I think what you are talking about was a show called ‘Anzacs’ with Paul Hogan. Dimly remember watching it years ago and enjoying it. Should be able to dredge something up on Google or Amazon!.

‘wolf,

You want to start trying to rattle a sabre you need a sabre first!. In regard the UAE China doesnt have one…..according to Gao Yusheng, China’s ambassador to the UAE:

”During the first seven months of 2007, Chinese exports to the UAE were valued at 9.2 billion dollars,” Gao told Gulf News. China is the single largest exporter to the UAE, he said.

Gao said nearly 70 per cent of Chinese exports to the UAE is transit trade as Chinese businessmen use Dubai’s free ports for the strategic and tax advantages they provide in re-exportation of goods. ”The emirate is a free port… from here Chinese goods are re-exported to Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Middle East countries, as well as to countries in Africa, which are so much closer from here,” said Gao, adding that around 1,50,000 Chinese nationals lived and worked in the UAE.

China ‘punishes’ UAE and UAE start levying fees on Chinese trade!. Aim economic pistol at PRC foot……pull trigger!.

Grey Area

It wasn’t them eating meat that made her cry, it was that she thought that what the housemates done with the leg of the pig was an OFFENSE to her RELIGION

Paul, as said above, it was the fact that she saw somebody rubbing the leg of a pig on someone, she cried because just seeing a pig was offensive to her.

The poor girl…..imagine never being able to wander through the meat section of a supermarket without being reduced to a quivering wreck!!!.

Distaste at someone waving a pigs leg about the place is quite understandable…its not exactly standard behaviour and personally I have never, sober, ran around wielding the severed leg of any farmyard animal that I can think of. I’ve chucked a few chicken drumsticks at people in my time but somehow I think thats a bit different!.

To burst into tears at the sight of a pig is probably going to have a seriously handicapping impact on your friends life though so you may be advised to encourage her to grow a slightly thicker skin or seek help controlling her emotions. Muslims are quite capable of dealing with the sight of pigs and people hungrily devouring various large chunks of them!.

On to the issue of devouring chunks of former pig it is heartening to see that so many true believers in the power of the bacon sarnie lurk hereabouts. The worrying thing is that no-one has seen the light that is a couple of thin-ish slices of well cooked black pudding and HP sauce with the crispy bacon. Takes things to the next level in bacon sandwichery!.

Best….advert….ever!

http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Carling-Black-Label-Dambusters-Carling/24268

There was a story that in one of the awards bashes they have for TV adverts one of the judges actually got up and stormed out declaring the contest rigged when this advert didnt win.

Its got to be said that the meerkat gets my 2yr old howling with laughter every time she see’s it so I’d have to make the comment that the advertisers art may not be completely dead yet……just very, very sick!

LOL Mohammad was obviously on to something before the rest of us! (though in interests of religious balance the bible also says, in Deuteronomy, that Christians aren’t allowed to partake either!)

All I know is that it would take a lot more than a few psalm-wielding priests and mullahs, or even the threat of some hideous bollock-exploding disease, to prise my bacon sarnie out of my hands on a pleasant relaxing sunday morning!.

Er…

Secondly, I was very angry at the housemate Marcus as he cut of the leg of a pig to take it into the garden as a “joke” as it was offensive to religious followers of Islam and Hiduism as they see porcine creatures as important animals in their culture and I found what happened offensive to their religion.

….quite willing to be corrected on this but arent you confusing the cow-worship thing from Hinduism and the Muslim distate for pigs there Heslop?.

As I recall it pigs are not revered in Islamic circles but, rather, they are considered ‘unclean’ and to be avoided at all costs?.

Jonsey- Good debate, enjoyed it!

You dont get away quite that easy PJ!. Busy yesterday and didnt have much opportunity for intense keyboard bashery!.

But it was what was affordable and also perhaps underlines some of the points people have been making about treasury interference etc.

This was the point I was making…since T42 B1, surely the worst example of blatant treasury tinkering, the situation has improved measurably. Perhaps, partly, something of a post-Falklands honeymoon, but, we’ve not done all that bad in terms of capability in the fleet.

Like our discussion of how far a PAAMS shoot down will occur, it is also reading too much into the dealers brouchre to believe that a strike aircraft will actually be able to accurately launch a strike at a range in excess of 100km, like Sea Vipers 120km range allows manoeuvre and chase, so the longer ranges of AshM are more to do with fancy dog-legs and multiple directions, launch aircraft will be much much closer, or at higher altitude and therefore detectable at a greater range.

I think you are missing the one fundamental point that will govern the range that weapons realease will be made under. The survival instincts of the pilots flying the strike!. Those Argentine Etendards did not have positive target identification before releasing any of the 5 warshot AM39’s they had. That was despite knowing exactly how far they could close on a T42 from their own practice runs!. In future, with a knowledge that Sea Viper is ahead of them, opposing AShM shots will be from the extent of a missiles range. Which is good for us as it means the hostile targetting solution is that much more of a difficult proposition. It is bad for non-combattants in the operational zone though!.

Well you must have had precognisence then because that was the stated need of the RN given its commitments at the time.

