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The 'Take it Outside' thread This thread will no longer be moderated ***
Will wrote: "Umm, Geoff, that report actually blames private contractors for failing to properly maintain the aircraft, rather than the design of the aircraft itself (admittedly rather old, being initially base..."Hold on, who was in power during this debacle? Labour. did they not look at the cost overruns? Did they not look at the fact that the things wouldn't work?
Mind you, the Conservative Party did the same thing in the 1980's with the original AWACs order for Nimrods. It couldn't tell the difference between incoming Soviet bombers and cars on the coast road. Margaret Thatcher finally put a stop to that mess and ordered American Boeing AWACs instead.
To be balanced Geoff, no government of either party has ever controlled MOD cost overruns, wasteful and stupid spending, failed capital projects and general financial irresponsibility.And the General staff never admit to HMG when kit doesn't work, do they? In case they have to admit to their cock ups.
Have you ever heard of any project arriving on time, on budget and actually working on point of delivery?
Look at the new aircraft carriers. One may never ever enter service even though it is part built, and no one has a clue how much the other one will have cost by the time it is undergoing sea trials. Frankly, the whole thing has been a mess for decades, and no one is prepared to have a go at sorting it out
Having seen that from the inside, Will, nothing surprises me with MoD procurement.
All the politicians are too scared, Geoff. Except possibly Corbyn, but I suspect he will have more immediate priorities than MOD procurement (except for Trident's replacement, which I sincerely hope he manages to stop)
Marc wrote: "wouldn't live anywhere else in the world Jim!"I know a lot of people like you Marc :-)
Actually I think it's good so many people do like living there
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Having seen that from the inside, Will, nothing surprises me with MoD procurement."One issue (having watched it from a shipbuilding perspective) is that government asks for something. But they don't really know what they want and the parameters change at irregular but comparatively frequent intervals.
Not only that but the negotiations take place between civil servants who've been in post a year or so and will move on in a year or so, and men who have often spent their lives in the industry and know how things work.
So when government bids, the initial tenders try to take into account the changes, but we're constantly surprised at how ridiculous some of the stuff they come up with is.
Will wrote: "All the politicians are too scared, Geoff. Except possibly Corbyn, but I suspect he will have more immediate priorities than MOD procurement (except for Trident's replacement, which I sincerely ho..."Without Trident firing plenty of cruise missiles we've lost the west coast of Scotland ;-)
Damned Russians with snow on their boots!
Jim wrote: "Will wrote: "All the politicians are too scared, Geoff. Except possibly Corbyn, but I suspect he will have more immediate priorities than MOD procurement (except for Trident's replacement, which I..."You may laugh, but's me who'll have to witness Russian soldiers marching past the local town hall!
It's all right for you in your corner of England's green and pleasant land :)
R.M.F wrote: "Jim wrote: "You may laugh, but's me who'll have to witness Russian soldiers marching past the local town hall! It's all right for you in your corner of England's green and pleasant land :) "
The Russians will not invade and over run Scotland, because we have a nuclear deterrent. If you get rid of Trident, or its replacement, however...
R.M.F wrote: "Jim wrote: "Will wrote: "All the politicians are too scared, Geoff. Except possibly Corbyn, but I suspect he will have more immediate priorities than MOD procurement (except for Trident's replacem..."And we build the nuclear deterrent, I think you'll find that the security round here is 'interesting' to say the least ;-)
The Russians will not invade Scotland, with or without Trident. They find it hard enough to keep and control what they have already...(Plus most of the invasion fleet would break down at sea and have to be rescued and treated as economic migrants by the baltic countries, at which point they wouldn't want to leave)
message 1563:
by
Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)
(last edited Sep 01, 2015 08:21AM)
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If the Russians were thinking about invading, you just need to send them a copy of any book on what happened to the Armada. That'd scare the bejeebus out of them.
Russia's nuclear deterrent is far superior to the UK's. If ever we get into a shooting war with Russia, there's only going to be one winner.
if we get in a nuclear shooting war with anyone, it gives the lie to the concept of deterrent
R.M.F wrote: "Russia's nuclear deterrent is far superior to the UK's. If ever we get into a shooting war with Russia, there's only going to be one winner."You have an awful lot to learn.
R.M.F wrote: "Russia's nuclear deterrent is far superior to the UK's. If ever we get into a shooting war with Russia, there's only going to be one winner."there will be no winners
Jim wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "Russia's nuclear deterrent is far superior to the UK's. If ever we get into a shooting war with Russia, there's only going to be one winner."there will be no winners"
I read somewhere that cockroaches will come out okay.
