Incorrect, it’s great! If that lad (gin captain) is still there, he really knows his gins too.

The gin greenhouse in the hydro!

Flying in circles usually means a recce platform like E3 or one of the others.

Nowhere near as much as it should be, and you damn well know that.

I gosh-darned well don’t!

Still a lot more than if the industry wasn’t here, of course! And if it was much more, would they be? Dilemma!

“Serously, what have you (lot) contributed in recent years:

A sub prime crisis

Speculative attacks on Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and even the UK going back a bit further

Tax evasion on a huge scale

Asset stripping of viable industries and businesses

predatory takeovers

speculative bubbles

the formation of cartels and monopolistic positions

government spending baling out incompetent finance houses and banks”

And a big slice of govt’s tax take!

But once again, that’s a function of social media acting as a nutter lantern, rather than the actual service of remembrance.

I can’t stand the poppy fascism and poppy pron (sparkly poppies on Strictly anyone?) and the assumption that anyone on TV in November without wearing a poppy is some sort of traitor.

This. I noticed on Strictly (guilty pleasure) that they had poppies on their gym kit during the footage of them in training, ridiculous!

No other wars are mentioned. Active servicemen and women aren’t either.

Definitely not correct of several memorials or any memorial service I’ve been to. The far lower casualties in later conflicts are probably the reason there’s none of their names on there; statistically, there’s a far lower chance of people from your parish having died in those.

I’d suggest seeing tones of imperial superiority/glorification of war/British exceptionalism in the service of remembrance say more about the beholder than the content.

Mike, hammy and Edukator, good posts 🙂

Remembrance Sunday isn’t some kind of partisan, nationalistic fervour though. He’s comparing something that commemorates the horrors of war and provokes a moment’s reflection on it, with half-remembered ancient grievances which are used to whip up popular feeling towards the opposite objective.

Agree that there’s a disturbing “remembrance porn” and “griefier than thou” aspect to it these days. But that’s social media’s fault, not Remembrance Sunday’s. Rest of the article is just him making shit up!

He lost me with this little gem:

Such memorialism continues to distort Britain’s defence budget. It devotes astronomical sums to remembered threats and archaic strategies, such as submarine warfare, convoy protection, aerial dogfighters and manned bombers.

Absolute drivel.

Its really is the last act of the desperate to say group think – what it means is I have no facts to counter this so I will just shout out something I cannot prove.

PS its not my graph its just the facts in visual form.

Aggressive. I’m not desperate or shouting, just thinking aloud which I thought was kind of the point of online forums! Graph is factual but it doesn’t say what you and others have said or suggested, ie “more intelligent people voted remain”. While I agreed this is probably true, and I personally think to remain would have been much better, I think there are a lot of exceptions in both directions.

Re groupthink, you picked a definition that suited your argument. Here’s another:

“Groupthink is a term first used in 1972 by social psychologist Irving L. Janis that refers to a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. In many cases, people will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group.”

I recognise that from the students’ union and the world of work. Add it to the echo chamber effect of social media and you’ve got an influencing factor. Equally true of those on the leave side too, of course! Not suggesting it swung the vote, but I think it’s arrogant to suggest that all leave votes came from a cool, rational assessment of the facts whereas leave was all the xenophobic thickies.

RichPenny hope it works out with your daughter.

“yourguitarhero – Member
airtragic »
Agree with this, but don’t you think a lot of young graduates voted remain, without fully understanding the implications, because all their friends were? Probably not in the same numbers, of course!
The one major thing a university education gives you is the ability to critically analyse information provided to you, not to just accept it as de facto.”

I know a lot of young graduates. I am one (ish). I think you’re over-egging this particular pudding; students are no more immune to their own groupthink and social norms than any other group of people! I think this accounts for a little bit of Junkyard’s graph.

As for the comment about not letting less intelligent people vote, of course that’s idiotic. However, there is definitely at least an opportunity for discussion on how to improve voter education and engagement on the issues upon which they are voting. I don’t think anyone can argue with a straight face that everyone who voted in the referendum fully understood the implications of their vote. To improve democracy you need to improve voter understanding of the issues at hand. That’s where dog-whistling from Farage et al. was so destructive.

Agree with this, but don’t you think a lot of young graduates voted remain, without fully understanding the implications, because all their friends were? Probably not in the same numbers, of course!

But are graduates necessarily more intelligent? Plus, that’s a pretty noisy graph, I think the right-hand half of the line is struggling a bit!

As an observation on the leave voters having less intelligence than remain voters: assuming a normal distribution, it would be safe to say that 52:48 more or less cuts down the middle of the population. We all know that under a normal distribution the mean is equal to the median. It’s just possible that all but the 2% over 50% who voted for leave are below average intelligence

I struggle with this a bit (I know it’s at least partially tongue in cheek), and Junkyard’s comment on the previous page about right wing ness and education level. It all seems a bit too neat for me, I think tying intelligence directly to education level is a bit suspect. I’m not sure how you define intelligence as there seem to be lots of different types, plus you’d have to allow for social norms, groupthink etc. Anecdotally, broadly true I think but I’m sure everyone can think of exceptions to prove the rule!

Sorry chew, can’t get pics to upload!

Yeah mine’s 10kg, would probably have been more if I’d left his nuts on! Pretty sure he couldn’t drag a deer though

The majority are not clever enough to know. All they want to see is less foreign people.

*fewer.

My Maine coon is four feet from nose to tip of tail, and has been mistaken for some kind of “beast” around the village. He can put his front paws on my solar plexus with his back feet on the ground ( I’m 5’9”).

