Recent content by Simon

I think it's fair to say that the A380 could be viable on very specific routes such as ones with very high passenger numbers, unfortunately the market started moving away from mainly hub and spoke to more direct routes. That's the trouble with the airliner business – it takes so long to develop...

This is probably one for @Coiler but I was reminded a few days back about the Cooper vs. Ali fight of 1963. Claims that due to a tear in one of Ali's gloves the rest interval was more than momentarily longer than normal have been debunked, that Dundee used illegal smelling salts can't be proved...

I know, the correct answer is of course Liechtenstein Congo.

NAFTA had already come into force five years earlier, if China remains outside of the WTO how much of the movement that went there goes to northern Mexico instead?

Reading the Wikipedia article about the Tottenham Outrage – feel free to make your own Spurs jokes – there's a passing mention that the two perpetrators moved to the UK from France after the brother of one who they had been staying with was killed by the premature detonation of the bomb he was...

Rather than just have it divided up are there any other candidates for taking Leopold's/Belgium's place instead? Although that likely results in a lot of the same outcome so possibly not that interesting.

Late 2003/early 2004 was when Libya started to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction capabilities which, alongside accepting responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paying compensation, allowed it to be welcomed in from the cold diplomatically. With potential oil and gas deals there's...

Looking through things institutions which did actually form, if perhaps not with university status, but closed down in short order are: Northampton, 1261–1265 Stamford, 1333–1335 Durham, 1657-1660 Proposed institutions which were never founded, or in Gresham's case founded but never gained...

Would that mean no shirking of responsibility via the first victim myth? If they want to get the Soviets and Allies to leave then neutrality still seems like it will probably be needed.

Well the obvious one is for there to be no British continental commitment – either because they're not involved, or prior agreements have them concentrating on naval and colonial side of things.

What was local public opinion like in our timeline do you know? If an alternate Portugal has invested a bit more and in a referendum there's a small majority for continued association I have to wonder how India would react.

As other have written the geography lines up but I'd wonder about the politics. Decolonisation in Kenya wasn't the most friendly of affairs, although saying that there is still British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) so something might be arranged. Distance is another potential problem. It's...

I was reminded this morning of the University of Stamford, a short-lived English university founded in 1333 by a breakaway group of lecturers and students from the University of Oxford. Oxford University and Cambridge University lobbied against it and they managed to convince the King to have...

Is there any way to get the SSP as the main party of independence? They decide that the best chance they have is in an independent Scotland and back the idea fully. It would take very specific circumstances though combining Labour imploding and the SNP still being positioned to the centre-right...

Or have Scottish Labour implode either before the Scottish Nationalist Party became firmly established or repositioned themselves to the left. If Labour is fighting amongst itself then the Scottish Socialist Party would potentially be the only other viable left-wing alternative.