General News Thread

[Lionator]

1 hour ago, DJW1 said:

What has changed in the last 50 years is the attitude of the far right in the UK. In the 1970s the NF actually supported the PLO in their struggle against Israel. Now the far right dislikes Muslims more than Jews.

Honestly I think the far right are bad regardless of whether they are wishing death upon Jewish people or Muslim people. 

[bovril]

24 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Honestly I think the far right are bad regardless of whether they are wishing death upon Jewish people or Muslim people. 

I don't think he's arguing otherwise. It is interesting in general how the far right's and even the centre right's attitude to Israel has changed over time. 

[foxes1988]

2 hours ago, kenny said:

It is.

 

But also, if we doubled the military budget would it be twice as effective? Probably not, we probably wouldn't get much more than we have now, we have a real issue with how we spend money.

Whilst our procurement has been poor it takes years of sufficient/good spending to improve the effectiveness.  Even if we were at 3.5% gdp now it would take a decade or so to become effective again especially in the Navy because of how long and expensive those warships are to build

 

Constantly cuting the ship numbers or of each type of ship we build will always make our procurement look poor. 

 

The Type 45 was initially supposed to be 12 ships in the fleet then we cut it to 8 then we cut it to 6 but the R&D and manufacturing tooling costs don't reduce when you cut the total ships. That's how the type 45 ended up being a 'billion pound' destroyer when

It should have been more like 500 million a ship. If we had 12 we'd always have at least 3 type 45s ready to gone. Even if we built 8 then we'd always have 2. Building 6 meant we only have 1 available at any time sometimes maybe 2 hence why we struggled so much to get one down to Cyprus.

 

We should have built 3 aircraft carriers to guarantee always 1 available.

 

The type 26 ASWs we are building thanks to the deal we made with Norway should be more cost effective but even with the type 26 we should've ordered more.

 

Currently we have 5 type 31s on being built again numbers are too low. 

 

 

Edited 13 March by foxes1988

[Zear0]

Dragon had also literally returned from a tour of the Arctic due to some tit in the White House kicking off about it.  Shock horror it takes some time to replace the crew, undertake repairs and reprovision the boat.

[fox_favourite]

I'm so glad that we said we don't want to help orange fart with the attack on Iran. He just doesn't know what the hell k he's doing...and that is scary. 

 

He's making everything worse. America is ran by utter dimwits. 

 

He sees this as a game and not real life is the impression I get. 

Edited 13 March by fox_favourite

[danny.]

7 hours ago, kenny said:

Apparently it's because we need the gas power plants on standby because the renewables are unreliable. So in effect we have to pay for them today even though they aren't in use.

 

It's also the reason China is building coal plants alongside renewables.

Yea but paying for everyone at the same rate is the insane part! They have to buy gas to burn it, wind and sun are free!

[WigstonWanderer]

11 minutes ago, fox_favourite said:

I'm so glad that we said we don't want to help orange fart with the attack on Iran. He just doesn't know what the hell k he's doing...and that is scary. 

 

He's making everything worse. America is ran by utter dimwits 

I suspect they’ve bitten off far more than they can chew. Short of a ground invasion (which would be very difficult as far as I can tell from most commentary), the war is likely to go on for a long time, or until Trump gets bored or TACOs, and in this case Iran will have every incentive to develop nukes.

 

Trump has chosen the very worst path imaginable.

[Corky]

1 hour ago, Zear0 said:

Dragon had also literally returned from a tour of the Arctic due to some tit in the White House kicking off about it.  Shock horror it takes some time to replace the crew, undertake repairs and reprovision the boat.

Should have been out there two months before this started!

[MPH]

So ground troops on the way then. Only a few hours after Trump announces all military targets have been destroyed on Kharg island - home to Irans largest Oil depot/ port

 

 

just in case anyone was in any doubt, it’s all becoming  a little clearer now..

[CornwallFox]

10 hours ago, danny. said:

The marginal pricing system becomes more and more ridiculous too, the less we rely on gas. I can't understand why this isn't a priority to reform.

The other utterly ridiculous thing is guaranteeing certain prices to companies helping build energy capacity. 

 

This is precisely why private sector input into assets that should be publicly owned is such a terrible idea. Everything has to be incentivised to get them to do anything. Socialism for corporations, if you will. 

[ClaphamFox]

 

[danny.]

