Welcome to rascott.com
This is a
personal site that reflects my interests in news,
current affairs, aviation and travel.
email me:
robert@rascott.com
rascott.com
Home Page
Photo Albums
My photographs are now stored on Picasa.
Please use
this link to see my list of photo albums.
Some
Useful links:
Information:
World Time
Clock
Exchange Rates
Journalism:
ForeignPolicy
Nationsonline.org
Project Syndicate
Amnesty International
Reporters w/o borders
The Guardian
BBC World News
CNN Asia
Bangkok Post
Daylife.com - news
Gulf News
Arabian Business
World News
WSJ - Asia
SCMP
Good causes:
Sister
Joan - Bangkok
Regional Info:
BKK Magazine
HK Magazine
In
Singapore Magazine
TimeOut Dubai
Back in the UK:
Newton Ferrers
Bournville News
And for fun:
EarthCam
History
BBC Archive
National Media
Museum
The British Library
Imperial War Museum
There are many other links on my AOB blog page.
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An Occasional Blog |
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Dubai based Airine bloggers
TampaxTowers Egypt Thailand Blogs Thai-blogs.com - rather serious
2bangkok.com
-
not really a blog but always up to date on Bangkok news
Thai
Girl The exotic adventures of a literary
sexagenarian.
Thai Films
Asia Unbound - CFR
Dubai Blogs
dxbae
- picture blog - also Gerald Donovan
The Gulf Blog
Grumpy
Goat Arabic affairs blogs
The Arabist
Hong Kong Blogs
Hong
Kong Outdoors In China: Danwei - media and advertising news from China
Shanghaiist.com
Hong Kong Cinemagic
Chinageeks
In Singapore: Xiaxue - self-confessed mean, bitchy, sex goddess who says "wah" a lot!
Mr Brown
- colourful commentary from Singapore
In Burma:
In Canada:
Media:
Tabloid
Watch (UK) Aviation: Amadeus (airline schedules) Airline meals - see it b4 you eat it!
Airliners
- aviation forum, trip reports and pix
archive Planenation - commercial aviation news Airchive - a web museum of commercial aviation.
CrankyFlier - mainly US commentary
Sharjah -
1937
KPAE - Paine Field Blog
Johnny Jet News: The Guardian - UK
Arabian
Business Bangkok info sites: Worthy Sites:
Rconversation - from Rebecca
MacKinnon, ex-TV reporter-turned-blogger.
What Matters - McKinsey
Golf Sites:
Cricket sites:
Alternative
Cricket Almanac
Other Sports
Fun Sites:
Fun signs
Cooking
Technology Ideas:
Stuff -
gadgets
TNooz - Travel Tech
ViralBlog
Photography
The Rest:
Black
Flamingo - recipes and life (no golf!)
Place from my past:
Author
Robert Scott lives and works in Dubai; born in England I have since lived in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. I am very happily married to Tai.
If you want to know more you only need to ask! ask.
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31 October 2015
Sorry for the lack of
updates - my flying blog took over! Please go and read it! 18 October 2015 Woken at 2am by Tai's phone blasting out an alarm signal. Thought it was the hotel fire alarm. Not so: The Massachusetts Child AMBER Alert is an emergency alert system that helps recover abducted children. The Plan utilizes the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to interrupt regular programming and broadcast information that could help recover the child. Information is also broadcast on electronic signs along highways and in airports. How this gets to pick up the mobile numbers of foreign tourists is a mystery. 15 October 2015 We flew from Dubai to Boston yesterday on EK 239 - leaving Dubai at 3.20am and arriving into Boston about 09.20am local. It is a long 14 hour flight but with a light load there was plenty of room to spread out. The weather on Boston was good for exploring - and we walked around the freedom trail until mid afternoon before heading back to the hotel to check in. We were then asleep by 5pm! And slept through until 3am this morning. 8 October 2015 A couple of notes from Reuters in an article in 7Days on progress at Al Maktoum AIrport - in what is becoming known as Dubai South!
Firstly it appears that
the new concourse D at DXB has been delayed. Dubai Airports officials have
said construction of the concourse has just finished and the testing phase
will now be launched.
"May be ready" is none
too encouraging. So do not expect to see EK at Al Maktoum until 2025 at the earliest. Persuading other airlines to move there in the short term, as this web site has said many times before, will remain challenging. 6 October 2015 Fascinating - The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal is a record of the lunar surface operations conducted by the six pairs of astronauts who landed on the Moon from 1969 through 1972. The 112 pages on Flickr of pictures from the exploration of the moon are equally good. 3 October 2015 Happy birthday baby brother.
*********************************** For me it makes it hard to keep that strong connection between the club and its fans. Watford was built as a family club closely tied to the community. Many ex-players left the club and stayed nearby running business or pubs. I can barely pronounce the names on the team-sheet now; a far cry from the twelve names at the 1984 FA Cup Final. Just one substitute in those days. 1 October 2015 Hats off to Thongchai Jaidee who last week won the Porsche European Open in Germany - in all honestly it was not the strongest field on the European Tour but it is still a good win - I suspect at this point Thongchai might have prefered "pretties" from his home country rather than parading with what appear to be German milkmaids!
