by
United States Marine Field McConnell
Plum City Online - (AbelDanger.net)
January 29, 2016
1. Abel Danger (AD) asserts that Serco's shareholders deployed its long-range 8(a) companies and crooked patent lawyers to impose Crown Rights rules and allow the U.K. Cabinet Office to practice whatever patent Serco issued in the United States.
2. AD asserts that after the 9/11 attack failed to achieve the surrender of the United States government, Serco procured patented sabotage spore powder to be mixed by Hillary Clinton's aides with anthrax to intimidate the media and the politicians.
3. AD asserts that Serco shareholders led by Goldman Sachs financed patented QRS-11 modifications to Trump Shuttle Inc.'s Boeing aircraft and transferred its operation to Oneworld Alliance in Vancouver to prepare Al-Qaeda drones for 9/11.
United States Marine Field McConnell (http://www.abeldanger.net/2010/01/field-mcconnell-bio.html) offers to show how to win a Crown Rights war with Serco's shareholders – including the U.K. Cabinet Office – as they extend their global media and government controls following the drone and anthrax attacks of 2001.
Hillary Clinton - Fast and Furious History of Murder and Lies - QRS11 to 911
Copy of SERCO GROUP PLC: List of Subsidiaries AND [Loan Shark] Shareholders!
(Mobile Playback Version)
Secret City - A film about the [Vampire] City of London, the Corporation that runs it.
Serco... Would you like to know more?
Goldman Sachs: The Vampire Squid
"Taking, Tort, or Crown Right? The Confused Early History of Government Patent Policy
Sean M. O'Connor
University of Washington - School of Law
John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 145-204, 2012
University of Washington School of Law Research Paper No. 2013-24
Abstract: From the early days of the Republic, Congress and the federal courts grappled with the government’s rights to own or use patents it issued. Courts rejected the British "Crown Rights" rule that allowed the sovereign to practice whatever patents it issued. Instead, the federal government was conceptualized as a legal person on par with any other persons with regard to issued patents. But, this simple rule presented challenges as complexities arose in three intertwined patent rights scenarios. The first involved inventions by government employees. The second revolved around government and government contractor use of patents held by private citizens. And the third involved inventions by federal contractors and their employees arising under federal funding. While these three scenarios seem quite distinct today, nineteenth and early twentieth century courts often treated them as overlapping. The confusion was not resolved until the mid-twentieth century when a combination of executive branch and Congressional legislation set the roots of current government patent policy. This Article reviews the history in detail and illuminates current government patent policy debate occurring through such seemingly diverse cases as Stanford v. Roche and Zoltek Corp. v. United States."
"Serco Awarded $95 Million Patent Classification Contract with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
November 30, 2015
RESTON, VA – November 30, 2015 – Serco Inc., a provider of professional, technology, and management services, announced today the Company has been awarded a patent classification services contract with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Serco will provide initial patent classification and reclassification services to support USPTO's core mission of examining, granting, and disseminating patents and trademarks. The recompete contract has a one-year base period with four one-year option periods, and is valued at $95 million over the five-year period, if all options and award terms are exercised.
Serco's highly trained Scientists and Engineers are responsible for reviewing, analyzing, and applying classification symbols to newly submitted patent applications to assist with the USPTO examination process. Throughout the classification process, our team performs comprehensive performance management; quality assurance; information security; training; knowledge management; and IT support, engineering, and development of custom software.
Serco has supported the USPTO under this program since its inception in 2006, and currently processes approximately 1,600 applications a day, and over 400,000 applications annually. Under the contract, Serco has been instrumental in assisting the USPTO as it transitioned to a new international classification standard called Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) and will continue to provide services within CPC that enables the USPTO to align and lead within the global intellectual property environment. Work on this program will continue to take place in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
"We are extremely honored to have been selected to continue to deliver patent classification services to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office," said Dan Allen, Chairman and CEO of Serco Inc. "Our team continues our focus on operational excellence and incorporating innovative solutions, for classification services, in the most economic and efficient manner."
About Serco Inc.: Serco Inc. is a leading provider of professional, technology, and management services. We advise, design, integrate, and deliver solutions that transform how clients achieve their missions. Our customer-first approach, robust portfolio of services, and global experience enable us to respond with solutions that achieve outcomes with value. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Serco Inc. has approximately 10,000 employees and an annual revenue of $1.2 billion. Serco Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Serco Group plc, a $5.9 billion international business that helps transform government and public services around the world. More information about Serco Inc. can be found at www.serco-na.com."
