My emphasis not the greatest of the Commodore machine’s

I THINK that you will find that it really isn’t. For example I suspect that decision was not made by teachers, LSAs or school admin staff to spend half of the DfES budget on consultants.

However I also THINK that we are both in circular argument stage now. So by all means post in response* and we’ll call it a day.

* tis not really sporting of me to call and end to the argument and claim last word now is it.

Do you have a source for the point about a large amount of money from the DfES going on consultants? I’m not trying to call you up on it, I’m just interested how they managed to blow such an incredible amount of money.

Actually I worked in the MoD as a Civil Servant for 15 years supporting the Jaguar, Canberra and Hawk and have a pretty good understanding of how this are/were. It is said there are alot of jobs that are not neccessary like health and safety etc. These are often roles taken on as secondry responsibilites by someone already doing another job. Yes there are alot of “Bean Counters” but these were made neccesssary when the previous Government introduced Resource Account Budgeting (RAB) which micro manages accounting.

I worked in the Then DLO and we were constantly have money taken from our budgets to bail out the then DPA at Abbey Wood. THere is where alot of the blame lies with the Senior Project Management yet they were also the victim of unstable budgets thanks to Treasury interferrence and Politically driven actions such as imposing delays etc.

The system was/isn’t perfect, far from it but we all had to work within a system. This is what the DFU is supposed to be looking into to correct but it will not happen overnight. In the mean time many technical SNCOs and Junior Officers are goingto be moven into desk jobs to fill gaps left vacant by Civil Servants who have taken redundancy reducing the pool av ailable for deployments etc. The RAF and Navy should have too much porblem with the numbers of planes and ships going down fast but the Army may find it more difficult.

To solve the Inflated price of some seemingly bespke spares, where ever possible industry should provide a full tech spec for an item and transparent sourceing info. Too many items in Illustrated Parts Catalogues are duplicated and classed as bepoke to individual platforms when it is not the case. Also the MoD shold once again invest in Intellectual Property access to allow comperative sourcing rather than single source.

Interesting points, thanks 🙂

Please define “Pen Pushers”. If you mean the average civil servant then you are way off base. If you mean the Senior Civil Service and Government Officials who decide policy and set the rules then fine. AS with the Military the Senior Civil Service to too large and has jobs created just to maintain said numbers.

AS for you average Civil Servant in the MoD, well most of them replaced Senior NCOs that were doing the jobs previously and get paid alot less. In the MoD responsibilites are scaled up so everyone has responsibilities that outside would be done by a grade higher again to save money. In addition an equivilent position in industry also pays substantially more. Yes they have a non-contributionalry pension but on avaerage it isn’t very big, 15 years will get you around £45 per month so don’t use that arguement.

What has to change is both the attitudes of Industry and senior management. The former must realise that it can no longer inflate its balance sheets by over charging the MoD/customers for spares and services and the MoD/costomer must ensure that contracts are written to allow transparent review of costs incured by the supplier. With budgets and business tightening Industry should be more open to this if they know what is good for them.

Nobody is disputing that Civil Servants were made to do jobs cheaper than using troops to do it, but rather that a lot of those jobs could probably be done without. Less jobs in health and safety enforcement, less in press relations, less thinking strategies for reform ect. Sure, lots of them are valuable jobs, but many are either borderline useful, useless or just plain excessive management.

Folks,

Unless you are ready to engage in what the Geneva Convention 1949 (enforceable since 1954) calls genocidal warfare, the type of boats and aircraft, etc do not matter. What is needed is a manual on who and what is a pirate vessel in those waters. Just as the Royal Navy in the 1800s had an anti-piracy book (ie according to that book you could go up the yardarm fast with a hunk of rope around your neck, for just have cooking faculties that a boat of that size and crew would never require — ie a lot of iron chains and iron collars would have been just “jelly on the biscuit” to the RN ship and crew that pulled you over). To wit, for example crewing one of those sea skiffs with two motors is ok. But with two high powered motors and extra feul you is a pirate. And video evidence of you throwing RPG-7s and heavy machine guns over board still makes you a pirate.

Basically this manual needs to be compiled and voted on by the UN Security Council and also giving permission for any nations navy to court martial anyone that manual deems is a pirate.

Also the UN Security Council needs to tell Egypt that no large merchant vessel can traverse the Suez Canal unless it is armed. And not just uber loud speakers and fire hoses. Basically have armed merchant crews at the Suez Canal with heavy machine guns that can be bolted to decks and out in the Indian Ocean a ship they can leave the merchant and board for transfer back to the Suez Canal. And have a good threat against Lloyds of London if they interfere in the arming of merchant vessels against pirates.

Finally, but all this will not solve the problem of the large number of vessels the Somalia pirates have, especially the crews. And then their is the problem of the rich idiots (Jesus freaks or otherwise) who think going for a Sunday stroll near Somalia — ie even with little kids aboard — to ask the Lion to open his mouth so they can stick their head in and dare him to shut it!!!!!

Jack E. Hammond

Btw> A few have noticed. But the pirates seem to be leaving most Muslim shipping alone. A Saudi tanker got seized and it was released without a ransom being paid. In addition, the Muslim nations in that area have a lot of patrol warships. Egypt especially. But all they send are token ships, that do very little. Something smells.
.

Shotguns would be a better alternative to machine guns, as they are very cheap to buy and maintain and most countries, even those with quite strict firearms regulations, will have no issues with them coming into port. Obviously they aren’t as effective as a machine gun, but they are much more feasible to implement. Rifles would be another option, but could encounter more regulatory issues. I doubt even the US would want ships with deck mounted machine guns cruising through places like NYC.

The SSGNs were a good idea since the subs were going spare, but I don’t think its worth making such an investment again for a dedicated SSGN new build. The money would be better spent being ploughed into more SSN and some into the SSBN.

Too much propaganda for Drabslab I think 😉

I see on the news today that HMS York is still in the area, available to help the evacuation and HMS Westminster is steaming into the area in support of operations, is HMS Cumberland still in the area? There seems to be good deal of war ships moving into the area, supposedly to evacuate refugee’s, but what with USS Kearsarge and Ponce in the area, Canada sending HMCS Charlottetown and French sending Mistral and a frigate, are we seeing a prelude to some sort of military operation, as surely chartering ships would be better than sending frigates to evacuate civilians?

If they want to carry out operations they need LHAs and transports, not so much escorts.

yes yes. but that would be true of anything eh?

This forum has turned decidedly curmudgeonly of late!:)

Thats true, and the magnitude of it will be much less with these, but proportionally I suspect it will be more. That said, its just a guess, as there is no quantity its hard to be sure.

i’m sure i bought that for my son this christmas no?:)

This is my point about them being too expensive.

story on flight global referencing a UK requirement to have a nano rotary UAS in Afghanistan by 2012.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/03/02/353770/uk-seeks-nano-uas-capability-for-afghanistan.html

Another example of how committed the UK is the use of systems like this. It may not be a squadron of fast jets but requirements like this represent an interesting change in the UKs approach to aviation assets in my opinion.

Probably be overpriced and have only a limited capability.