No, lawrence, its called humour;) 😉 😀 😀 😉

No, certainly xenophobia.:mad:

By that logic though Sealord isnt ‘2007’ just an arbitrary bunch of numbers based around what could, easily, be a fictitious event. Yes I accept that in business instant global communication has forced an objective ‘standard reference’ for time and date….but then isnt that standard divorced from the bc/ad debate?. When was the last email you recieved timestamped 2007AD?.

My point is that the bc/ad thing is scarcely relevent any more. AD actually meaning the ‘Year of our Lord’ sort of thing doesnt it?!!!. Why not let it pass into history and start conforming to the societal values we claim to have in today’s more enlightened era?!.

That pretty much covers it, the AD/BC things is relevent becouse it distinguishes between before 0 and after. The problem is if you want a new calender, where do you start it.

Ps. if I ever recieved an email from BC I would be rather concerned about the senders authenticity.;)

There seems to be a complete lack of joined thinking about the RAF’s transport capabilitys. With both the tanker program, the A-400M project and the C-17 still rumbling along there is an opportunity for some real rational thought about the RAF’s transport force. It seems like someone needs to just sit down and work out what the best split would be between the A-330 tanker/transport, the A-400M and the C-17, the C-17 and the A-330 being the priority.

Well I quess it might be easier than trying to tell that to certain people in certain country which basicly grew out of all the religious nutcases of europe being driven there…:dev2:

Thats what is known as xenophobia.

HAS the Christian calender been universally accepted Sealord?. Isnt it slightly absurd of us to tell the Chinese that, for all intents and purposes, history started from zero 2007 years ago?. They were as far on as blowing each other up with gunpowder and using lodestones as compasses for navigation by that time and had several millenia of history before that, same for other eastern populations who predate the young chappie in the stable by a great many centuries.

To suggest that one could draw a line at an arbitrary date and reset the calender to zero in order to provide focus on some new force majeure on the scene I would find bloody offensive to be honest. The example is if perhaps the Finns where to become the dominant global force and decided to zero the calender at the date when Nokia was created. All the achievements of Great Britain in the Industrial Revolution etc would then be de-emphasized as being part of ancient history – Before Nokia perhaps!!!. That would not impress me much!.

I will declare that I am not religious in the slightest, but, it does seem a non-sequitor that we stress that we live in a secular society and show it off with pride…yet our standard for setting dates is based in religion. Perhaps we shouldnt be overly upset if Year 0 was referred to as such and we had times measured ‘before zero’ or ‘after zero’….would accepting that really push people off the edge???.

0 is not really 0, hence BC, its just a bunch of numbers. I can assure you that Chinese buisness uses the same dating system as us, the Olympics are not Beijing 2008 for nothing.

Can somebody explain that the UK is already deployed in two wars requiring major use of equipment and resources, I’d say that having the ability to mobilise for a third deployment if really needed is a hell of a capability for a European defence force. The logic here seems to be that the RN needs 4 CVF’s so that if two are needed in war the RN will still have two to go on jollies with NATO, or maybe they need 6 just in case the other two have to be deployed on operations too…….

I was not aware that anybody was complaining about the numbers of CVF’s ordered? Sure more would be nice but that seems to be the one program that is proceeding how it should (with the exception of the stupid aircraft choice).

Has anyone else here read the recent Time magazine article on the V-22 Osprey? It slams the V-22 for not being able to autorotate, and its lack of a chin mounted 50 cal machine gun turret. Transport helicopters don’t have chin machine guns anyway, so thats not a big deal. Having two widely seperated engines should reduce the need to autorotate. But the price tag is so high on the V-22, I don’t know if they would want to fly it into a hot LZ anyway.

There is a program underway at the moment to arm the V-22’s. Personally I have always regarded it as a niche type, for when you want to fly a long way but still land and take-off vertically.