Lets face it France would have no issues or reservations about sharing the source codes…need to consider who our real friends are.

I would be very happy to see Rafales parked up at RNAS Yeovilton, lovely looking bird, carries tons more kit than the F35 and we can get some two seaters for SEAD and FAC/CAS etc, its already wired for Stormshadow/scalp, and its planned to carry Meteor. Have a nice joint training establishment, cross decking between carriers, joint upgrades…..I see no disadvantages really other than the work BAE does on F35…they would probably still get that and RollsRoyce has been shafted by the 135/136 debate anyway.

The preliminary design of the Thetis class was by Y-ARD (Yarrow Admiralty Research Division) according to Olsen and Storgaard (1998)

Olsen, G. & S. Storgaard (1998): Flådens Skibe og Fartøjer 1945-1995, Marinehistoriske Skrifter, Copenhagen, Denmark, 317 pp.

Regards
JS

Cheers! I thought I had read that some where, could not find it on my book shelf.

Wanshan – Flex is a danish system of exchanagble boxes and weapons, but the actual design of the vessel is not flex.

Interesting comments.

Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t the fudge include the ludicrous plan for 7 or 8,000 turbines? Surely that makes no sense, either economically or viably? By, say, 2030, by when we must have replaced all our existing power stations and added more, what is the proposed mix? What would your favoured mix be?

Well if most of the turbines are built in the uk thats good investment in our industry and the majority will be off shore. Its no more ludicrous than say building a series of massively expensive floating drills to pump crude and gas out of the sea bed to be pumped through hundreds of miles of pipes to be processed…

My ideal would be first off all a massive drive to reduce our demand, turning off the office block lights, getting people to turn off their appliances. There is currently one power station in the UK thats only role is to maintain all the TVs, computers etc that are left on stand-by. That would be a good start.

My favoured option is a slow drive to local energy production, to much of the stuff is wasted in transmission. If you reduce the distance electricity travels you waste less in heat loss. Bio-mass is a renewable little used in the UK but would lend itself to local production especailly in rural areas. That teamed with a lots of renewable, some nukes, a few carbon capture units and lots of money for fusion reseach would be my answer.

@Grim901 – well said, while I am climate change “believer” the fanatics sitting in roads at confrences dressing up as dying seals drives me potty. And as for UEA, daft b****rs the stuff they exagerated supported the claims anyway, prats.

I’m a secondary teechar in a special needs school currently but i’ve done years of mainstream as well as doing teacher training and edu stuff in Tanzania.

@JoeyR – I don’t think you are entirely wrong there, the drive of our energy policy has been pants frankly.

Nuclear used to be the best option but there is one huge problem, an elephant in the room, how much uranium is actually left to dig up? Its a matter of huge debate at the moment. The most pessimistic figure is 60 years at current usage, now thats likely to be wrong but its an indication of the potential problem. Also using uranium means you are dependent on a foreign state for your energy resource and with increased demand for a diminishing stock the cost of producing nuclear is going to go up.

So that leaves us back with two choices to guarantee energy security- re-newables such as wind and tidal which are the most promising for the UK (not a fan of the severn barrage – the environmental damage will be massive to the upper reaches of the river.) and perfecting carbon capture and reopening the coal mines. Neither is perfect, coal stocks are finite (estimates of between 100-300 years) and carbon capture is not perfected, while renewables have all sorts of cost, placement and reliability issues.

The most sensible solution is in the end the fudge the govt eventually came to – use all three! Nuclear and renewables to supply the daily norm and coal-carbon capture for peak times, this all has to be tied to a drive for energy efficiency so we use less over all. Using more than one type of energy source isn’t a luxury, makes good (strategic) sense and if done right will spark off some new industry in the UK.

Well there we are, I had gone to lunch thinking how I was going to phrase my reply and its all been said already. I’ll leave Front of Free bashing be then, I think its probably been kicked into touch by everyone else.

Joey, you should be careful not insult a man’s profession and take such a naive view of it. If thats how you think education is delivered you are welcome (and I genuinely mean this BTW, i do it regularly) to come in and spend the day with myself and my colleagues. I’ve had MPs, local councellors, press, researchers…its all good and you would be made very welcome and you can take part in a global warming lesson where the students are given the evidence for and against and allowed to make up their own minds…. we don’t do brainwashing, we leave that to sunday “school” and Rupert Murdoch.

we spend time looking at historical trends in temperature from different sources, sat pics of glacial retreat, we take air samples ourselves and test them, we look at presentations from both sides of the debate and the students eventually write a reply about their decision based on the evidence.

