They must be having a right laugh

[MARK.B.]

Having a laugh , there will have been a few of them from all Navies around the world of that I am sure, but each will have also seen a snapshot of their daily lives. Few if any ships even new ones and in some cases especially new ones, run without a hitch year on year and as they get older just like a car the faults get more frequent .
Being a little cynical in my old age I think the producer and the MOD were rather hoping that the average viewer would think how well our lad's n lassie's did in overcoming all those obstacles on a Top Secret mission .

 

[baldkev]

instead of military technology getting the investment it could have been medical and health

I fully understand that view...... equally war pushes on medical advancement, through both incidental tech advancement due to new weapons, but largrly due to dealing with the consequent injuries.

 

[shed9]

Keyword here is internet. It's used by good guys, bad guys and the grey middle ground, alike. It travels, primarily, through deep sea cables (satellites can't match that bandwidth and never will). How will you protect those cables from being hacked for information theft, from being disrupted intentionally, or even outright cut, without a "flotilla of ships"?

Cyber is all the fashion, sure, but it's just like trying to fight a war with air power alone: can't do it. At some point, you have to put boots on the ground, or in this case, anti-submarine frigates in the same water as the other guy's cable-cutting sub.

Your perception of who 'The good, the bad and the grey' is is dependent on which viewpoint you have.

Two weeks ago Norway reported that the deep sea cable that it uses for secure comms with its satellite receiver station in the Arctic had gone down. Gosh, I wonder why? Why would someone want to reduce the ability of parts of NATO to get information from surveillance satellites that were monitoring places like Ukraine? Who has the ability to do that? Who has submarine bases with easy access to the Arctic, and whose submarines routinely pass through those waters on their way into the Atlantic? Answers on a postcard...

The SvalSat facility is within a designated demilitarised zone in terms of NATO definitions. If it is been used militarily then see previous answer above. What would our 'good guys' do if Russia's demilitarised zones were used counter to agreed purpose.

PS: it hadn't gone done, it just lost one of two conduits thereby reducing redundancy capacity.

Will that fit on a postcard?

 

[Jameshow]

Duncan was a Type 45 destroyer, about a decade old. The current frigates were all designed before the Falklands, redesigned in a hurry as a result of Falklands war experience, and were only ever intended to last for 25 years. That they're showing their age is not surprising. That their replacements have been slowed down to save money is criminal.

I agree much older than Duncan etc.

Due to be replaced iirk.

 

[Jake]

Quite happy to accept that Biden is as bent as a nine bob note but that website is very dubious, although entertaining!. Swiss Policy Research - Wikipedia

It's more bent than a 17 bob note, bung the word Swiss on the front and then parrot lines. Also, a TN favourite.

 

[TominDales]

Anyone seen that TV program called life at sea, about the crew onboard a navy ship that is on it's last legs and should have been called carry on navy because you expect Sid james, Barbara Windsor and the rest to appear if they were still around as it is such a farce. If the Russians are watching they must be having a great laugh at such antics and wondering why this crew believe that the UK is at war with Russia, I suppose it makes good reality tv. The sad thing is that we used to have a navy that was probably the envy of the world but like everything else it has long gone, in 1953 the Queen reviewed her fleet at Spithead and we had 193 vessels, six carriers, about fifteen submarines and so many other vessels with something in the region of 150,000 sailors, my old man was on the submarine HMS Aurochs at the time. This navy ship also highlights an issue that our government seems to overlook and that is that having something is just the initial cost, you then need to maintain and keep it in good condition and upto date so HS2 is costing a fortune just to build, but if you watch the program about the Japanese shinkansen trains then you see just how much is needed to keep them running.

True, but its a matter of priorities.
UK defence spending is currently 2.5% of gdp, its was 12% in 1953 (were were at war), that is 5 times as much relatively speaking. In 1947 after ww2 it was 16% (25% during the war), it declined to 6% in 1950 but was back up 12% from 1950 to 1954 due to the Korean war.
Conversely spending on NHS has increased 4 fold sinece 1953, this is due to the aging population compared to 1953. Population in 1950s was consideraly younger and its the old that dominate Heath spending.
Spending on Health in UK 1949 to 2019

Basically you don't want to go to war with an aging population.

Same source IFS this is quite a stark comparison.
The peace dividend is not so much guns into ploughshares, but carriers into care-plans and bullets into books

 

[Jake]

Exactly, not the sort of person you want in this sort of situation, at his age he also only has a few remaining years to lose.

He's a more impressive human being than me or you. He's old, sure. He also was/is a stutterer, which doesn't help anyone seem impressive because of the speech faltering to avoid it (see Ed Balls), but the story that he is senile is a load of republican crap.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The story that he is senile is a load of republican rubbish? Sorry, we've all seen videos of him.

 

[Jake]

He's a stutterer - they have to search for other words when the word will not come.

 

[D_W]

He's a stutterer - they have to search for other words when the word will not come.

This is biden you're talking about? This is the first I've heard it. He's not that bright, and never was. He's in office for one reason - two, I guess.
1) he's not trump
2) he's not hillary

The second may sound odd, but the whole reason he was added as a vice president is because he was seen as no threat to obama for popularity, but could attract the northeast vote (which obama had trouble getting due to being from the midwest - specifically chicago - which has the same problem as someone from the east coast or west coast - its residents think it's the only habitable place in the entire world).

