Well done US. He was not a nice man.

Now, do I still have to go to Afghanistan this summer?

We appear to be back to assuming that the Royals are a debatably expensive tourist attraction with no purpose. Nobody has yet answered my argument on pages 3-4 that they are a valuable and working part of the constitution and a safeguard against a democratically elected dictatorship.

Regarding the class system perpetuating the oppression of the working classes, anybody not starting from a position of wronged, chippy prejudice can see that Britain is a meritocratic society. For every rich toff I’ll show you a self made man/woman. As somebody said, Kate Middleton’s surely an example of social mobility in action? Do the endlessly wronged and oppressed lefties on here actually know any posh people? I do, and I can assure you they spend their time working and living their lives like the rest of us. Plotting the continued oppression of the workers doesn’t figure that highly.

Get rid of the Royals and you will have a new ruling class to rail against, one with just as much inherited wealth and privelege but without the duty to and good work for UK plc. Tootall’s point was that countries who have overthrown their old ruling classes have frequently got something as bad or worse, eg Russia, France initially, Germany. Most of the world’s monarchies these days are what we would consider free, happy places. Most of the world’s hellholes are The Peoples’ Glorious Republic of Somewhere.
Someone’s going to bang on about Saudi now, hence I said most!

I love my 2010 Five. It’s completely dependable and far more capable than I am, up and downhill. The perfect “one bike to do it all”. And I think it looks great!
Admittedly, it’s the first FS I’ve owned, but I test rode equivalent Trek, Speccy etc and they felt a bit more clinical, with less of a hooligan streak.
As others have said, test ride it against some others and if you like it, buy it!

Elf +1

TJ:

Admittedly from wiki:

The Royal Prerogative includes the powers to appoint and dismiss ministers, regulate the civil service, issue passports, declare war, make peace, direct the actions of the military, and negotiate and ratify treaties, alliances, and international agreements.

The Queen has the power of veto for all bills passed by Parliament too. It would be pretty big news if she used it, I think it was last used in the 18th century, but it’s a reserve power. Like I said, a potential brake on democratic excess.

The Belgrano, for all the controversy, makes a great pub quiz question:

Q. Which US warship survived Pearl Harbour to be sunk by the British?

A. The USS Phoenix, sold to Argentina in the 50s and renamed the General Belgrano.

I believe we were outside the RoE on that one. I don’t know why she was torpedoed, although I’ve read lots of hypotheses. I suspect to destroy the Argies principal naval asset, degrade their military strength and impact on their morale, which was a battle winer later on. At the Government level, they started it by invading British territory, and got what they deserved. A real pisser for the 1000+ conscripts on board though.

Edit: And to get back to the original post, I agree with TJ and accept the “Garter Knights” explanation.

Hitler wasn’t elected on an overt “Let’s kill lots of Jews mandate” though, was he? And the fact he was elected surely underlines my point about a constitutional monarchy acting as a brake on the worst excesses of democracy. Both they had to get rid of their respective monarchies to crack on with the atrocities that followed. It’s not that hard to envisage the British monarchy curbing the actions of a democratically elected far-right government. It’s the ultimate safeguard.

I am still serving, and have been shot at a bit, although admittedly only rockets and mortars as I’m a bit of a REMF. I don’t see what that’s got to do with the argument though, am I allowed an opinion on MPs, for example, as I’ve never been one?

We aren’t intervening in Syria because we can’t do it:

Legally – As Z11 says, there is no way a UNSCR would get through.

Politically – Syria is at the heart of the Arab world, physically and culturally, and has ties with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah etc. It would set the middle east ablaze.

Militarily – Syria has a large and credible military. We haven’t got the numbers. Even the Americans would struggle, given their current commitments. Also, what seems to be happening in Syria is more urban, house-to-house, repression using hired thugs etc, much harder to interdict from the air than using heavy weapons in the open.

So overall, it’s realpolitik. All we can do is diplomacy, protest, sanction etc. Just because we can’t intervene everywhere, does that mean we shouldn’t intervene anywhere? Hypocrisy or doing what we can?

Germans? Where did your ancestors live in the mid 1700s? I’ve no idea about mine.