"The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax from its Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case name, occurred within the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement".[1]
A major focus in the early years of the investigation was a bio-weapons expert named Steven Hatfill, who was eventually exonerated. Another suspect, Bruce Edwards Ivins, became a focus of investigation around April 4, 2005. Ivins was a scientist who worked at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. On April 11, 2007, Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that "Bruce Edwards Ivins is an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks."[2] On July 29, 2008, Ivins died from an overdose of acetaminophen.[3]
On August 6, 2008, based on DNA evidence leading to an anthrax vial in Ivins's lab, federal prosecutors declared Ivins to be the sole culprit of the crime.[4] Two days later, Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. Rush Holt called for hearings into the DOJ and FBI's handling of the investigation.[5][6] On February 19, 2010, the FBI formally closed its investigation.[7]
A review of the scientific methods used in the investigation at the National Academy of Sciences,[8] published in February 2011, cast doubt on the U.S. government's conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator. The review report said that, although the type of anthrax used in the letters was correctly identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI's assertion that it originated from Ivins's laboratory. The FBI responded by pointing out that the review panel asserted that it would not be possible to reach a definite conclusion based on science alone, and said that a combination of factors led the FBI to conclude that Ivins had been the perpetrator.[9] Some information about the case related to Ivins's mental problems is still under seal.[10][11] Lawsuits filed by the widow of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens were settled by the government for $2.5 million with no admission of liability. According to a statement in the settlement agreement, the settlement was reached solely for the purpose of "avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigations."[12]"
"MDA Wins Key U.S. Aviation Contract
Press Release
Source: MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.
Posted Thursday, May 3, 2001 Richmond, B.C. - MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSE: MDA) announced today the company has been awarded a contract by the United States Air Force to develop a system to be used by specialists at Air Force bases to design Instrument Approach Procedures (IAPs).
IAPs are published instructions to pilots specifying a series of aircraft maneuvers that must be executed for the aircraft to transition safely from an en route airway to a runway final approach when flying by instruments. MDA's system ingests digital terrain and elevation data, air navigation data (such as the locations of navigation aids, runways, buildings and towers) to build and display a virtual model of the physical environment surrounding an airport. It then develops the complex surfaces that define a safe approach corridor for any of the dozens of IAP variants, and determines whether any of the defined surfaces are penetrated by terrain or man-made obstacles. It flags these incursions to the operator, who can quickly modify the approach procedure through a drag-and-drop user interface.
This initial award, valued at $2.9 million (CDN), consists of a fixed price element to develop, integrate, and test the system. The next phase will include installation, government testing, and operator training. The contract includes an option for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to adapt the system for their needs. The U.S. Air Force also has options to field the successful system at up to 108 air bases around the world, and to award T&M support contracts for up to 8 years. MDA plans to team up with Air Navigation Data (AND) of Ottawa to offer a custom solution, based on AND's "Final Approach" product.
MDA President and CEO Daniel Friedmann said: "This is a significant project for MDA that has the potential to improve the safety of air transportation for many other air forces and civil aviation authorities world wide."
Related web sites:
www.mda.ca
www.usaf.com
For more information, please contact:
Ted Schellenberg
Media Relations
MacDonald Dettwiler
Telephone: (604) 231-2215
E-mail: teds@mda.ca"
"[Former CAI special investor in Macdonald Dettwiler and vampire lender to Trump Shuttle Inc.] Walter Bigelow Wriston (August 3, 1919 – January 19, 2005) was a banker and former chairman and CEO of Citicorp. As chief executive of Citibank / Citicorp (later Citigroup) from 1967 to 1984, Wriston was widely regarded as the single most influential commercial banker of his time.[1][2] During his tenure as CEO, the bank introduced, among other innovations, automated teller machines, interstate banking, the negotiable certificate of deposit, and "pursued the credit card business in a way that no other bank was doing at the time".[3][4] With then New York Governor Hugh Carey and investment banker Felix Rohatyn, Wriston helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the mid-1970s by setting up the Financial Control Board and the Municipal Assistance Corporation, and persuading the city's union pension funds and banks to buy the latter corporation's bonds.[5]"
"Oneworld (marketed as oneworld; CRS: *O) is an airline alliance founded on 1 February 1999. The alliance's stated objective is to be the first-choice airline alliance for the world's frequent international travelers. Its central alliance office is currently based in New York, New York, in the United States. Its member airlines include Air Berlin, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian, S7 Airlines, SriLankan Airlines and TAM Airlines, plus some 30 affiliated airlines. As of 31 March 2014, Oneworld is the third largest global alliance in terms of passengers with 512.8 million passengers, behind Star Alliance (637.6 M)[2] and SkyTeam (588 M).[3] Its slogan is "An alliance of the world's leading airlines working as one."