Having biden as a vice president (and getting the northeast vote that hillary was able to get due to relocating and being a NY senator) is less of a threat to life and limb than having a clinton as a vice president.

But he's never been sharp, and he says idiotic things now - and not due to being a stutterer. Bill Clinton was sharp the same way Reagan was comfortable and disarming. What we've had since has not been impressive.

 

[Jake]

Hillary would have been better but Biden is underrated.

 

[Jake]

I think Blinken is unimpressive however.

 

[D_W]

Hillary would have been better but Biden is underrated.

Biden is kind of like keeping a parking space with an inflatable car.

 

[shed9]

This is biden you're talking about? This is the first I've heard it.

I find that a little hard to believe, he has done countless interviews on the subject across many media platforms and it came up specifically during the election campaign. He has been used as a beacon for other sufferers worldwide and praised for his determination to overcome that situation in public speaking and his deflection of the derision of others who feel more comfortable describing those who stutter as;

He's not that bright, and never was

 

[Phil Pascoe]

He's a stutterer - they have to search for other words when the word will not come.

Does stuttering make him go to sleep in meetings?

 

[D_W]

I find that a little hard to believe, he has done countless interviews on the subject across many media platforms and it came up specifically during the election campaign. He has been used as a beacon for other sufferers worldwide and praised for his determination to overcome that situation in public speaking and his deflection of the derision of others who feel more comfortable describing those who stutter as;

Ok, you can not believe me if you want
I've never heard the hero stutter story here, which shouldn't be that big of a surprise given the car accident and beau's early death on top of it. I think those are a little tougher to deal with than stuttering.

Lack of cognitive ability is a whole lot more concerning than suffering. The gaffes I've seen from him have to do with slow processing. At least he's not the terrible person Hillary is, though. I think he's a decent individual compared to the idiotic trump and the fake and severely narcissistic Obama.

 

[Spectric]

He's in office for one reason - two, I guess.

They must have thought him to be the best candidate out of the bunch, so what does that say! American politics are nothing more than a circus, huge sums of money wasted in order to become the president, I suppose that is the best thing about UK politics, the campaign expense is capped which makes it fair but does allow the likes of Corbyn through. Also what about Bidens speech where he said he would allow a slight Russian incursion into Ukraine but was soon retracted.

 

[D_W]

Here's the deal with Biden - he ran in a field that really didn't have much. If there was a bill clinton type of candidate, the election would've been a blowout.

There was nothing from the republican side other than a trump who couldn't dig his own hole deeper fast enough, and if you told him the hole was getting deep, he'd dig faster to show you how big of a baby he is.

On the democratic side, you had a somewhat odd socialist takeover attempt from progressives that never gathered steam. Everyone wanted a mild candidate, and they got that with Biden, but they were running away from something (Trump) and not toward something. Why did trump get elected? because Hillary and most of the democratic and most of the republican establishment were getting way into the globalist economic thing and the public here was getting tired of it. Half of the country can't stand Hillary, and even in that case, the alternative was (incompetent) Bernie. Biden rises to the top and the lukewarm desire to have him elected was displayed in the fact that he barely beat a terrible sitting president. Terrible as in the worst I've seen in my lifetime.

So, we got the presidential version of white bread with no salt. It really bothers a lot of people that Biden is actually moderate, at least reasonably so.

I don't have great hopes for the next election - people are voting against candidates rather than for. Maybe an even worse outcome would be another very charismatic candidate who really only has their own desires in mind - ego.

If we look around the world at leaders, though, let's be honest. Do we want a Xi type instead? A strong leader propagandized and kept in by ideological force? No. Putin? No. Johnson? No. Bolsonaro - no. Trudeau? No.

I like Merkel, but you don't find many of those. Maybe it's a statement of the practicality and sensibility of the Germans to have a Merkel and the rest of us have the above.

 

[Spectric]

I don't have great hopes for the next election - people are voting against candidates rather than for.

I think it goes much deeper in the UK, here politics has become stagnant, stale, perceived as corrupt, outdated and tied to history. Yes people are now voting to stop someone rather than for a candidate which shows how PP the choice now is. There are so many issues and yet they call it a democratic system, how can that be when in elections the turnout often only represents a small percentage who bother to vote because the rest are probably so disillusioned with it all. Our next election in two years will more than likely end in a hung parliament, no one is going to want another Borris fiasco and if he hangs around much longer the rot will just eat through the tory party, as for labour well plenty of hot air and criticism of everyone else but not much else and the others have no real presence.

What we need is a total overhaul of everything and not just a collection of politicians, it needs to be made of a more diverse group of people from engineering, sciences, etc etc so you get a realistic outcome when decisions are made. Lets have a new parliament building outside of london, leave all the historcal pomp and bshiete behind and put it in the middle of the country. On top of this let's get real and accept that we are no longer a world super power and need to play cat and mouse with the big boys and playing war games because we will only end up getting hurt. Put the people first and hit poverty, taking back our streets, addressing homelessness and looking after the old rather than just treating them as no further use burdens. This unfortunately needs a new type of political system and leadership. The British have never been good at people management and leadership, they have been responsable for many failures so how can we expect a successful government, perhaps it is time to do what others do and that is bring in leaders under contract like sport clubs do a lot of, must be a reason why they use so many foreign managers and less british.

 

[Jake]

Does stuttering make him go to sleep in meetings?

Johnson fell asleep in the same meeting. Biden had the excuse of jet lag and a hectic schedule the day before.