming, as we are, that it is a straight line from aircraft, as one can take off to over 30m height, and then be close (horizontally) to my house or neighbours houses yet outside these distance limits because of height. There may be a slight issue with finding somewhere to validly take off or land. It will be interesting to see what a PFAW says about that though.

One question that came up on the course, and the answer was not 100% confident (sorry heliguy), was that these distances are 3D, i.e. "piece of string", distances. From aircraft at height to the object/person. So if allowed no closer than 50m that could be achieved by being 1m away horizontally and 50m up. Pythagoras do your worst. This is confirmed by a phrase in IN-2014/190 and CAP 722: "In any circumstances or weight category, it should be noted that flights directly overhead persons and vehicles will not be allowed at any height in a congested area unless they are under the control of the person in charge of the aircraft.". The fact they have to say this means clearly that the height is a factor in the distance calculation, i.e. we could fly 30m over our heads (if in our control). Good news, though I may need to buy some hard hats to mitigate risks.

Update: CAA have confirmed that these distance rules really do work as a direct 3D line, so height is part of that.

Getting these distances reduced is what takes a lot more work and an operational safety cases in volume 3 of the operational manual. However, the fact that the height is a factor means I should be able to fly high enough to avoid the need to get permission from my neighbours to take aerial shots of my house, and can even fly over my house (at least 30m above - though it is a structure not a person so maybe closer is actually allowed) as I control it. This is once I get the PFAW. Indeed, the documentation does say that this basic permission will be suitable for video of properties, filming, etc.

I do think heliguy should have had a slide right at the start stating clearly the rules without PFAW and the rules with PFAW - a clear indication of what you are getting by doing this course. It was not obvious to me, or others on the course, until just now that for under 7kg the basic PFAW allowed work in congested areas. I'll give them feedback on the final day tomorrow.

Somewhere to practice...

Before I do the practical I will need a bit of practice. The test involves a few basic flying manoeuvres, but as I have had exactly 20 minutes total flight time so far, I am not quite up to them yet. So where can I practice?

One possibility would be a field, with permission from the owner, and not somewhere the public are likely to access (and not near power lines or flight paths, etc, etc).

But one interesting possibility is the office car park, at a weekend!

There are two ways to do this - one is pretty clear cut and involves removing or disabling the camera so I only come under the non-surveillance rules. Then there is no issue as it is clearly "safe" on a weekend, with nobody else around.

The other is more creative, and I am trying to find a reference for this. But the idea is simple. The definition for that area to be a congested area would mean it has to be substantially used for industrial use. Well, the argument is, that, at the weekend, it is not. All of the offices and work units are all closed at the weekend and nobody is around!

The formal definition does not say! It would be an interpretation to say "right now" this is not a congested area. It was suggested by one of the trainers, so hopefully is valid. One way to be reasonably sure may be to actually ask the CAA. I am not sure I want to open that particular can of worms right now though. Some have suggested that this rule is not time specific, but ultimately it has to be - if you build a housing estate it will, at a point in time, change from non congested to congested - so time has to be a factor - so why not time of days or hours?

What I can be pretty sure of is that it would be safe, especially if I am doing it personally as a private flight, covered by MBFA membership insurance. I'll get permission of the neighbouring units within 50m so I have "control" of the buildings, and have someone watch out for vehicles or people approaching (unlikely). With any luck this will give me somewhere to practice.

Not this weekend though, as I have my wedding blessing to go to. Oooh, look, it is in a castle in the middle of nowhere (not a town or city or settlement). That could be handy :-)