E-mail me if you would like an invite, I teach history and science too, my debates on whether Hitler was mad or not, whether nuclear deterrence works and whether the world is flat might interest you too.

No, thankfully, the opposite. The edifice of MMGW is cracking and with any luck will have been discredited within two years.

You are kidding me? Not the forum to debate this at all but can this Geography teacher say to you please take your head out of the sand, next you’ll be telling me you don’t believe in evolution by natural selection, gravity, tectonic movement or the Big Bang. Please see attached photo, if you need more eveidence i’ll mail you the field work I did on Mount Kilimanjaro. If you say sun spots to me I will just laugh (and i’ll show you why thats balderdash too).

In this sense, you are correct. As exemplified by Islamist extremism, arguably the most serious threat we are dealing with.

All extremists are a serious threat, I see the christian and Hindu ones as causing just as much pain in the near-future, and what the Jewish extremists are doing in Israel/Palestine boils my blood too. Bush and Blair in my mind were pretty fundamental about their beliefs, dangerous men. Again not the place to debate either.

Which I do and I don’t see any likelihood of the UK joining the Euro in the next decade, if ever.

Pitty really, its such a pain to change curency when i nip to the continent, which I can get to quicker than most of the UK. And I am sure they all came out of recession quicker and more strongly than we did holding on to our little island funny money and weird debt ridden ways. We will join it eventually, its as enivitable as glacial retreat casued by carbon induced greenhouse effect.

That is partly true but that foetal offer was rapidly superceded by the Schumann plan which started life as the Common Coal and Steel Pact, I believe, which then became the Common Market, of which I may say I was a fervent supporter. I fell out of love with it as it gradually turned itself from a community of trading partners into the monolith which it now is.

The monolith thats improved car and road safety? The monlith that has helped enshrine human rights in our laws (ones written by UK lawyers by the way)? The monolith that has allowed people to travel, spend, mix and intergrate all over the continent? The monolith that is ensuring that petty nationalistic squabbles don’t descend into conflict? The monolith that will allow us to face China/india/US etc on something like equal terms? Westminster is a monolith that has little relevance to people in Cornwall or the outer hebridies so I am not sure what the ho har is about moving some of those powers and decisions a couple of hundred miles east, its not as if there are no elected UK officials there speaking up for you and probably with more success than your whipped local MP who just follows party line for his loyalty points..

I think our debate is turning itself into another thread!!

Agreed!

Root and branch reviews cover figures and what you’re willing to pay, you don’t use one to remove a capability the 2 largest parties are both commited to which parliament has already consented to fund.

We need a nuclear deterrant, and experts have already made it clear a cut to 3 boats will not maintain full time coverage, so the Vanguard replacement must be a class of 4 submarines, the only question is just how many of the common missile compartments we decide to stick in the damn thing

There was no real debate and there is a reason the current government did not allow a free vote on trident, the majority of MPs would have voted against it. It was a whip led vote and an issue that most labour MPs weren’t going to rebel against given the state of play in that party.

I still maintain that if you are going to have a free, frank and honest appraisal of UK defence and foreign policy you cannot ring fence anything otherwise you are already deciding outcomes and aims before hand. Pointless exercise.

We are not discussing relying on the USA. I do not agree that our interests are mutually exclusive.

Not entirely no, but the UK is much closer to Europe on many issues such as climate and trade for instance than the US and the whole religous aspect certainly pushes most Brits firmly into the Euro camp, we see the world quite differently from the US in many ways temporal and spiritual. I personally feel closer to Germany, France, Holland and scandanavia than I ever do to the US or most of the commonwealth.

But that’s the problem. Our neighbours are rapidly ceding their sovereignty, thereby reducing their ability to act independently. In any case, apart from France, no other neighboring country has a comparable military standing. And as for common interests, despite the usual political game-playing, our underlying alliance with the USA is as deep as ever, based on common language, strong cultural links, and a historial heritage, which manifests itself every single day in some form or another.

What is soverignty anyway? Nationalism is a modern idea born of the 19th Century, Eurpoean alliances, politics and loyalties were very fluid and dynamic for years. look at the make up of wellington’s army or Marlborogh’s a hundred years before.

Our alliance with the US is much weaker than you think, look at the row over F35, in many ways its an alliance of conveniance and the UK is tossed aside when its no longer suits the US.