7 hours ago, CornwallFox said:

The other utterly ridiculous thing is guaranteeing certain prices to companies helping build energy capacity. 

 

This is precisely why private sector input into assets that should be publicly owned is such a terrible idea. Everything has to be incentivised to get them to do anything. Socialism for corporations, if you will. 

Successive governments seem to have no desire to nationalise energy though so probably more chance of changing the pricing model than nationalising 

[Robo61]

15 hours ago, Salisbury Fox said:

Agreed, I believe that you could say that about the NHS too

I have no doubt savings could be found, but I'd be interested to know which countries/systems you think do better than the UK on this front

[Lionator]

Any European country that’s still supporting Trump on this venture is clearly led by morons. He’s put all their military security at risk, drained vital stocks for the defence of Europe and the Middle East and made Iran even more emboldened. This is so bad it makes the ‘special military operation’ look semi competent.

 

And to think a week ago the leaders of two main parties and the whole journalist elite were attacking Starmer for not getting involved. Sanchez had it right from the start. 

Edited 14 March by Lionator

[Trav Le Bleu]

I thought they'd already won and it was nearly all over?

 

Middle East crisis live: Trump calls on China, France, UK and others to send ships to keep strait of Hormuz open

 

https://share.google/wG2sphhvOV2w2rOF7

 

Could Don possibly be wrong? Surely not!

 

[leicsmac]

19 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

I thought they'd already won and it was nearly all over?

 

Middle East crisis live: Trump calls on China, France, UK and others to send ships to keep strait of Hormuz open

 

https://share.google/wG2sphhvOV2w2rOF7

 

Could Don possibly be wrong? Surely not!

 

Hopefully the response from the international community is as follows:

 

[Sampson]

If Farage and Badenoch scream about us sending our ships into a war that’s not ending anytime soon and has nothing to do with us because Trump has got himself in over his head, then it only shows they care more about America’s interest than Britain’s.

 

Why the hell should we be dragged into this potentially years or decades long war because Trump thought he could overthrow a 50 year regime in a few days and screwed up 

 

This is America and Israel’s war, they should be sending their own ships and their own men to risk death for it not British ships and people 

Edited 14 March by Sampson

[Jattdogg]

...Came here for some good news ....

[Md9]

6 minutes ago, Jattdogg said:

...Came here for some good news ....

it’s a bit cheerier than the match day threads 😂😂

[Md9]

2 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

I thought they'd already won and it was nearly all over?

 

Middle East crisis live: Trump calls on China, France, UK and others to send ships to keep strait of Hormuz open

 

https://share.google/wG2sphhvOV2w2rOF7

 

Could Don possibly be wrong? Surely not!

 

Idiot everyone needs to tell him to do one 

[CornwallFox]

18 hours ago, MPH said:

So ground troops on the way then. Only a few hours after Trump announces all military targets have been destroyed on Kharg island - home to Irans largest Oil depot/ port

 

 

just in case anyone was in any doubt, it’s all becoming  a little clearer now..

Literally everything he's done foreign policy wise has been to try and grab oil and minerals from across the globe. He's taking them from Ukraine, wanted them from Greenland, oil from Venezuela....

[CornwallFox]

7 hours ago, Robo61 said:

I have no doubt savings could be found, but I'd be interested to know which countries/systems you think do better than the UK on this front

You could save a bit by combining HR, payroll etc teams across the NHS, but only a bit. And if you are trying to get the best results you'd end up spending more than you've saved as the system is hopelessly underfunded thanks to austerity. While the budget has gone up, demand has far outstripped it thanks to an aging population.

 

(We an aside, it's almost funny how it's actually old people living longer with more chronic and complex care needs that is really putting the NHS under pressure, yet those same old people think their one shilling a week NI paid for everything they get and it's the immigrants running the NHS that are to blame) 

[MPH]

21 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

Literally everything he's done foreign policy wise has been to try and grab oil and minerals from across the globe. He's taking them from Ukraine, wanted them from Greenland, oil from Venezuela....

 

Cuba now….

[MPH]

Trump also said that the US had "totally demolished" Kharg Island - a critical hub for Iranian oil exports - but added that "we may hit it a few more times just for fun".
 

 

 

[Trav Le Bleu]

44 minutes ago, MPH said:

Trump also said that the US had "totally demolished" Kharg Island - a critical hub for Iranian oil exports - but added that "we may hit it a few more times just for fun".
 

 

 

Going for the high score.