Tony Comer

Paging @jockbruce.bsky.social whom I've been nagging in this context for some years.

*A* Censored History of AA-83 😉

+1 ♥️ for the envoi.

Contagious Laughter (@contagiouslaughter.official) on Threads Following a ban on using animals for entertainment, the Prime Minister of Denmark explains a complication that arose when the state subsequently had to purchase four elephants from the circus. 😂 funny...

From Threads. www.threads.com/@contagiousl... Animal welfare meets immigration policy.

Out to lunch at a pub today and the server asked what drinks people wanted. One asked for Chardonnay and was told 'We don't have any Chardonnay but our house wine is made from the same grape'. 'OK. I'll have that then '

Excellent review!

Thanks.

Thanks, Mark

I've had an article published in Diplomacy & Statecraft: 'Behind the Enigma: How GCHQ's Authorised History Appeared'.

The first 50 people to click on the link get a copy for free!

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BCZTB...

It's (still!) hypothetical but I'd guess that the organisation would be fundamentally reformed from above leaving the ethical middle- and lower-level staff to accept the new reality or move on. Their ethical product wouldn't get through the new filter at the top.

I think if a country was democratically backsliding, a reasonably apolitical intelligence agency would be the first thing to be undemocratically backslid into following the party line.

I explore need-to-know again in a post at www.siginthistorian.blogspot.com looking at an Official Secrets Act case in which a clear Sigint connection was ignored because the investigators had no idea it existed.

No. 'The School', maybe, just as GCHQ people today talk about 'The Department ' or (perhaps older, retired, people) 'The Office'. You'll sometimes see complicated 'Golf, Cheese and Chess Society' formations, but I've never seen them in anything contemporary and they aren't things people say.

I was surprised that it was written by a Norwegian.

Did Quex ever think he was subordinate to the Foreign Secretary?

Thanks, Frode.

How good is 'I was there' as a guarantee of historical memory? Not, perhaps, as good as it might seem. A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at records and memory.

Sid James's nephew.

To keep traffic flowing on a busy road in Cheltenham the council has marked approved parking spaces as half on the road and half on the pavement.

How to sort out parking on busy roads: this is what our council has done.

… there's an awful lot of creative writing: imagined conversations and a neatness you don't get in real life. Tiltman *was* a fan; Marks *did* write poem codes; the Dutch Resistance was shamefully treated.

But it's a 'must read', perhaps the perfect introduction to cryptology for 14+ teens. (2/2)

I refuse to comment on that bl**dy pigeon: it blighted a couple of months of my life!

The Leo Marks book is an excellent read, and has brought more than one person to cryptanalysis as a career. It has a solid and historical foundation, but (you were expecting a 'but') ... (1/2)

It's easy to overclassify and it's easy to be nervous about release. An illustration of this point in a new post on siginthistorian.blogspot.com

It's you he'll bother, over there. He'll have been watching Clarkson's farm.

So it's just a £38 rosé?

A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at what can happen when two opposing sides are using the same cryptosystems.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4437... shows the news that has provoked so much comment. Why it has happened is anybody's guess.

Lucky old Cumbria.

RAF A400M a bit near my house.

RAF A400M ZM416 (c/s NAPER60) being used to teach pilots how to fly at 600 ft. I assume they have the aircon switched on!

Good description of Henry VIII but he is sadly not unique in terms of rufism and finiscampeism.

… José Ramón Soler …