You have said that you approve of aircraft carriers and think we should build them. Since you think that Britain is an insignificant country, which should immerse itself into the EU, I have to ask “why”? Without an independent foreign policy, why do you think Britain should spend even one penny on carriers?

Britain insignificant???I said no such thing??? But you read what you want.

As to Thatcher, she was certainly not above criticism in my eyes. Nonetheless, this country was sliding towards oblivion in the 1970s, and would have reached it without her leadership. Her military policy was, again, not beyond criticism, the plan to scrap HMS Endurance being an obvious example. But can you really see Edward Heath or Jim Callaghan having the guts to retake the Falklands? If we had let the invasion stand, Britain would have been almost as feeble and pointless as you obviously feel it is.

Wrong Gentleman Jim stood up for the Falklands and as for Heath you have no idea what he would have done. Seeing as he was in Spain during the Civil war and served in World War II I think you do him a diservice when it comes to his views on foriegn and defence policy.

And again with ths Britain feeble thing…when did I say this? I must be getting old….:confused:

And yes, I do take exception to your gratuitous insults aimed at Ward. Disagree with him all you like, but calling him a tit? Look in the mirror friend.

I called him a whinging tit. Goes on and on like a broken record with the same self interested, navel gazing, 28 year old story. And when I look in the mirror I see more of an annoying nipple than the full on tit.

pjhydro,
Sorry if my despair seems to colour my views on this lamentable state of affairs we find ourselves in. I served at Kinloss and recall the pans being used, at various times, by such visitors as the Argus, Atlantiques and Orions but the mighty Nimrod ‘owned’ them all.

The MR4A may have been a cluster you-know-what – whether we should have gone down the road of something else I don’t know, but when I see the French still using the Atlantique, in it’s latest version ATL3, then there must have been life left in the Mighty Hunter…

I still like the prop jobs so perhaps seeing an ATL3 doing our maritime work might make this bitter pill a little easier to swallow……

Could not agree more, very much mourning the passing of the rod here. Great aircraft even in MR2 guise it was still the dogs Bs until the end.

As for venison – I prefer ostrich myself. Little less rich and you get proper man-sized omelettes ….:)

LMFAO! Actually Fortnam and Masons do a scotched ostrich egg!

Well, having read that, I am not surprised that you cannot even spell the word “sovereign”.

YAWN…so your first angle of attack is to pick up on a typo, how tiresome.

The fact is that if it wants to be, Britain can be a major player in world affairs. For the money we have wasted on the EU since 1973 we could have bought a dozen carriers without even worrying about the change. If you wish to see the end of British sovereignty, subsumed into a European defence identity, and thus unable to undertake independent operations in the British national interest, then I have good news for you, you are going to get your way.

You really believe that? First off we are a “major player”, but we have increasingly declining importance. We would be in an even worse position globally had we not been in the EU, China and India are interested in the UK precisiely because we are in europe, if we were outside of it there would be no point to investing in the UK as you would be outside the free trade area for a start (with a correspondingly smaller economy and therefore none of those carriers you dream of.)

The British establishment has been completely gutless since Suez, and apart from a brief flurry under Thatcher, the long march towards self-imposed national decline has continued unabated. Your contempt for a man who fought magnificently for our country in 1982 really speaks volumes about you and the views you hold.

You see I almost mentioned Thatcher in my last post, I knew you would be a fan! She was a dinosaur, she belonged to a bygone era, she railed against the advance of history, attempting to cling to fantasy ideal of British greatness that was long dead. Suez didn’t make Britain impotent, it demonstrated that Britain was impotent in such matters without global consensus, it showed that the world had moved on since the days of the Victorian empire where we could span the globe with impunity. Suez demonstrates the begining of the world we now inhabit, one where co-operation and consensus are the order of the day. Thats not self-imposed thats just how the world now works, if you think the UK can somehow change this or choose a path different from the rest of the world, then you are welcome to your view, but recent history says you are wrong.

As for Ward…does “fighting for you country” put you beyond criticism? I wasn’t aware of that. In which case Field Marshall Haig was a magnificent chap without blemish and his calls for maintaining horse cavalry between the wars were the mark of a genius. Come on, what ever you’ve done people are entitled to think your wrong, or a whinging tit. Or is discussion to be stifled with constant calls of “but he fought for our country!”

We may as well be reduced to hunting for deer – I mean someone has already bumped off the Emperor of Exmoor. And as for the “gatherers” there has been a marked increase of late in the taking of mushrooms and I often see people hanging suspiciously around hedgerows clutching carrier bags…

I think i’ll stick to waitrose. As for Emperor, what a ridiculous story…350,000 deer get shot in the UK every year. Yes it was a little insensitive to shoot such a popular celebrity deer but deer have to be managed otherwise they destroy various habitats and quite honestly I like venison, so blast on as far as i’m concerned. Emperor indeed… pipe bomb in Belfast Airport, Cholera in Haiti, on going war in Afghanistan and whats the UK medias top story last week…Deer shot on Exmoor…clucking bell.

And is it really acceptable that we have to use Orions belonging to another nation to do our sub hunting? We used to have a pretty capable sub hunter of our own. Remember them?

As i said, i’m knarked at the Nimrod loss but then that is the point of NATO, shared defence of the North Atalntic.

My point is we are reduced to flogging off our defence assets, the US Marines are mentioned as being interested in our Harriers. One of the yet-to-be-built carriers will probably be flogged too. How long before we are reduced to the same military power of tent dwelling nomads – that is zero.

As I said, list the nations that have a larger military with similar or better technical sophistication and with the same global reach as the UK….USA and France, end of list. There are of course India and china (but they are still regional), Israel ( again very much regional) Russia (with many issues), Brazil (maybe in a few decades), Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany are high up but have little strategic reach. The UK military is still a top rank organisation. People need a little perspective on this.

As for writing the obituary – I think that is being done now by the government…..:mad:

Hardly.

I’d imagine it would be ‘testing the envelope’. Seeing how manoeverable the boat was at very shallow depths in inshore waters. Thats the sort of thing you do with a leadship so you can write the book on the handling for the follow on units.

Either that or whoever was doing the navigation felt like showing off and got it badly wrong!. Pride goeth before a Court Martial!

I know for a fact the RN is very, very short of sub navigators.

I thought the Uk already had pretty good simulation facilities at the AWE in Aldermaston?

Yeah but we can close that, make lots of people redundant, sell off the site to developers (prime city banker commuter territory) and save bags of money while losing a soveriegn capability. Whats not to like (he says tongue firmly in cheek)

Sorry to pick on you, when there are plenty of other offenders, but I can’t stand this one any longer. It’s like fingernails on a blackboard to me.

Rouge (pronounced roozh) = French for red, used in English to mean make-up used to heighten colour, particularly of the cheeks.

You mean ROGUE.

Opps. Absolutely, apologies and me in the business of teaching. 😮

I blaym mi poor tieping skils, thets mi storee and oim stickin 2 et.

What about other potential situations regarding territories that fall under British protection that may for what ever reason require fast jet support in a part of the world that the RAF cannot reach, Belize springs to mind as an example in the past

Well firstly i’m a fan of carriers…

BUT which territories? There is not a British lump of rock under any sort of threat from a foriegn power at present. Pitcairn island? Ascension? St Helena? BIOT?

And i’m sorry but Belize is not a great example. Pheonix Squadron is a lovely book, very enjoyable but its not the whole story. The threatened invasion was averted by the Government announcing the deployment of forces from the UK and issuing a guarantee of soveriegnty. Two Buccs helped underline that but they didn’t prevent the invasion.