As of October 2013, its member airlines collectively operate a fleet of 2094 aircraft, serve about a thousand airports in more than 150 countries, carrying 475 million passengers per year on 14,000 daily departures, generating annual revenues of more than US$140 billion.
Management[edit]
Oneworld announced the formation of a central alliance team, the Oneworld Management Company (oMC), in February 2000, to mark the alliance's first anniversary. The oMC was established in May 2000 in Vancouver, Canada, and in June 2011 relocated to New York City. It acts as the alliance's central secretariat, with responsibility for driving future growth and the launch of new customer services and benefits. The oMC was first led by Managing Partner Peter Buecking, previously Director of Sales and Marketing at Cathay Pacific; followed by John McCulloch, previously the alliance's Vice-President for Marketing; and since December 2011 by Bruce Ashby, who previously held roles of CEO of Saudi Arabia's SAMA Airlines, CEO of India's IndiGo, and Executive Vice-President for US Airways. Reporting to the CEO are Vice-Presidents for Commercial; Membership and Customer Experience; and Corporate Communications, a Chief Financial Officer and an IT Director.[4][5][6]"
"AUG 8, 2013 @ 01:43 PM 13,203 VIEWS
"The Great Vampire Squid Keeps On Sucking
Jake Zamansky , CONTRIBUTOR I write about securities law Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The now famous Rolling Stone magazine article in 2009 by Matt Taibbi unforgettably referred to Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful investment bank, as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
At the time, Taibbi was describing Goldman's role in the 2008 financial crisis and the speculative bubble of mortgage-backed securities assets which later came crashing down."
"18 U.S. Code § 1958 - Use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire Whoever travels in or causes another (including the intended victim) to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes another (including the intended victim) to use the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of any State or the United States as consideration for the receipt of, or as consideration for a promise or agreement to pay, anything of pecuniary value, or who conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both; and if personal injury results, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than twenty years, or both; and if death results, shall be punished by death or life imprisonment, or shall be fined not more than $250,000, or both."
"Opened in 1994 as the successor to the Transitional Immigrant Visa Processing Center in Rosslyn, Va., the NVC centralizes all immigrant visa preprocessing and appointment scheduling for overseas posts. The NVC collects paperwork and fees before forwarding a case, ready for adjudication, to the responsible post. The center also handles immigrant and fiancé visa petitions, and while it does not adjudicate visa applications, it provides technical assistance and support to visa-adjudicating consular officials overseas. Only two Foreign Service officers, the director and deputy director, work at the center, along with just five Civil Service employees. They work with almost 500 contract employees doing preprocessing of visas, making the center one of the largest employers in the Portsmouth area. The contractor, Serco, Inc., has worked with the NVC since its inception and with the Department for almost 18 years. The NVC houses more than 2.6 million immigrant visa files, receives almost two million pieces of mail per year and received more than half a million petitions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) in 2011. Its file rooms' high-density shelves are stacked floor-to-ceiling with files, each a collection of someone’s hopes and dreams and each requiring proper handling."
"The Telgraph .. Police drop investigation into Serco prisoner transport contract The outsourcing group said there was no evidence of individual or corporate wrongdoing
The City of London Police has closed an investigation into Serco's prisoner transport contract after more than a year of work, enabling the firm to continue with the contract until 2018.
The Ministry of Justice called in the police in August 2013 to examine whether Serco had misleadingly recorded prisoners as being ready for court when they were not, in order to meet the performance criteria of the contract.
However, Serco said on Friday that the probe into the Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) contract had been closed after the police found no evidence to support bringing charges against the outsourcing firm or its staff.
