pjhydroYou seem to have the common “daily mail” view of these sort of contracts.
The “Daily Mail” view? Blimey since when did they support such a left wing, unionised view of public spending? I should stop buying the Granuiad…. My view is very much that essential services should not be handed over to the private sector. I have never thought of the Daily Mail and I having anything in common.
The contract will have been put out to tender, then the shortlisted companies will have to provide costings and details on how they are going to fulfill that contract. Then the best value company will win the contract.
Based on the view that ths was the best way to proceed. One of the biggest complaints of PFI is that it is considered the best way to proceed and rarely compared to a non-pfi solution. Never was buying tankers or SAR outright really considered, PFI was the only goal, so yes, based on that framework I am sure the best tender was selected…. still not a very good deal for the tax payer.
These companies are not charities, and usually do it far cheaper than the MOD could, so why begrudge them making a profit?
But do they? the evidence isn’t there. In schools where I currently work things cost more under PFI, they are slower to react to change and processes are slower. It is cheaper on the govts books as it doesn’t appear in their normal costs, long term its massively expensive. Look at the difference in cost per hour between Omega Tankers and AirTanker (see AFM last month).
If the MOD/government write the terms for a maintenance contract why is it so bad that the company actually sticks to those terms?
No it isn’t, but the deal is negotiated and from what I have seen in education its not the civil servants that cool the shots in the discussions. If the deal was negotiated in the terms of what was actually wanted by those on the ground no company would touch it, therefore quality of service falls.
Would you prefer to go to the old days of having a bunch of PSA blokes sat around drinking tea, then taking ages to fix something as simple as a light bulb. Having the MOD spring for their sick pay, gold plated pension rights etc?
No I would prefer efficient inhouse providers are used for frontline services. If it is essential it should not be for profit, be it a hospital, school or Search and Rescue. Perhaps we should put the Ambulance service out to tender eh…?
The very reason the majority of the armed forces has gone civvy apart from the front line is due to cost, and if these civvy companies can make a profit, and still do it cheaper than the old way it just goes to show how inefficient the old way was.
No its gone civvy so sucsessive governments can claim to have reduced waste in the defence budget and put off paying for things for years, appearing to “put the frontline first” by saying support services are less essential and can be done by civvies paid for by long term credit.
I have worked most of my career under both ways, and the current way seems to get things fixed far more quickly than before.
I’ll take your word for that, but PFI is a byword for waste and inefficency in my industry and old friends in the services tell me much has got worse.
pjhydroReally? Do we need 200 in front line service? Telic was 2 Armoured regiments and squadrons from one more.
Rule of three anyone? If you use one of something you need three to make it sustainable… ie 1 regiment of C2 requires another 2 to be actually useable long term, so at minimum you need three regiments + training unit (ie 200 C2!)
Can we not cut the 380 figure by half and also replace the other tanks with lighter vehicles that can be transported more easily and we can use in other places?
1/2 below the useful threshold and lighter vehicles useful where?
Will GW1 and GW2 happen again? If so we can provide support with units other then heavy tanks.
so bit part player then, take it we won’t be part of the main command chain then. Also GW1/2 are not guides to future conflicts, what happens when we come up against a peer rival with a useful army?
Selling off 3 E-3s and not requiring basing and crew will earn us money and save alot in the long run. Mean we will also only have to upgrade 4 in future and not 3.
And when we need more than 4? Thats a very minimum fleet and sold off for little gain.
Agree, private training possibly not as effective sometimes.
Definately not, never reacts fast enough to changing requirements.
All our eggs in one basket? We have to do that sometimes, it is a hard choice but we need savings. If we can put all tanker/tranports at Brize, and all MPAs at Kinloss, why not all Typhoons at Coningsby?
How big do you think Coningsby is? It is also about sortie rate, you can only operate so many aircraft of one runway.
pjhydroSurely Gripen NG and F35 are not really much of a High-low mix? very similar performance figures….
And the cost of operating two small fleets would be huge, two lots of engineering facilities and training, two spares and supply chains and a fleet of 16-24 is not very sustainable long term.
pjhydroWe clearly see this so completely differently that it is unproductive to continue our debate. I’ll bow out, but still watch, with great interest, how the arguments playn out concerning the SDR, and finally, when it is published in the Autumn, we shall know how our Government see the next decade or two.
Fair enough, shake hands and move on eh? Enjoyed the discussion.
