Yep, they learned a lesson there, the old Sea King and S61 family may be big old bruisers short on finesse and modern trickery, but for operations offshore in hostile conditions they’re still hard to beat.

EU regulations and I believe now British law specifically excludes the defence that the financial transactions are done in offshore havens, precisely to stop European companies doing their dirty business through offshore accounts. Do all companies do it? If they want work in places like Saudi-Yes. Does that make it right-No. The investigation is the responsibility of the investigating authority, it is for the correct legal channels to decide when to drop the investigation or make charges. Will this gift the French a big order? Possibly yes, however if BAE are so dependent on a single customer then they’re pretty much going down the toilet already, for all the hyperbole over this order the sky won’t collapse if the Saudi’s change their mind and BAE will still exist, it’s in BAE’s interest to fill the media with hysterical scare stories at the moment.

I was only teasing. I know that in the global economy everyone owns everyone.

No probs, I consider the CVF British even though Thales (the lead designer) is French, and the “physical integrator” (pointless extra tier IMO) is KBR and American company.

Any time 😀

It’s not about the ownership, it’s about who makes the ships and designs them… 😉

Quite agree, I was just making a point that it’s dangerous to have a go on the issue as when you look into it that particular barb is very double edged 🙂

Yep, the Rosyth thing is a farce, OK I understand the Scottish lobby protecting their own interests, if I lived in Portsmouth, Plymouth, Belfast or Barrow I’d be demanding favouritism for my local base/yard, but there just isn’t the work to support all of the bases/yards chasing MoD work and sadly for Rosyth it lost out. By deciding to ignore that decision all the government is doing is threatening other facilities whilst Rosyth still isn’t especially viable in the long term (unless they close Devonport or Portsmouth…which could very well happen). By avoiding the hard choices and caving in to their own party political vested interests the government is only postponing the inevitable and when it comes the crash will be even more painful. My own view is the original plan to shut Rosyth (or rather not give it any more MoD work, if they can get commercial work then great), keep Devonport, Plymouth and Faslane bases and support BAE Govan and Barrow, VT and Appledore for smaller work made a lot of sense.

They will be suggesting Harland and Wolff for CVF main assembly next as part of the Northern Ireland Peace Dividend 😉

Don’t joke, it could happen 😀 Wait a minute though, I don’t see any of Gordon Browns buddies in Belfast so it probably won’t happen :dev2:

My own experience is that there is no link between the personal ethics, morality and virtue of a persons life style and decisions between whether they’re religeous or atheist. I’m not anti-religeous per se (it’s none of my business what others want to believe) but I do hate the way some religeous people have this smug holier than thou attitude that assumes that the mere fact they’re religeous makes them better, more virtuous people than non believers. In my experience many of the most kind, gentle and good people i know have no religeon and many of the biggest POS a-holes I’ve encountered have worn their religeon (of various kinds) on their sleeve like a badge. A good person is a good person whether they’re religeous or not.