"The information obtained was also sufficient for the City of London Police to conclude there was no evidence of any corporate-wide conspiracy or an intention to falsify figures to meet the DRACT [designated ready and available for court time] contract requirement by senior Serco management or at the board level of the company," the firm said in a statement. The Ministry of Justice had said it would end the contract immediately if the firm's board was found to have done wrong."
"NOSE DIVE
10.04.1512:01 AM ET
The Crash of Trump Air The real story behind The Donald's brief and bizarre career as an airline chieftain.
Donald Trump strode into a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel he owned on October 12, 1988, to announce his acquisition of yet another trophy property: the venerable Eastern AIR Shuttle, which had pioneered the original power flights between New York, Washington, and Boston.
The 42-year-old Manhattan real estate tycoon exuded an outsize confidence, airily waving aside any concerns about his ignorance of the business he was wading into. "It's a diamond, it's an absolute diamond," he crowed to the packed crowd.
Classic Trump bravado, of course, but the airline insiders he'd tapped to run the show were already rolling their eyes. "When he started with that 'diamonds in the sky' line, I said, 'We're going to have to settle for cubic zirconia,'" said Henry Harteveldt, a former TWA and Continental executive who was the nascent line’s new marketing director.
"We inherited more than 20 of the world's oldest 727 airplanes, because that's what had been allocated to the shuttle,” said Harteveldt, now head of Atmosphere Research, a travel data research firm. "At first all we could do was to clean the planes and put a sticker with Trump's name on the side."
And so began one of the stranger episodes in aviation history.
Trump, according to sources close to him at the time, seemed less interested in the inner workings of the business than in what it could do for his brand. "It was this flying billboard for Trump properties," said Harteveldt. “At the time, he was expanding his casino business [in Atlantic City], jet fuel was still relatively cheap. It was a combination of vanity and the lure of an appealing business." Trump, sources said, apparently also dreamed of creating a national airline 10 times the size of the shuttle, a natural fit with the hotels he was rapidly collecting.
That was not to be, and interestingly, Trump's airline dalliance appears to have been airbrushed from his official biography. He makes virtually no mention of it in the numerous memoirs and self-help books he's penned since its demise in late 1991 [with one exception: in the 2008 tome Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success, he admits that the shuttle "never turned a proper profit," but in typical fashion, accepts no responsibility and blames the failure on ‘timing” and the vagaries of the airline business.] Other business setbacks like his casino bankruptcies have been spun into inspirational comeback tales in the Trump narrative—or used by Trump's rivals for the GOP presidential nomination as a way to bash him on the debate stage. His airline adventure, on the other hand, is an outlier: maybe that has something to do with the fact that Trump never was able to get his airline to produce enough cash flow to pay down the massive debt Trump accumulated when he bought the shuttle.
The story does, however, reveal much about the Trump now appearing in the national spotlight. He lied about his competitors. He trotted out plans to attract customers—but many of them made no sense from a business standpoint. Those who worked with him at the airline describe him as a loose cannon; a generous and engaged boss on the one hand, obnoxious and impulsive at other times—especially in public.
As former Trump Shuttle president Bruce Nobles told The Daily Beast, "I cringed every time he opened his mouth."
"He really didn't understand the business and at times he said things that really weren’t helpful” to his new company, Nobles said. "That was his style and it really hasn't changed."
And this tale might also say something about how Trump may behave as this presidential contest continues: When that sunny business climate turned stormy, Trump got out of the airline business—and fast.
He spent more than $1 million on each jet, going well beyond the normal cabin upgrades to add thick maroon carpeting, maple-veneer paneling, beige leather seats, and even faux marble sinks and gold-colored fixtures in the lavatories.
The aviation business has always been a tough one. More than a few corporate titans have been humbled by it. (Think Carl Icahn and TWA, Kirk Kerkorian and his MGM airline.) "I remember telling [Trump]: ‘There's an old saying in the business: the way to make a little money in the airlines is to start with a lot," said Nobles, who'd previously helmed the rival Pan Am shuttle. Airlines have been notoriously poor investments, what with high fixed costs and a vulnerability to unpredictable forces like gyrating fuel prices and economic downturns. In fact, although the economy in general was in decent shape in 1988, the airline business Trump was entering was in turmoil—dozens of airlines had shut down since deregulation was passed in 1978, and many major airlines had either merged or gone into bankruptcy court protection.
