European countries use various options. Some US derived:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

UK did look at getting proper prime ministerial transport plane but the idea proved unpopular.

It turns out that in this day and age 2-3 m class telescopes aren't that expensive compared to launching and running the things. They also really really want to get the James Webb Space Telescope up there before spending money anything else.

Compared to the european budget carries probably. Until the US opens up its market though we won't really know.

Because the police are the ones out and about in the small hours of the morning. If you are outside for sustained periods it doesn't need to be below freezing to be unpleasent enough to reduce your effectiveness.

Probably they wanted a larger vehicle able to hold a fair number of offices with some cross country ability. Getting something from the military is significantly cheaper than buying something built for that purpose. It may not be perfect but it is good value.

You can't force any level of review. It can always be turned into people signing stuff without looking at it. What the UK is currently doing is getting a buch of lawyers to go through and dig out all the laws that don't do anything any more. Every few years they pass a big omnibus repeal bill removing them. 2013 version can be found at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...

Get rid of up or out and then actively recruit people who will put up with tedium in return for pretty solid job security.

The lids on the silo aren't that thick and disabling the lanchers is probably just a matter of throwing a few pounds of explosives at them. You can throw more it if makes you feel safer. Then you have a mildly radioactive mess but that can be delt with.

Eh quite a bit of industry where even small impovements in weather forecasting are extremely valuable.

Heathrow is owned by Heathrow Airport Holdings. Private sector. The tax disc website is by Government Digital Services. Public sector. The savings they have made by moving government functions online are in the billions.

Probably unrelated. In this case recent means after 1923 (yes there are a bunch of exceptions but they are all either very narrow or involve music you haven't heard of). If they were going for copyright expired stuff you would hear the likes of Ragtime, early jazz and blues.

"mp3". The six copyright purist nerds in existance who might take such an instruction to mean you should do it while respecting copyright would have insisted on ogg vorbis or FLAC.

Part of that is budget. A lot of museums don't have the money to digitalise their content or maintain anything but the most straightforward of websites.

I don't think photography policy is linked to dissemination approach. Historically they have been pretty random. A condition of a loan somewhere. some long gone director getting paranoid about theft. A curator who just didn't like photographers. A lot of the team people aren't even sure who is allowed to change the policy and there was little pressure to do so. Then came camera phones.

Counterpoint. The number of people who visit the British museum to see the Rosetta stone