Tories you mean? Yeah, probably :-)
Marc wrote: "Tories you mean? Yeah, probably :-)"lol
I remember a short-lived comedy show with George Cole called Comrade Dad, if I remember right.The premise of the programme was that the Russians set off a fake nuclear attack, all the great and good dived into the nuclear bunkers. The Russians then parachuted in and concreted up all the entrances.
I seem to remember that was the high water mark of the show, after that it got tedious and was canned.
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "...The premise of the programme was that the Russians set off a fake nuclear attack, all the great and great and good dived into the nuclear bunkers. The Russians then parachuted in and concreted up all the entrances...."Worth a try!
In the 1980s, the powers that be decided that several people I knew would be eligible for the nuclear bunker in Carmarthen, I can remember one chap's wife getting very shrill and tedious because she wasn't included. It was quite a topic at the time and our under stairs cupboard seemed to be the best place for us remaining unimportant mortals. As there were three people, 4 dogs, 2 cats (& litter trays of course) I decided that all things considered I would take my chance outside,
Point I was making was this:Nuclear weapons didn't stop the USA from being humiliated by North Vietnam.
Britain's nukes didn't discourage Argentina from invading the Falklands, and the UK's nuclear arsenal would barely dent the Russians.
So why do we need them? The only other nuclear powers are France, Israel, Pakistan, India, and possibly North Korea. I can't see us hitting the red button against any of that lot.
R.M.F wrote: "I can't see us hitting the red button against any of that lot. ..."And that's the point of nuclear weapons. Not that they stop conventional war, but that they stop nuclear war because it's not worth it.
Basically we know that if only one power has nuclear weapons, they'll use them.
So we decided to see what would happen if several powers have nuclear weapons, and so far history has shown that they don't use them.
It's like chemical warfare. So far, since 1918, nobody has used chemical weapons against an enemy who could retaliate with chemical weapons.
I'm not going to repost the distressing photo of the drowned baby on a beach. We've all seen it.Conservatives let children drown and do nothing but count their money.
What else is there to say?
Oh Will, that's a cheap shot. Blame the bastRds who are making money out of people smuggling these desperate souls!
Lynne, I think we are all entitled to look at Camaron's response, don't you? In fairness, even Tory MP's are finally repulsed by him over this.
1. The children were not drowned on a British beach.2. The EU is doing nothing to alleviate this crisis. If you want to make a political point, Will, look to the socialist majority in the European Parliament and its elected officials (elected by the MEPs, that is).
3. Most asylum seekers are not interesting in coming to the UK but to Germany.
4. Most of them are not asylum seekers but economic migrants.
5. Migrants have been drowning in the Mediterranean by the thousand for a number of years now. Why do two dead children on a beach suddenly get your crocodile tears going?
Will wrote: "I'm not going to repost the distressing photo of the drowned baby on a beach. We've all seen it.Conservatives let children drown and do nothing but count their money.
What else is there to say?"
Or you could blame Ed Miliband, but the drowned will still be dead.
in regard to your last point Geoff, it often takes a tipping point incident or particularly a visual/photographic image to sway people's opinion. The young Vietnamese girl covered in Napalm or the Vietnamese shot with a pistol at his head being two examples.As to the political point, as Cameron himself acknowledges the long-term solution is peace and stability in the region. What he neglected to say was that while Iraq was destabilised into chaos at the hands of the US & the UK, Libya was down to him & the wee French fellah and Syria is down to pretty much everybody. I don't think he or the UK has anything to contribute to bringing peace and stability to that area any more.
And Cameron will still be refusing to take refugees on financial grounds, Geoff.(I'll not take offence this time at the cheap personal jibe which ill becomes you)
Will wrote: "And Cameron will still be refusing to take refugees on financial grounds, Geoff.(I'll not take offence this time at the cheap personal jibe which ill becomes you)"
The other point worth noting was that Cameron wanted to get involved in Syria years ago, to lend support to the US and other forces. Unfortunately, that got voted down and ISIL were allowed to expand into both Syria and Iraq.
Don't worry, Will, I didn't take offence at being accused of letting children drown whilst I count my money.
Marc wrote: "in regard to your last point Geoff, it often takes a tipping point incident or particularly a visual/photographic image to sway people's opinion. The young Vietnamese girl covered in Napalm or the ..."I think you've struck the nail firmly on the head here Marc
People are heavily influenced with visual images. I noticed this when the Tsunami hit the Tamil and surrounding areas. We didn't have a telly so just heard about it on the radio. But our shock at the effects of the Tsunami was almost dwarfed by our shock at the effects of constant news coverage and harrowing pictures on people here.
Now what might have been media sensitivity has been overcome because people are posting pictures on facebook bypassing the TV.
So this one will hit harder.
