Tuesday 29 March 2011

HMS Ark Royal on the block

Heart breaking
What is it about Mr David Cameron, boy Prime Minister, and his obsession for scrapping Britain's military assets as fast as possible?  First he cuts the Nimrods and they're literally shredded inside of weeks.  Now HMS Ark Royal is on the auction block and will be sold by mid-June.

I'd hoped that even a wet slap like Mr Cameron would see the folly of his ways after declaring war on Libya.  I'd even imagined that he'd be at least half-way sane and keep Ark Royal in mothballs until the new carriers are finished or someone with an ounce brains replaced him.  But apparently that wasn't enough.

Ah, well.  It's understandable.  Why waste money on national defence when there's a parasitic welfare state to fund?

Meanwhile, the RAF doesn't even have enough pilots to put on an air show.

Update:  What once was–and this is back in 1983 when Mr John Nott was running around with his little ledger.  Today, thanks to Messrs Blair, Brown, and Cameron, we probably haven't enough manpower or national pride left for a busker with a broken guitar.

2 comments:

eon said...

And the best thing about the Typhoon? It only took twenty-eight years to get it in service (design frozen 1980, IOC 2008). (This beats the F-22 in the "whenever" department by four years, BTW; 1982-2006.)

If the Fin (Tornado) had taken that long, Strike Command would still have been flying Canberras in Operation Desert Storm, over Kosovo, and maybe even in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Old joke; The original name for the Tornado project was the Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, or MRCA. Considering it was first OK'd for production under the Labourites in the early Seventies, who never met a piece of military hardware they didn't reflexively try to White Paper to death, a lot of people said that MRCA actually stood for Must Re-spar Canberras Again.

cheers

eon

Anonymous said...

Frankly there is a need for a yardarm and some hempen rope...
Politician, yardarm, rope - some assembly required.
Call Me Dave's foreign policy consists of keeping his eyes firmly screwed shut, fingers in ears and humming loudly wishing all the nasty people will go away!