One of the first signs of trouble came soon after the deal was signed when the neophyte airline chief set out to destroy his rival—the Pan Am Shuttle, its only direct competition in the market. The Eastern Shuttle, which had had the market all to itself before deregulation, had struggled to keep up when New York Air, and later Pan Am, offered free drinks and food and made the Eastern flights (which then had neither) look spartan by comparison.
Trump decided he’d win customers away from Pan Am—by scaring them. Pan Am was unsafe, he said. He had no proof of this, of course; his message was simply: "I wouldn't fly them; they're losing money and their planes are old," all of which was equally true of Eastern and the planes he’d just bought. Trump’s seasoned airline hands were horrified; even in the combative airline business, such talk was regarded as out of bounds, as it would only stoke more general fears of flying. Moreover, it revealed his lack of understanding of this business—at the time, competitors would help each other if delays or other problems arise. "We told him 'Don’t attack Pan Am, they're the grandfather of this business,'" said Harteveldt.
Next, Trump turned his attention to his fleet, where he was soon to get an education in airline economics. Trump had paid $365 million for the assets of the Eastern shuttle operation and its 17 planes, which he'd spun as a great deal—negotiated down from the $400 million asking price. But later, as the closing was delayed by Eastern’s bankruptcy and other bidders emerged, Trump tried to get Eastern chief Frank Lorenzo to lower the price, since the value of the asset had indeed diminished. Instead Trump ended up taking five additional planes as compensation, which he described as a victory in his book The Art of Survival, published in 1990, when the airline was still flying. "This allowed me to refurbish my fleet without taking any planes out of service," he said.
True, but the shuttle needed only 16 planes to operate a full hourly schedule at its three cities, with one or two jets as spares, and extra aircraft are anathema to an airline—they don't make money sitting on the ground. Even though Trump was later to deploy some of them on flights to Florida, those additional planes were later to prove a drag on the airline as it struggled to make enough money to service its heavy debt. "Lorenzo must have been laughing all the way to the bank," wrote John O'Donnell, former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel, wrote in his book Trumped!
"The shuttle was a clear example of how the exaggerated value of his [Trump's] name led him into a purchase whose foolishness was apparent almost immediately," he added. (The Trump organization declined to comment for this article.)
To his credit, though, Trump decided that since the planes, on average about 20 years old, needed an overhaul anyway, he could use the chance to spiff up passenger comfort and service. He spent more than $1 million on each jet, going well beyond the normal cabin upgrades to add thick maroon carpeting, maple-veneer paneling, beige leather seats, and even faux marble sinks and gold-colored fixtures in the lavatories.
"The bathroom was a work of art," joked Nick Santangelo, who ran maintenance and engineering at the shuttle. “They used ideas from the hotel business, which wasn't bad, but they didn't always work." Older jets in particular guzzle fuel and airline executives are obsessed with saving even a few ounces of weight. Not so Trump: "At first they wanted to put in a ceramic sink, that was too heavy," said Santangelo. "Then one of his henchman decided they were going to put brass handles on the doors you use to get out in an emergency. Normal handles weigh a few ounces, and these things probably weighed five pounds each... you'd kill to save one pound, and they wanted to add 20 to 30 pounds to each plane."
Still, the airline lured customers with frills like airport concierges who would book same-day reservations at fancy restaurants; gourmet food and drink and tarted-up departure lounges. "We spent a lot on service," recalls Harteveldt. "Bagels and coffee in the morning; boxed dinners with sliced chateaubriand and salad; the flight attendants hustled to serve everyone meals and then pour two or even three rounds of drinks" in the 45 minutes the plane was in the air.
Trump's flight attendants—the female ones, at least—wore matching fake pearl necklaces and earrings to go with what the Trump organization described as an "upscale" look, with outfits of navy with burgundy trim. The uniform belts incorporated the Trump Shuttle "T" logo.
It got noticed: an August 21, 1989 New York magazine column said that Trump apparently wanted his attendants to have "the look of old money." The jewelry was a “required part of the uniform," and the magazine quoted a spokesman as saying they were "real, of course," but according to Harteveldt, they were in fact faux. "But we did raffle off a pair of real ones," he said, and even as the go-go 1980s were winding down that was an unusual stunt for an airline.