23 September 2015
Just being reported
today by avherad.com - 22 September 2015 In case you missed it - Piggate - is all the news in the UK; Billionaire tax exile and former Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lord Michael Ashcroft has co-written, with journalist Isabel Oakeshott, an unauthorized biography of Cameron. It is not flattering and includes allegations of drug use, among other things. But the attention-grabbing assertion is that during an initiation ceremony for an Oxford student society, Cameron “put a private part of his anatomy” in the mouth of a dead pig — and that photographic proof of this deed exists. Yawn.
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Dubai: Emirates on
Friday announced double daily flights between Dubai and Phuket, starting
on December 1. 16 September 2015 What a fucked up country Thailand is - one journalist can strike fear into the ruling Junta; The Nation reported that its senior journalist, Pravit Rojanaphruk, had been realeased after signing an agreement not to lead, participate, or assist any anti-coup movement. The NCPO filed a pending police complaint against him, which would be activated if he violates the NCPO's order again, a source said. He was in detention since Sunday afternoon. The Nation then fired Pravit - well they asked him to resign. 15 September 2015 Appalling:
12 September 2015
NNT reports that the
Thai "PM has confirmed that legal action will be taken on anyone
expressing opinions that could lead to unrest and instability in the
country. Bizarre really - I guess staging a coup is not a cause of instability. Sadly the Thai government sounds more and more like North Korea every day. You cannot silence public opinion - and not everyone will agree with you. 11 September 2015
Prime Minister Prayut
Chan-o-cha has set up the Command Center for Resolving Civil Aviation
Issues (CRCA) to speed up efforts for upgrading Thailand's aviation safety
standard to meet requirements of the International Civil Aviation
Organisation.
Like that is going to
make a difference! 5 September 2015 Ben Stokes - handball - out. Hard to tell what all the fuss is about. 24 August 2015
Paul Mason - the
Economic Editor of Channel 4 News nails the market collapse that has taken
place today in one tweet: "Markets slump as world realises main growth
engine in hands of incompetent, secretive police state that thinks it can
dictate equity prices." The day began with the Shanghai stock market suffering its biggest fall since 2007.
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Melbourne is the most
liveable city in the world, according to analysis by the Economist's
Intelligence Unit. Amazed to see Calgary in joint 5th - this was clearly a summer poll and not a winter poll! 21 August 2015
Emirates today
announced that it will increase its Dubai – Phuket service from 7 to 11 x
weekly with the addition of a new 4 x weekly Boeing 777-300ER rotation
from 1st December 2015. Schedules are as follows:
**************************** And yes - I did solo yesterday - 20 August! 28 July 2015
Emirates airline today
announced its fourth daily A380 service between Dubai and Bangkok from
December 1, 2015. Just imagine the queues at immigration and the scrum around the baggage carousel.
******************************** 27 July 2015
Emirates will launch a
second daily service to Lisbon next year.
That late return into
Dubai is an odd time since it is too late to connect with EK flights to
the Far East. Pacific nations and Africa. 25 July 2015 Recovering from taking the long way to Florida....Dubai to Seattle and onto Denver and then to Tampa. 23 July 2015 Put these cancellations down to the Emirates effect:
European carrier
Austrian Airlines has stopped its Dubai route, effective September 13,
2015. Meanwhile British Airways is ending Entebbe flights follows previous African route network cuts to Dar es Salaam and Lusaka. 16 July 2015
Is it Eid yet? Tough
call in Mecca tonight: 15 July 2015
B777-21H (A6-EMF) left
the Emirates fleet today. It was the last B772 in EK fleet. It made its
final flight positioning Boston – Marana for part out and scrap as EK3149.
************************ And my nearest and dearest asks me if they are landing there. Bless. She really did think that there were people onboard the spaceship.
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************************* 11 July 2015 Shouldn't the latest - and even harsher - austerity package also be put to the Greek people for their agreement? Precedent was set last week. 10 July 2015 No McIlroy in the British Open next week - football injury while playing with friends. Expensive.
************************** Now there Prime Minister is negotiating a deal that is even harsher than the deal that was rejected.Tsipras is trying to get backing from his MP's for reform proposals that are tougher than those rejected in last week's referendum. 6 July 2014
United Arab Emirates
carrier (UAE), Emirates Airlines has announced that it will launch a
service to Mashhad in Iran, its second service to the Western Asian
country. 5 July 2015 Effing wifi an my London hotel is a disgrace....it is actually worse than having no wifi at all...cos of the level of frustration it creates - completely unusable.
***************************** Trouble is the Greeks think they can continue negotiating. But the creditors may not want to negotiate. What next is a genuine mystery.
Only one question was
really settled today: the Greek government has survived, and Brussels must
deal with Athens as it is, rather than as it would like it to be. The
bigger questions – can Greece remain in the euro, or even in the European
Union – remain unanswered. As does the most pressing for most Greeks: when
will the banks reopen, and how many euros can we withdraw?
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****************************** Who is going to give Greece the bn10million that they need to simply get through til the end of the summer.
****************************** 1 July 2015 It is 18 years ago that Hong Kong was returned to China. I was there. It was a very different time. And now; 18 years on, HKG has a new independent online media source. "Hong Kong Free Press" is a new, English language news source seeking to unite critical voices and provide quality analysis and credible reporting on local and national affairs. Free and independent, HKFP arrives amid rising concerns over declining press freedom in Hong Kong and during an important time in the city’s constitutional development.
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