06 May 05. General Election: Labour’s Third Term. HM The Queen invited the leader of the Labour Party, the Rt Hon A C L Blair MP, to form a new Government. During the previous day’s General Election, the Labour Party had secured an overall majority (356) of the 646 seats in the House of Commons. With voting in one constituency postponed (due to the death of a candidate), Labour’s majority fell from 161 to 67. At 61.2%, turnout on 5 May 05 was a slight improvement on the 59.3% of 7 Jun 01. Provisional figures indicate that 38.8% of the electorate did not vote and 21.5% voted Labour. The 18 seats in Northern Ireland reflected a further polarisation towards the two political (and religious) extremes. The Democratic Unionist Party gained four seats to give a total of nine and Sinn Fein gained one seat to give a total of five. The leader of the Ulster Unionists and a Nobel Peace Laureate, the Rt Hon W D Trimble, lost his seat. The Prime Minister announced (6 May 05) some changes to his Cabinet. The Rt Hon G W Hoon MP has become Leader of the House of Commons and has been replaced as Secretary of State for Defence by the Rt Hon Dr J Reid MP. The Department for Trade and Industry has been renamed as the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry with the Rt Hon A A Johnson MP replacing the Rt Hon P H Hewitt MP as Secretary of State. Miss Hewitt has taken over from Dr Reid as Secretary of State for Health. Comment: New Labour’s popularity continues to decline, not least because of the UK’s involvement in Iraq. 30.8% of the electorate voted Labour in 1997, 24.1% in 2001 and now the figure is further reduced to 21.5%. New Labour boasts of a ‘mandate’ ring extremely hollow. Dr Reid will, doubtless, be delighted with his new appointment as Defence Secretary. John Reid was a Shadow Defence spokesman from 1990 until 1997 when Labour assumed office and he was appointed Armed Forces’ Minister until moving on in July 1998. Junior Ministerial changes are not expected to be announced until 9 May 05, at the earliest. When all the members of the Defence Council are known, the revised list will be published as a third page with DNA (probably with Issue 05/19). (Source: DNA DEFENCE NEWS ANALYSIS, Issue 05/18, 09 May 05)
10 May 05. Intel, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and SRI International have joined the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC), an international collaborative forum comprised of 65 companies and organizations committed to providing a common technical approach that will enable all systems to operate on a global network
09 May 05. Boeing officials dedicated a new state -of-the art customer center today that allows military experts to analyze and take part in simulated battle scenarios in order to develop future systems and platforms.
The Virtual Warfare Center (VWC) is networked with existing Boeing Integration Centers in Anaheim, Calif., and Washington DC, the System of Systems Integration Laboratory in Huntington Beach, Calif., and centers in Philadelphia, Seattle and Mesa, Ariz. It enables live and virtual military forces and military systems to interact with one another to create realistic war scenarios in a complex and immersive learning environment.
10 May 05. DoD Secretary Rumsfeld may announce this week the relocations of Defense Department employees out of northern Virginia because the buildings they work in don’t meet new security standards. As many as 50,000 workers could eventually be affected. Washington Post, May 10, 2005, Pg. 1]
06 May 05. Marconi has said that it is to axe about one-in-five of its UK workforce in an organisational revamp following its failure to win work on a landmark £10bn BT project. The telecoms equipment company has opened talks with unions over the cutting of 800 of its 4,300-strong UK workforce in a shake-up aimed to at providing “significant cost savings”. However, the redundancies are lower than many analysts had predicted, with some observers forecasting