And then there was the cult of Donald. Frequent travelers would often get thank-you letters after a flight with Trump's personal signature. A glossy inflight magazine was launched, and Trump at first insisted that the cover resemble theArt of the Deal, his best-selling business book. "The attention to detail was incredible," said Harteveldt. "Pretty soon we were at 50 percent of the market, and keep in mind, we started with about zero," the result of Eastern's prolonged labor strife, said Nobles. "But it was also 50 percent of a shrinking market," he said.
Yet another reality was setting in: Business travel was slowing in the Northeast.
Nonetheless, Nobles said the balance sheet improved as the shuttle regained market share, enough to show an operating profit, but not to cover debt payments. And the recession was not just affecting the airline but most of Trump’s other assets, like his hotels and casinos. In fact at one point Trump came up with a plan to help both, by giving away casino chips to his airline passengers in the expectation they'd come to one of his Atlantic City properties to redeem them. It was a bust. "I think something like two chips got cashed in," Nobles recalled with a laugh. ***
Trump's airline, for all its brass-handled glitz, was a relatively minor player. So in late 1989, he made a bid for control of American Airlines, then the largest airline in the country—and one of the few that had avoided a bankruptcy or merger to survive. His $7.5 billion offer was, at $120 a share, well above the $83 per share the airline was then trading for. But Wall Street and industry insiders were unimpressed, especially after Trump boasted that he'd picked up "substantial insight" in the business he'd just entered. He was, after all, taking on American CEO Bob Crandall, one of the most respected executives in the business. When Crandall immediately took steps to thwart the unwanted advance the bid fizzled. Did Trump he seriously think he could fill Crandall's shoes? "He thought he saw an opportunity, and he likes to own the best," said Nobles. "He thought American was the best airline, it was as simple as that."
Was Trump chastened? Probably not, but it may have dawned on him at that point that he was out of his depth.
"Trump did see that it was a difficult business," said Nobles. "The number of people who want to fly and the money they'll pay to do that is pretty much out of your control. All you can hope for is your fair share, and we got our fair share. But the size of the pot was shrinking." And in the final analysis, the shuttle, whether it had Trump’s or Eastern's name on it, was a basic conveyance, its short hops that departed on the hour, with no reservations required, were closer to a flying bus than a first-class hop across the pond. Things like punctuality were far more important to its clientele than a better cut of steak. When Trump looked back on the experience in 2008 and wrote that "I knew it could be successful…. it just needed to be buffed up a bit, to make the travel time a bit more luxurious," it's clear how little he learned.
Meanwhile, relations between Trump and some of his shuttle executives had started to fray as market conditions went south. Nobles had offered his resignation in early 1990, because he disagreed with some of Trump’s ideas for cutting costs, some of which flew in the face of reality. "He insisted I fly the planes with only two pilots in the cockpit," said Nobles, instead of the required trio at the controls. To a layman, that might not seem unreasonable, but it spoke volumes about Trump’s lack of understanding of the airlines—and of his very own fleet. The 727s Trump owned could not be flown with two pilots; it was designed for three and "would have been unflyable” otherwise, according to aviation expert (and Beast columnist) Clive Irving. "The FAA would have never permitted it," he said.
But Trump was unmoved. He fired Nobles in the middle of 1990 and did not honor the executive's severance contract. His reason? He told reporters at the time that while the airline was doing well, he just wasn’t pleased "with some of the people running it."
By the middle of 1991, it was clear that the situation was not going to improve; Trump had raised $380 million from a syndicate of 22 [narco?] banks led by Citicorp, [led by the late Walter Wriston] putting in just $20 million of his own money. But the airline was just one of a cluster of assets that were at stake; and Trump finally hammered out a deal that gave bankers control of the airline; the climate was turned so sour that no bidders came forward to buy it. US Airways was later tapped to run it and by mid-1992, the plus-size "T" logos on the planes were replaced by more conventional airline livery.
For all that, it can be said that Trump's transformation of the Eastern Shuttle was not for naught; he'd ended up stuck with damaged goods when he bought the shuttle and made changes that were welcomed by both customers and employees (given the condition the shuttle was in when he took over, however, anything would have been an improvement). But other claims he's made about the shuttle over the years don't really stand up; yes, he did rescue a distressed property—but other bidders did come forward at the time and the value of the shuttle franchise was beyond dispute. True, he hired more than a thousand employees from Eastern—and most of them, understandably were happy to have jobs and enjoyed the brief ride while Trump was lavishing perks on his passengers. Most of them continued on after the tycoon departed. And Trump's brief shining moment as a flyboy remains a mere footnote in the annals of aviation.