The Queen’s powers are largely formalities; she has a great many powers on the condition that she never uses them. But she does act as an ultimate constitutional safeguard against dictatorship, preserving democracy? She could ultimately prevent a British Hitler or Stalin. I think our system is a nice compromise between democracy representing the will of the people, but with its inherent short termism, populism and lack of rigour tempered by the Lords or, in the worst case, the Monarchy.

And they let me go riding in Swinley Forest for just £2!

And as to resentment about being born to wealth and privelege, that applies to the children of anyone rich. I prefer the royals to Paris Hilton. At least they work for the country.

Used to deliver Dee Hepburn’s (Gregory’s girl) paper.

Bought my house off K T Tunstall’s parents.

On the main track that runs along the top of all the DH bits, ride to the right as you look down the DH runs and keep looking left as you go. There are some big wooden drop offs in there, I haven’t been brave enough yet!

My Samsung LED 32″, newly purchased after christmas, is the shizzle. I too replaced a ropy old Schneider one though, so can’t comment on the comparison with LCD. It does seem brighter though.

Back to the top. Any ideas?

And you can keep naked looking like new with a brillo pad, with new graphics every few years it’ll never be old and tatty.

Fair play.
Superiority complex.
Imperial hangover/decline.
Pubs.
Reserve.
Refusal to take oneself too seriously and derision of those that do.
Pride in home.

Can’t find a piccy, but that pair that dead end in mid air in central Glasgow were a source of amusement to me as a nipper.

Well I’m usually happy to just read, but I’m sitting around ill and when the subject is important to you…

I would assume its only in the places with a big permanent presence

Correct. Very big.

Your Dad’s (or Mum’s, not very right on of you is it?) rank has nothing to do with it. It’s an allowance to offset the disadvantages that serving in the military confers on your kids.

Available to all ranks. Scaled down for those on higher pay rates, actually What made you ask that? Care for some vinegar with that chip?

These day schools, is there one at ALL locations military personnel are posted, in the UK and abroad?

Like the man in the orthopaedic shoes, I stand corrected. But at

you would probably be paying less than £10,000 a year at a state boarding school.

it’s still using up most of the allowance. So if mil types want to send their sprogs to Harrow, they’re still going to have to stump up a lot.

How is it

barriers to entry

Show me a comp that offers boarding, and I’m sure the military will send military kids there. The purpose of the boarding school allowance is to stop mil kids being uprooted as their parents move around every few years. It’s a max of about £5000 a term so you’re not going to Eton with it! The alternative to your

self perpetuating elite?

is therefore the systematic compromising of military kids’ education. Hardly conducive to social mobility is it?

Thirdly, you overlook the esprit de corps and can do attitude that leads people to the highest ranks – the reason you so often see people with public school backgrounds in the forces is because frequently their Fathers were in the forces too, and the military paid for their schooling because of the disruptive effect of frequent moves on children’s educations, the CCF system in public schools, and the desire to achieve arrived at through their family example.

Good point, forgot to mention that earlier!

All Army Officers are educated at Sandhurst. It’s the Army Officer training academy!

“Sir Michael Beetham joined as an airman was an LAC (private)”

And he was the Chief during the Falklands War.

Plenty of grammar schoolboys up there too.

Whitgift School is an independent day school educating approximately 1,200 boys aged 10 to 18 in South Croydon, London in a 45-acre (180,000 m2) parkland site.

Gen Wall is an alumnus. OK, it’s probably not a Croydon comp, but hey, it’s close….

I’m merely stating that the majority of top officers are from pivileged backgrounds.

Define “priveleged”? It’s been demonstrated that the top ranks of the RAF didn’t go to the famous public schools or Oxbridge. They almost certainly didn’t know each other before they joined up. They’ve mostly got degrees because to be a star ranked officer, you have to be clever, ambitious, confident and articulate. People like that tend to go to uni.

Yes, it certainly helps to have been given a supportive upbringing, in which confidence has been developed and one has been pushed to achieve, whether at home or at school. This is surely not unique to the upper classes though? Also, there surely comes a point when you have to stand on your own feet and stop bleating about how rubbish your school was and how they’re all out to get you.

There are of course complex reasons for this, but the overall reason is that a class system exists which divides people and serves as a framework for discrimination.

Moving away from the military now. The above quote makes the old boy network sound like some kind of conspiracy, rather than a large scale expression of the fact that people in positions of power (regardless of class) are more likely to appoint those they know, or failing that, have some common ground with. Human nature. So the pace of change is slow.

