You need to check that your phone is capable of connecting to foreign networks, mine refused to function in the USA this summer.

As in store or something.

There is a rumour or two…I hope very untrue of

…a reuction 6 MRA4 and a capability holiday with a pretty immediate withdrawl of MR2 followed by mothballing of Kinloss.

…Harrier to go before arrival of F35

Govt have been very clever with this, who can oppose this deal? If you do then your going against what the “boys in afghan” the media and the public at large have been crying out for more Chinooks, its so Orwellian I could cry.

The Conservative spokesman made some good counter-points to the announcement though – in the past, expenditure for operations has not had to come out of the MoD budget – it comes from the reserve.

He also spoke out against making cuts to core capabilities to fund current operations. I really wish that the opposition would make a stink about this, but it seems nobody wants to pay to defend this country.

I daresay we’ll get one after the election, but we’ll see

The entire situastion is absurd, they’ve seen it before and still thought they could handle it. Gross stupidity at work. I’ve spent the last few years in my job travelling round these provences, and as much as I feel enlightened by my cultural exhanges, I still wonder WTF is going in in certain modern EU regions ?

You have my wholehearted agreement that the situation is tragic….

…but Russia isn’t in the EU.

‘Global Warming’ is a misnomer in any case, as what seems to be happening is more accurrately discribed as ‘climate change’. Global warming is an outdated terminology used by skeptics of the science.

Another arguement that is oft trotted out is that the climate has changed before without man’s influence. Yes, it has.

That does not mean that our industrialised activities cannot or are not having an influence.

I’m all ears for scientific evidence that can be brought to the table, from either side, but what I cannot stand is the arguement from incredulity and emotion that I see all around me. Just because your own armchair analysis does not agree with the science does not mean the science is wrong; many things, such as atomic weapons, heavier than air vehicles and germ theory could be considered counter-intuitive, and yet are demonstrably true.

Goverment using climate change as an excuse for gaining more tax revenue/power is another issue and has no influence on the voracity of the scientific claims. And in any case, what is wrong with adopting more energy efficient, clean technologies and moving away from an oil based economy?

We currently use a finite resource and are highly, highly dependent on it; has to change. Nations can be held to ransom by their energy producers, and so if we can have clean renewable energy that will give us energy security, price stablility and much greater efficiency I say we should grab the chance with both hands.

You buy an new car, does that give you the right to the softwear for the engine or anti-skid control computer?

Lockheed and the US governmant went through this with overhaul and repair shops working on US government owned C-130’s and P-3’s. They can’t not use Lockheed proprietary data (blueprints/wiring diagrams/etc) without Lockheed’s permission, ie: they must purschase the data from Lockheed.

I think that is a flawed example.

If I pay a company to develop a car on my behalf, do I not have a right to access the technology for which I have paid?

If Lockheed were producing the F-35 as a commercial venture then they would have an argument that they needed to keep the code as their intellectual property, but they are not. The program is being funded by taxpayers, thus goverments have a right to access the technology.

if you bothered to read the Q&A’s, you would know why you’re wrong

No, if YOU bothered to read the Q&A’s and better yet read the previous RFP you would see that YOU are wrong. I say again, 1200 gal/min max fuel offload WAS NOT a requirement (THREESHOLD or OBJECTIVE) during the last solicitation.

:rolleyes:

Ok, so you disagree about the 1200 gal/min figure….we get it!

Do you mind quoting the relevant documents? This “I’m right”, “No, I’m right” business gets us nowhere 😉

I flew from T3 to Chicago this summer with Virgin, was my first time long haul and was fine!

A340 was comfortable, in flight meal was ok, entertainment was good.

That said I found the lack of decent places to eat (unless you want to re-mortgage) in T3 to be irritating.