Yeah its all conjecture at present isn’t it, we might have a slightly clearer idea after the manchild Osbourne has finished today.
pjhydroSorry, but I simply disagree with your broad-stroke analysis. Groups of extreme militant Muslims are intent on destroying the life and culture of the West. And that is black and white. Their reasoning is muddled and often contradictory so the history is irrelevant. They want to kill us and we want to prevent it. Black and white.
How is that broadstroke analysis? I would have said your black and white arguement is a broadstroke of the highest order, you are lumping together thousands of people, from many different branches (and often contradictory) of islam who are “in this fight” for hugely different reasons. You ask what an angry youth in Bradford is going to blow up the underground in London for and ask what a Taliban fighter in Helmand wants to blow up a NATO convoy for you will get different answers.
As it happens very few of “them” want to destroy life and culture in the west. Al-Q main, central, over-riding aim is the west (non-muslims) out of Saudi Arabia. They have no designs on an Islamic state of Ohio, thats just Fox News propoganda.
The history is very relevant, its history – empires, crusades, cold war, the Great Game, last 20 years of western policy, israel-palestine etc if you do not try to understand peoples greivences you will never defeat them, or in this case come to some sort of muddled compromise because we are not going to defeat them militarily. In the whole history of mankind ideaology (how ever muddled) has never been beaten by military force, the whole birth of the USA is predicated on that notion and that is a lesson from history many in the USA seem to forget.
pjhydroI disagree with both of you about playing the opposition’s game for them. It’s an old argument and I have never been convinced of its merits. And this particular “conflict” is black and white.
small dispirate groups of terror cells that have no solid direct links, radicalised by various means attacking thier own countries because of different reasons, all stemming from a series of western policy decisions, previous wars, religious ideaology, thousand+ years of history and a bag full misguided nutters and that is “Black and White”? It really isn’t, an its thinking that it is that will keep us in this mess….
pjhydroIf that’s the case then they should detach themselves from their religious label. The Irish Republicans were/are Catholic, although not exclusively so, but Republicanism was their creed. In the case of militant Islam, they are Muslims and it is Islam, or their interpretation of it for which they fight and which they want to impose on the West. Until they chose a new label they will always be seen, rightly, as Muslim terrorists.
I think its more the case that we shouldn’t pander to an errounous label that they choose themselves, we end up doing their propaganda for them. By underling that they are seen as “muslim terrorists” by the west we just end up pushing more muslims into that camp, tarring with the same brush. There were many republican terrorists that would loved to have seen the British Govt play the Catholic card but it was resisted despite the unionists best efforts because it would have just increased support and membership.
By repeating their own label we help them out, they are just terrorists with small ideas trying to foist their view on a majority who do not wish to be associated. Its similar to when Bush said the US was on a “crusade” in 2001- he helped the cause of the otherside no end, so insensitive, but it was exactly what Al-Q would want America to have said, underlining the us vs them, east vs west, muslim vs christian agenda.
I think that paints Clinton rather too favourably – he was a wily, scheming, devious individual but, like, Blair, highly plausible, if you didn’t dig too deep.
Oh I agree, absolute sh*t, but love the guys style -Clinton that is. But then I’m watching from afar I didn’t have to live with his domestic policy. He was a Victorian politician with a big cigar (!) and saxaphone, loved it.
Most politicos are hateful to be perfectly frank but you can admire them in odd sorts of ways. Churchill big case in point, total ar*e but you got to admire the style.
pjhydropjhydro – the reason I used the term Muslim terrorists is because they are. I am not sure what else you would call them. They are Muslims and they either try to blow people up or succeed in blowing them up. Help me here if I am missing something.
Just “terrorists”? Are they terrorists because they are muslim or for some other reason? I think the picture is mixed. No one would have called the IRA “Catholic terrorists” though technically that was true. Labelling them “muslim” suggests a representation of the world muslim view by these groups, that is certainly not the case.
Well, we’ll choose to disagree. I have managed not to join in the general global loathing of Reagan and Bush as I found it irrational and childish. Most US presidents have had their failings although none have been idiots. I certainly admired Reagan a great deal more than I did Carter and Clinton and as for Obama – the least said the better.
Fair enough. Regan did have quite a bit going for him, but he always felt like a lovable mad old uncle to me, empire of evil indeed. But bush for me was several sandwiches short of the full picnic. Obama so far has been a real damp squib frankly, a man not up to the job presented to him. I did like Clinton though, real old 19th century style doesn’t give a monkeys politician…
pjhydroArticles have appeared in the media stating that 10 NH-90 Helicopters are to be ordered to support British Special Operation forces at a cost of £100 Million. I have to ask why? Putting the Chinook HC3 debacle aside couldn’t existing platforms be modified for the role, or couldn’t a number of the Chinooks on order be purchased for the role?