You don’t find Old Etonians in the ranks regardless of how easy it might be for us peasants to become officers.

I suspect that’s due to parental ambition. The only Etonian I’ve ever met was a scholarship boy!

AVM = Air Vice Marshal, 2* officer, Maj Gen equivalent

Evo, because we can all dream.
Climb, for the pictures.

A quick bit of googling reveals that the last three Chiefs of the Air Staff (the head honcho) attended the University of Bath, ICL and none! None had been to a school I’d heard of. Eton/Oxbridge conspiracy?

Why should I trust you at all? I don’t know you from Adam mate. So, you can’t actually prove what you claim? Thought not.

I could say the same about you, and everyone else on this forum. There has to be a degree of trust surely? Alternatively, ask a military person you know if my posts are genuine. My comment on your source was based on what you have so far divulged.

Prove it.

I don’t have stats to hand, I don’t know if they exist, but given that I’m a non-posh bloke, in the military, I think my instincts on this can be trusted, no? Whereas you’re not in the military, so you’re trading on the equivalent of what some bloke in a pub told you years ago.

And you’ve ignored my point on time constraints.

To get to the very top, you need to spend no more than 3-4 years in each rank, assuming promotion to Lt Cdr/Maj/Sqn Ldr aged 30. Therefore, if you commission aged 28 for example, having been a non-commissioned soldier/sailor/airman, you simply don’t have time. This may well be a fault of the military command/promotion structure, it’s widely criticised. It is, however, nothing to do with class.

Prince Charles is hardly a typical and representative example of a commissioned officer.

“Vast majority” university educated? Maybe, but an unscientific poll of my workplace = 9 officers. 4 came up through the ranks and don’t have degrees, including the boss. 2 of the junior ranks have degrees. Is that meritocratic enough?

Her Maj was in the Army, in as much as a woman could be at the time. See also Princes Andrew, Harry, William. If you want to question the military credentials of an upper-clas family, you’ve picked the wrong one.

And CO = Commanding Officer.

I’ve heard it postulated that winning a war is bad for a country in the long term, as it breeds complacency and lazyness. Losing makes you take a hard look at yourself, reform and rebuild. Look at British vs German economies, manufacturing etc since WW2.

Elfinsafety,

Congratulations, you’ve finally moved me to register and post. I am a serving RAF officer, and what you write is tripe. This bit

S’always bin that way really, hasn’t it? Regardless of whatever waffle the likes of Stoner can come up with. Working Class = Cannon Fodder. Middle/Upper Class = those who order the Cannon Fodder to their potential deaths. Of course there are those from the Commissioned Officer ranks who have seen proper action, but I doubt very much that the armed forces risk losing their elite in the heat of battle.

is particularly offensive. Like Zulu says, junior officers top the casualty lists in percentage terms all the way from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day. Highest British rank KIA in WW1 was a Brigadier, IIRC. The tired old cliche of a cabal of extravagantly moustached upper class types in big trousers casually ordering thousands to their deaths from a posh hotel miles back is simply not true. Except for the moustaches and trousers. So don’t go bandying your chippy prejudices around, it’s an insult to their memories.

Modern Armed Forces recruitment is genuinely meritocratic, as far as any system staffed by human beings can be. There are academic requirements for commissioned entry for school leavers, but serving non-commissioned ranks can apply for commissioning and if they’re good enough, they’ll get it. About 20% (guess) of RAF Officer Training entrants come from the ranks. They do every bit as well as those who went straight for the commission. One of my Station Commanders, a Group Captain, was an ex-ranker. So

the highest rank someone can achieve coming in at the ‘bottom’ is that of an NCO.

is drivel too. The class system “glass ceiling” does not exist.

There may be a few of the posher army regts where commissioning from less priveleged backgrounds is passively discouraged, due to posh blokes tending to enjoy the company of other posh blokes and likewise for the less posh. I don’t have direct experience of this so I can’t really comment, but I’m pretty sure that if you really want to be an Cav/Guards officer despite a poor background, nobody’s going to stop you. You might struggle with the mess bills, though.

For the record, my background is (probably) lower middle class, I’ve got a degree, and I went to a mediocre comprehensive. I have had subordinates posher than me and superiors less so.

And CO=Commanding Officer.

Edit: And lots of other people have beaten me to it. If it’s trolling, it’s good trolling.