Now if I've noticed the 'picture factor' you can bet that a lot of others will have noticed it and indeed I'm starting to see posts on facebook saying that the person will automatically unfriend people who post too many graphic images.
As for Syria, what can we do?
Assuming we don't particularly want British lads to die there, then there's no point getting involved on the ground. The only people who have enough men are the Americans, or the Russians (who'd almost certainly need US logistic support) or the Chinese (who again, because it's so far from home, would need logistic support)
Without 'boots on the ground' we don't have a lot of options. We can walk away and forget about it. At some point in the next ten years there might be a winner.
We can try and give support to the least unpleasant?
Well it might work.
But looked at in a historical context, all that is happening is that we're seeing the last unraveling of the Ottoman Empire. Iraq was an utterly artificial creation and has no real reason to exist. Syria is much the same. If you look at history, there is no 'natural' boundaries, no 'obvious' countries, no areas where people naturally give their loyalties to.
The sensible thing is for Iran to expand west a bit, but in return let the Iranian Kurds join an Independent Kurdish homeland.Turkey could swallow up 'North Syria' but again, hand over the Turkish Kurds to an Independent state, and you'd have a small state based on Damascus that was on a par with Lebanon in population but has a lot of land not worth much.
Geoff, (especially knowing that you probably haven't any money whilst between jobs!) would you be happier if i clarified that to Conservative Politicians?
Jim, I think that the Syrian civil war would probably have been over by now if we & the US had kept our sticky fingers out of it...ISIL is the big de stabilising factor here at the moment. and here we have some issues.
FDirst, the idea of defeating them with airstrikes is nonsensical. They are a effectively at the same technological level as a terrorist grouping, and do not depend on either large infrastructure units or heavy amour. I'd suggest that knocking out a couple of their Toyota pickups with a cruise missile is actually ruinously expensive, whilst admittedly providing good headlines.
Boots on the ground is the only way to beat them, but equally I don't think there is any appetite here or abroad for UK military intervention of that sort. We did enough damage in Iraq.
The US will never let Iran near the Iraqui oilfields Bush worked so hard to get, will they? And can you imagine the Israeli reaction to that idea? They would start another war in weeks.
The answer is Corbyn's suggestion: get an international agreement and go for their source of funds. Someone buys their oil. Someone buys the gold etc they loot. Someone sells them diesel, weapons, bullets - so for the suppliers too.
Without funds they will wither away. (Possible problem being the rumour that the biggest supplier of finance and weapons to ISIL and and buyer of ISIL controlled oil is in fact Saudi Arabia, and we don't want to upset them , do we?)
In fact, I suspect there may never be a solution, and all we can do is take refugees from that area for the whole of the next century.
And thinking generally about refugees, does anyone else listen to the occasional Radio 2 slot on 'What makes us human'?last week was Max Moseley, with an utterly compelling argument that what makes us human is our unique ability to be cruel, malicious, and vindictive and our transparent delight in causing each other distress, pain and suffering to a degree that far outstrips our leaning towards compassion.
Hard to disagree, isn't it?
The problem for Saudi Arabia is that it has ridden the tiger of Wahhabi Islam for about two hundred years. It's integral to the Saudi state. And Daesh has sprung out of it. http://www.newstatesman.com/world-aff...
Wahhabi itself came out of the urge to purify Islam because it was seen at the time that Islam had been polluted and degraded by contact with 'the west' and it was that which was blamed for the collapse of the Islamic powers. (It's a basic human response, you might even see it in a small way expressed by some of the supporters of Corbyn at the moment. We have to cleanse the Labour party of Blair influence and go back to the left and rediscover our heartland.)
Saudi Arabia is in for a couple of bad years at the very least. We could be seeing the collapse of the gulf as we know it.
The break even price for Saudi Oil is about $100 a barrel http://uk.businessinsider.com/break-e...
What's it trading at now? $50 a barrel for Brent Crude?
The gulf states, like the countries hit by the Arab Spring, provided cheap food (and in the gulf cheap welfare, medicare etc) which kept the lid on things. Saudi is not going to be doing that any longer.
Not only that but Iran now has its money back and no sanctions.
If we think the middle east is messy at the moment, it is as nothing to what it could be in ten years time. The best hope is for Iran to move west, and frankly in another ten years they might do so with American backing with Daesh controlling everything from Mecca to Bagdad.
But Daesh is a Moslem problem. It's Shia who are dying in the largest numbers, and they aren't going to put up with it. Daesh has killed several orders of magnitude more followers of Islam than it has killed Europeans
Will wrote: "last week was Max Moseley, with an utterly compelling argument that what makes us human is our unique ability to be cruel, malicious, and vindictive and our transparent delight in causing each other distress, pain and suffering to a degree that far outstrips our leaning towards compassion.Hard to disagree, isn't it?"