It is also stated that the SAS actually wanted the Special Operations variant of the UH-60 which they believe is a more reliable and proven platform.
I think its one of those non-stories/excited civil servant episodes ala “The Thick of it”…
pjhydroIt’s global, and justifiably labelled as such, because wherever Muslim terrorists attack or try to attack, be it Europe, USA, the Far East or Australasia the origins of the perpetrators are in the Middle East – either historically or through training camps. The leaders of Al-Qaeda originate in or are still based in the Middle East.
But they are citizens of the country they attack. That could be said of all terrorists, the IRA was sponsored by Americans and Libiyans for much of its time and Irish Nationlists trained overseas, doesn’t make them “foreign terrorists.
You have used the words “Muslim terroists” above, this is very much an extension of how the world has been painted in the last decade and it is very damaging. Why do we not label certain groups “christian terrorists” for instance? If this is not a ‘religious’ conflict as all leaders have been at pains to underline, why say “muslim terrorists”? Not getting at you specifically, just find peoples use of phrases like that revealing.
The pat anti-Americanism of your last paragraph is irrelevant and not even humourous.
That wasn’t “anti-americanism”, it was anti Regan/Bush. I could say very much the same about many leaders around the world including our idiot Blair (Pope Lord Anthony of Basra IX). Its also not irrelevant in that the mental faculty of a nations leader (and in this case the leader of “the free world”) very much shapes world opinion and policy. Regan and Bush are two men who see the world in very black and white terms, good vs evil, them vs us, with us or against us etc… I happen to utterly disagree with them, that doesn’t make me anti-american, it means I think Regan and bush are idiots.
pjhydroFirst one I meant was identical to top picture, ie camo, spherical nose.
The ones I have seen at Saints may have been the latter more puck shaped nose though. Have also seen the type in your last pic here.
Interesting….hmmm there was a rumour a couple of years back that the CASTOR nosed defender was in the sky again on some trials work, not with the CASTOR radar which is now obsolete but with something else in it, I assumed it was just BS.
pjhydroI think Nimrod is okay as Nimrod has proven very useful in Iraq and Afghanistan and clearly useful in a wide range of roles including in providing air support for counter-insurgency operations. I think the carriers are okay but I think the role the will be expected to fill will be different post the SDSR – and this will be reflected in the air craft purchased to fly from them.
But the Nimrods job is being done by smaller cheaper aircraft and UAVs now, its not needed in Afghan…. just playing devils advocate but the fact that Nimrod has been delayed, an aircraft we are told we are desperate for and has been delayed this long already, pending the review is eyebrow raising….
pjhydroSetting up a long-term PFI with a single customer (the govt) and no real chance to make a profit (or do they ask for your credit card number before lowering hoisting you up?) is more than questionable. I mean, this isn’t a tollway. It’s the same with govt lease deals. Just because it doesn’ show up on the books upfront doesn’t mean it’s cheaper. It ain’t. But what am I saying! You can make good money off the scheme! 😀
Hear him! Hear him! ++
pjhydroIn many cases the government can’t afford to upgrade or modernise a particular service, hence the use of private sector money. Is it so wrong that a private company makes a profit?
It is when its Tax payers money in regards to an essential service. Why on earth should I help make someone richer and help shareholders dividends for a service that has to be provided? It means private firms have government and by extension us the tax payer over a barrel as they can put up the price to maximise profit when they become the sole provider of an essential service.
I was recently in Gib with a service friend, there Serco have the contract to provide the building services. They are making a fat pile of cash, doing ****** all and people can’t even change a light bulb in their office as this breaks the contract- Serco have sole right to provide the service, demand the money and can provide the level of service they think fit as long as it meets the minimum requirement. Thats what happens when you have a profit motive over a providing service motive. Serco have the MOD over a barrel.
pjhydroOn a more direct defence review note, Nimrod intro is delayed again and there is a strange comment in the ministers statement….
“He also said that “some ad hoc capability” would be available before this date but that “all major equipment projects will be assessed as part of the comprehensive strategic defence and security review the Government are conducting”.”
Filed Under Military Aviation News.
http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=2161&thisSection=military
So Nimrod is “in the review” then and perhaps has been delayed because it might not make it? Pure rumour control and conjecture on my part of course…
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