As for the shuttle—it still chugs along today and on October 17 it will enter its fourth incarnation, as American Airlines formally takes over as part of its merger with US Airways."
"Super Serco bulldozes ahead
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
UPDATED: 23:00 GMT, 1 September 2004
SERCO has come a long way since the 1960s when it ran [Resilience exercises and] the 'four-minute warning' system to alert the nation to a ballistic missile attack.
Today its £10.3bn order book is bigger than many countries' defence budgets. It is bidding for a further £8bn worth of contracts and sees £16bn of 'opportunities'.
Profit growth is less ballistic. The first-half pre-tax surplus rose 4% to £28.1m, net profits just 1% to £18m. Stripping out goodwill, the rise was 17%, with dividends up 12.5% to 0.81p.
Serco runs the Docklands Light Railway, five UK prisons, airport radar and forest bulldozers in Florida.
Chairman Kevin Beeston said: 'We have virtually no debt and more than 600 contracts.'
The shares, 672p four years ago, rose 8 1/4p to 207 1/4p, valuing Serco at £880m or nearly 17 times earnings.
Michael Morris, at broker Arbuthnot, says they are 'a play on UK government spend' which is rising fast."
"Serco Combined Resilience Exercising
http://www.epcollege.com/EPC/media/MediaLibrary/Downloads/Gold-Standard.pdf
Types of Exercise Workshop Exercises These are structured discussion events where participants can explore issues in a less pressurized environment.
They are an ideal way of developing solutions, procedures and plans rather than the focus being on decision making. Table Top Exercises These involve a realistic scenario and will follow a time line, either in real-time or with time jumps to concentrate on the more important areas. The participants would be expected to be familiar with the plans and procedures that are being used although the exercise tempo and complexity can be adjusted to suit the current state of training and readiness. Simulation and media play can be used to support the exercise. Table-top exercises help develop teamwork and allow participants to gain a better understanding of their roles and that of other agencies and organisations.
Command/Control Post Exercises These are designed primarily to exercise the senior leadership and support staff in collective planning and decision making within a strategic grouping. Ideally such exercises would be run from the real command and control locations and using their communications and information systems. This could include a mix of locations and varying levels of technical simulation support. The Gold Standard system is flexible to allow the tempo and intensity to be adjusted to ensure maximum training benefit, or to fully test and evaluate the most important aspects of a plan. Such exercises also test information flow, communications, equipment, procedures, decision making and coordination.
Simulation and Media Support
The method of delivering an exercise is flexible and will be designed with the client to meet their requirements with options ranging from simple paper-based delivery through to full use of their real communications systems [Red Switch Network and Hawkeye onion router surveillance aircraft] and advance computer simulation [In Trump's death pool and war room suites]. In addition, media play can also be added in the form of news injects and the provision of experienced journalists and television crews to help test procedures and also assist in training key staff.
Gold Standard Emergency Planning College
The Hawkhills, Easingwold, York North Yorkshire, YO61 3EG +44(0) 1347 821406
enquiries@emergencyplanningcollege.com www.epcollege.com"
"Serco farewell to NPL after 19 years of innovation [outsourced by David Cameron at Treasury] … 8 January 2015
Serco said goodbye to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at the end of December 2014 after 19 years of extraordinary innovation and science that has seen the establishment build a world-leading reputation and deliver billions of pounds of benefit for the UK economy. It has been estimated that work carried out by the Centre of Carbon Measurement at NPL will save eight million tonnes of carbon emissions reductions (2% of UK footprint) and over half a billion pounds in economic benefit [bullshit] over the next decade. .. · NPL's caesium fountain atomic clock is accurate to 1 second in 158 million years and NPL is playing a key role in introducing rigour to high frequency [death-pool] trading in the City through NPLTime."
Yours sincerely,
Field McConnell, United States Naval Academy, 1971; Forensic Economist; 30 year airline and 22 year military pilot; 23,000 hours of safety; Tel: 715 307 8222
David Hawkins Tel: 604 542-0891 Forensic Economist; former leader of oil-well blow-out teams; now sponsors Grand Juries in CSI Crime and Safety Investigation
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