I think Mr Moseley is externalising his own mind set. Something he is eminently qualified to do. I think he would have considerable trouble understanding compassion, even if he could identify it.
There are many compassionate people in this world, but unfortunately they rarely rise to a position where they could influence events. Politics is not designed to accommodate the compassionate, it is designed to accept megalomaniacal and psychopathic behaviour. Mr Moseley is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
while that last statement is true Jim, they will still export terrorism, even if through inspiration of local disaffected types. Also, don't overlook the increasing radicalisation that will come from jailing more Muslims here at home. The whole American street gang culture emerged from their prison system, grouping together in ethnic gangs for protection on the inside, exported back out on to the streets once free. In UK prisons, the 'gang' will be radical militants and they will recruit disaffected prisoners from non-Muslim backgrounds too
The Saudis can afford to hold the price of oil down until competitors have gone bust, then watch out when they have a more of a monopoly. They can afford to play the long game.
Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "The Saudis can afford to hold the price of oil down until competitors have gone bust, then watch out when they have a more of a monopoly. They can afford to play the long game."That's what the Saudi's appear to have thought. They expected that they'd bankrupt the US fracking industry. But unfortunately for the Saudi's the US has driven costs down and they're now putting in new rigs that are profitable at $50 a barrel. So the Saudi's are caught. If they back down and let the price go up their competitors do really well, increase output and the price probably stays down. The world isn't sure that the Saudis can drive the price up any more. Too many producers are now desperate for sales.
And as long as the price stays at this level the Saudis are bleeding.
Meanwhile we're sitting pretty with cheap oil boosting our economies, keeping people warm over winter and cutting delivery costs to shops keeping the price of food and other essentials down.
Marc wrote: "while that last statement is true Jim, they will still export terrorism, even if through inspiration of local disaffected types. Also, don't overlook the increasing radicalisation that will come from jailing more Muslims here at home. The whole American street gang culture emerged from their prison system, grouping together in ethnic gangs for protection on the inside, exported back out on to the streets once free. In UK prisons, the 'gang' will be radical militants and they will recruit disaffected prisoners from non-Muslim backgrounds too ..."The Saudis have been exporting 'proto-terrorism' for thirty or forty years. Most of the mosques which are regarded as causing problems are Saudi funded.
The problem we have at home is complex.
We cannot accept the Wahhabi ideology. It is totally at odds with our way of life, our belief in sexual equality etc etc.
So long as we don't accept Wahhabi ideology we're going to have a proportion of the islamic community that will be alienated.
If we jail them they cause trouble and claim they're martyrs, if we don't jail them they cause trouble and claim that we dare not touch them. The easy answer is that we let the Muslim community deal with them, but if it doesn't we're back to square one.
The 'gang' is a probability. Mind you the increasing violence in society is something I wrote about in a school essay back in the early 1970s! You could see it then and it hasn't got any better.
The British way would be to find the ringleaders, stuff their mouths with money, bring them into the establishment and then let them worry about crushing the violent ones, because they're the 'sell outs' and the obvious targets. It's worked in many places, will it work here? You could say it worked in Northern Ireland.
Agree with the above. The renewed Iran/Saudi dynamic, in light of sanctions being eased on Iran, will be even more 'interesting' over the coming years. Iran more or less runs Iraq these days, and with other allies such as Hezbollah in the region, I can't see things getting any better.
if Iran flexes its military muscles, god knows what the Israelis will do. They've almost gone to war with them recently
Marc wrote: "if Iran flexes its military muscles, god knows what the Israelis will do. They've almost gone to war with them recently"But they also supplied them with spares and ammunition during the war against Saddam! So I suspect both sides will huff and puff and be pragmatic
I'm not sure where the Israelis are concerned. Selling arms to an enemy engaged in fighting another enemy is just business. But when they feel directly threatened, whole different ballgame.When you credit that you are god's chosen race, then you place the highest value on a single one of your people's lives. Hence their disproportionate response against palestinian rockets, or swapping 400 Palestinian prisoners for a single one of their captured soldiers.
Or perhaps that's just a government that feels it has a duty of care for its people? Being British it's not something you'd expect us to recognise :-(
not the Ethiopian 'Jews' Israel plucked out in the middle of the famine and relocated them in Israel. Very much second class citizens there with racism and social discrimination demonstrated towards them. Which makes Palestinians 3rd class citizens there, or probably even Untermenschen I suspect
And that makes them so much worse than us?
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Diversity in action, Marc. I wouldn't live there even if paid an enormous sum of money! But it would be a poor world if we all thought the same.