Nah not when they were talking of figures in the billions that the continentals were dropping into PAAMS (as it became). We had a CPOWEA at Collingwood who used to bang on about it as he was aware that BAE had an active-seeker Sea Dart and a VLS system in the works which could’ve done the area job and been at sea in the early 2000’s. As soon as we agreed to the european system though the costs were always going to, if you forgive the pun, sky-rocket and that would impact the hulls bought to field it. Remarkably accuracte prediction as it turned out.

12 Destroyers aren’t really a luxury?

12 are a luxury when you arent needing to keep them out on a permanent station somewhere. Darings job is AAW consort. Provided that is all they ever are and we dont get this idiocy reappearing of trying to turn them into an Arleigh Burke by bolting on SSM’s, serious NGS-capable artillery etc 8 would be more than sufficient. 6 isnt right, but, at least we will have a measure of capability to backstop the T45’s if CAMM delivers on its promises.

PJ

But it still won the day??!! what do you want? The idea that there is a perfect system that works first time and does what it says on the tin is pure fantasy. GWS 30 entered service in 1973 and was an 18 year old system, designed to take down MPAs and bombers in the mid atlantic here working in a littoral environment bringing down a missile… thats a bl**dy brilliant performance!

Do you honestly think Gloucesters GWS30 was the same as Bristols was in 73?. GWS30 has been steadily upgraded and by 91 it was declared, to NATO, to have a low-alt missile engagement capability. This is why the USN trusted us to put an area AAW screen on their battlewagons. The fighting G’s performance unfortunately did little to impress and was the last time, I recall, that the RN has been asked to provide AAW overwatch on any USN vessel.

T42 was born of budget constraints but has performed well and it meant that the RN got the hull numbers it wanted, a ‘better ship’ was unaffordable and would have been downgraded or bought in small numbers.

T42 was compromised to the point of hopelessness at birth. They are cramped and, initially, were noisy little ships that were not loved by their crews. By batch 3 experience had sorted many problems out, but, they are still ridiculously cramped by any standard. A T42’s gulches have to be experienced to be believed. T42 got Sea Dart to sea and that is about all you can say for the class.

PS GWS 30 is the only war validated area weapon system, lets not forget for all its fanfare AEGIS has never been fired in anger….

Did I make a comparison between the US Standard missile system and GWS30?. Dart had a reasonably good war in the south atlantic seeing that the other side knew most of its weaknesses. I made no general comment about that either. You implied that the USN were lucky that Sea Dart was there to save their BB – I know some in the USN who believe they were just lucky period!.

Well detection is part of that same lesson. I wouldn’t sugget 120km range is actually the shoot down range but allows for manouvre and chase. Downing a launch aircraft is so much easier than detecting and bringing down the missiles it has released.

Detection is the key point of the lesson. When will people understand that the actual ‘sexy’ shooting part of an engagement cycle is the smallest and least critical component of the process. Detection, assessment and tracking are all so much more critical in the system.

SAMPSON sat atop that lovely big foremast is wonderful and it can do some horizon bending to get performance, from a shipboard set, which is as good as you are ever likely to get. Its not going to reach out 120km though – do the calculations. For a 150ft masthead mount radar range against a 500ft ASL inbound is about 85km. If the inbound drops to 200ft thats down to 65km. Yes PAAMS(S) is very fast in the track-form to shoot cycle but we arent going to start shooting until 65-70km at very best and a contemporary strikefighter/AShM combination will have released 50km before that.

Either way Sea Viper operationally will spend much more of its time shooting at arrows and not the archer.

PAAMS would have been able to bring down SEntendards before they launched in 1982, while they approach at low level they still had to pop up to detect and launch, the quick reaction time and velocity of PAAMS and sea Viper is designed to do that.

Indeed. Sea Viper will doubtless be the very scourge of early 80’s French technology!. Is that an achievement to be trumpeted about for a system coming on line in 2011 one wonders?!.

The last 6 Darings surely? or has the MODs literature won you over?

No, as soon as I heard how much FSAF/PAAMS was likely to cost, back in the late 90’s I think it was, I never believed we would see 12 Darings in the first place!. For our commitments and taskings now I think 8 hulls is the right number – 12 would be luxurious and, to be honest, I’d rather that £2.5bn on the 4 extra hulls be put to better use. Think of what that kind of money could do in UAV, USV and AUV R&D, how much more satellite bandwidth we could get and how many UOR’s that could be filled for the lads on ops.

Buying in hulls, over what is absolutely necessary, just for the sake of having them and keeping up what we had before is ludicrous and makes us no better than the RAF with their ‘Typhoons at any price’ stance.

Its cynacism born of bitter experience. I hope you are right, but experience, precedent and the coming “bloodbath” in public finances suggest otherwise.

No its not. Its cynicism borne of irrational fear. As stated in naval procurement, since T42, we actually havent done too badly in terms of delivered capability. Ocean was serious value for money, the Bays are a lot more than what they replaced and the T23’s represented excellent capability for the spend even if we have been lucky with them to some extent.

We have lost a lot, that cant be denied, but thats not a procurement issue in terms of kit coming in so the kind of ‘were all doomed’ line isnt supported by the facts. If we were to get word tomorrow of the reinstatement of hulls 7/8 for the Darings, two additional Astute hulls and a guarantee on C1/C2 and C3 hull numbers how many of us would actually settle at that?.