Didn’t the Canadians have a Govt of experts a while back? Ie Education Minister ex Teacher, Defence ex soldier etc etc. Sounds like a great idea. I wonder what difference, if any, people in their departments felt?

Edited for autocorrect fail!

“HOWEVER he has 0 military experience “

They never do!

Bah, beaten to it!

FWIW, I bitterly regret my decision to fix for 5 years in 2014. I wanted some certainty post-divorce, indie financial adviser got me 4.5%, which seems to be at least twice what anybody else is paying! That decision has cost thousands, and resulted in me being in the weird situation of having a MINIMUM value of house I can buy due to loan-to-value ratio.
It’s got a £8k release clause too, so I can’t just get rid. Just under 2 years to go, yes that means I’m spat out 6 months after Brexit!

Now our SSNs come with cruise missiles, which greatly changes the risk to Argentina itself, should it ever come to another shooting war.

Apologies!

Fake news. It was 3 votes (out of 1500), not 3%!

There was always something suspicious about Jose, Manuel and Jorge….

Bit of misunderstanding about the roles of SSN vs SSBN above. Hunter-killer boats vs bombers. The hunter-killers (in old money) attack ships and other submarines, or fire cruise missiles, the bombers don’t participate except in the doomsday scenario. It’s very hard to imagine a FI conflict going nuclear.

The current plan is to not lose them in the first place! Air is the key, and Argentina don’t have any! If you think of the consequences of failure, given the current Argentine inventory, it’s hard to think of a plan that has a good enough chance of success. This chap analyses it nicely:
Recapturing the FI A lot of people don’t realise that the FI are over 300 miles off the Argentine Coast, we’re not talking about the Isle of Wight here, Argentina has no more claim on them than anyone else.

You’re right, rate of fire is the thing. Irrelevant for hunting big game, which will promptly do one if you miss with the first shot, but ideal for killing lots of people as quick as possible. I can’t think of a reason for a civilian to own one except as a range toy, but even then you tend to hit bugger all on automatic. I don’t get it.
A larger calibre will have much more energy per round, which is what you need to kill Big game.

Ah, the Nuremberg defence! These 2 were air traffic controllers so unlikely to be dropping anything! That said, we’re part of the system, so I’ve never liked slapping the moral conundrum on the aircrew. I’m content with the part I and my colleagues have played, which down at our level means dealing with the situation in front of you as best you can, in this case training a couple of guys to control aircraft. In the Yemen case, it sounds like a classic example of how to carry out an air counter insurgency badly, especially around targeting, rules of engagement etc. The big question is at what level the blame lies; are the violations we’ve seen deliberate policy or poor execution of commanders’ intents?
Even within the government, there are modernising and reactionary individuals and factions. Everybody has to operate within their own political reality, I suspect a Saudi calling for Western-style human rights tomorrow would get short shrift. You can argue that more will be achieved through a softly-softly reform process.

He’s given a ref. Bit much to expect him to post the entire text!

I trained a couple of Saudi Air Force guys a few years back. Both nice lads. I always think of them when I see (understandably) negative stuff about their society; a nation isn’t a homogeneous blob of good or bad people. Change is coming over there, but slooooowly. It would be nice to look 100 years into the future and see where the whole middle east is at!

[quoteIt seems to me that inside we had a lot of influence

outside we are reliant on the benevolence of Trump ![/quote]]

I’d suggest we’ll be more exposed to the cold winds of the international system. As a declining western power with unfavourable demographics and a debt problem, not the best strategy I think!

£9bn pa, one of the biggest economies in the world, a worldwide diplomatic network, one of only 2 full-spectrum militaries = “nothing but trouble”. Ta 😉

Klunk – Member
De Gaulle was a colossal tit and did all he could to hamper US/UK ops during WW2 despite the fall of France.
it was almost like he thought they were out to “get him” !

On 21 April 1943, de Gaulle was scheduled to fly in a Wellington bomber to Scotland to inspect the Free French Navy. On take-off, the bomber’s tail dropped, and the plane nearly crashed into the airfield’s embankment. Only the skill of the pilot saved them. On inspection, it was found that aeroplane’s separator rod had been sabotaged, using acid.[156][157] Britain’s MI6 investigated the incident, but no one was ever apprehended. De Gaulle blamed the Western Allies, and later told colleagues that he no longer had confidence in them

Surely that’s proof that somebody was out to get him, not necessarily the Western Allies. Seems an unnecessarily complicated sabotage too.
Agree De Gaulle was a throbber. Nice airport though. I always imagine what Harold MacMillan’s thoughts must have been when De Gaulle blocked Britain joining the embryonic EU, less than 20 years after the liberation of France! Probably not printable.

On the “EU Army”, it wouldn’t necessarily represent a big scaling up of footprint; there’s no appetite (or money) for that. You’d find that it would mean the establishment of some HQ formations, and lots of exercises together for them. The force elements would be the same units declared to NATO and their own sovereign states, the same physical boss/bits of kit.
If you were a cynic, you might think that the UK’s impending departure would allow the dominance of an EU force by the continent’s other big military power, hence M Macron pushing it! Buys him a bit more clout on that Franco-German axis….

Are they big enough to rumble? Only ever had them squeak before!

What Andeh said. It’s a hoot!

I like the look of that Thorn stem spacer with a mini handlebar on it, seems quite an elegant solution for drops?

Mikertroid plus 1, all that stuff! My 04 320d touring was bought in ’10 at 77k, sold in ’15 at 170k and still right as rain, I wish I had kept it!

. Good words, imo.