rkk01 – Member
The Americans won’t cancel F35 in favour of more F22’s as they are totally different; the F22 is air-air only, the F35 is primarily a strike aircraft. The Americans may cancel it in favour of more F/A-18’s and drones.
Presumably the F22 hasn’t got any carrier capability?

Well there is that, which is similar to the ‘why can’t the Navy fly RAF Typhoons off the new carriers?’ which keeps getting asked in these types of conversation.

My view is we should have 2 carriers, ditch F35 and buy F/A-18 or shhh.. Rafale depending on how much you want to annoy the Americans.

However you need to remember a carrier is only useful as long as it floats. If they are not properly protected some very low rate powers now have diesel electric submarines which would be able to kill one easily enough*. It would be very embarrassing for the pride of the RN being sunk by a North Korean sub.

*Also remember these are not like the armoured warships of WW2 and look at USS Cole to see what an explosive laden speedboat can do to modern thin hulls.

In response to a few posts here;

British carriers have been used numerous times since WW2. They saw extensive active service in the withdrawal from Empire and the numerous brushfire conflicts. They guaranteed the security of Belize so it was able to become an independent nation when it’s neighbour threatened it and without them the campaign to retake the Falklands could not have been waged.

If you are a bit of a lefty and want to get away from ‘colonial’ uses then they were very useful in the 1990’s supporting operations in the Balkans and Africa.

Don’t also forget that we are an Island with most of our trade carried by ship. Those ships can carry ASW aircraft which with everyone building submarines at the moment could be very useful in years to come.

Since WW2 all air to air kills performed by British aircraft were from Royal Navy jets or flew from an RN carrier. Despite the governments insistence that there are currently no overflight problems for the RAF that won’t always be the case.

On the flip side the Tornado GR4 is a much more useful aircraft than the Harrier if you need someone hanging around with lots of bombs just in case. Their range, speed, and payload make them far more effective for policing a country like Afghanistan than Harrier GR9.

The Sea Harriers were not effective in Afghanistan because firstly there wasn’t a Taliban air-force to worry about (and they are an air to air weapon) and secondly they were under powered for flying in the Hindu Mountains.

The Americans won’t cancel F35 in favour of more F22’s as they are totally different; the F22 is air-air only, the F35 is primarily a strike aircraft. The Americans may cancel it in favour of more F/A-18’s and drones.

I think that about covers most of it…

2) Only 1 pint after work on a Friday.

As opposed to 8?

You try going to pub to have 3 or 4 pints and not get round in when you are a team manager 😆

Interesting perspectives on here. The lose of this benefit for my wife and I can be covered in a number of ways.

1) Fewer MTB trips a year to wales.
2) Only 1 pint after work on a Friday.
3) fewer canteen lunches at work.

etc..

When I think of it like that we definitely don’t need it and it won’t take anything away from our little girl but on top of;

1. Forthcoming VAT rise.
2. Increased Petrol.
3. Increasing mortgage repayments (Interest rates have only 1 way to go next year)
4. Increasing car insurance costs.

It’s not the best of news!

I’ll just add that if you want to be pedantic you could class white phosphorous as a chemical weapon, in which case the RAF (and others) used it extensively in WW2 as an incendiary.

Ohh, and the European powers certainly did restrain themselves from using their most powerful weapons. Both the British and Germans expected to be subjected to chemical warfare, but weren’t because each side were too fearful of the consequences of using the chemicals weapons that they had developed.

I think it was more to do with the fact that high explosive was far more effective. Both sides had used blister agents in WW1 and knew they were very unpredictable due to wind etc. A chemical attack against a prepared population would also have been largely ineffective once the shock of the audacity of it wore off.

Very true.

Okay, I think I remember now. It was nerve agents like sarin I was thinking about.

The Germans did use nerve agents in WW2, with very effective results but only in environments where they had absolute control – death camp gas chambers for example.

Had the Germans carried out Operation Sea Lion in 1940 (invasion of the UK) I have little doubt that given the state of the British Army after Dunkirk Churchill would have ordered the use of everything including chemical weapons against the invading army.

To recap this thread for the late-comers at the back;

1. The need to force a Japanese Surrender before the Soviets joined in.

2. The need to force an impression upon Stalin that the USA was now Number 1 ahead of all other Great Powers militarily, scientifically and industrially.

3. The Military Industrial Complex had built up enough momentum behind what was a prohibitively expensive project; that expense needed to be justified.

4. Conventional area and fire bombing attacks had already killed and injured hundreds of thousands in Axis cities by the summer of 1945. Why get worked up about another 200,000 thousand enemy civilians who had already been dehumanized in the eyes of the majority of UK/US citizens?

5. A land invasion would have cost an estimated 50,000 allied lives and likely hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.

6. Siege? Not an option return to point 1.

Derek – Go and borrow Hiroshima’s Shadow from a library. A very good collection of essays – even if a little liberal for my Daily Telegraph tastes 😉

Interesting subject this (if a little horrifying). During the cold war there was plenty of western speculation as to what a Soviet attack would look like, one scenario I skimmed through when studying my degree described how the then government (circa 1980) expected no fewer than 6 nuclear strikes against London and a maximum of 11. There were not really any plans to evacuate London as far as I could tell even if conventional warfare had broken out in Europe…

Since the end of the cold war various soviet plans have been published in Poland and the Czech Republic. Some of these show Soviet plans expected a NATO nuclear strike first to which much of West Germany and the Low countries would be hit first. The UK and France were surprisingly spared (probably to allow for consolidation in W Germany and then for cooler heads to prevail – i.e. a western surrender).

God knows what would happen today, all missiles are supposed to be de-targeted and as there are fewer of them a limited tactical strike rather than MAD is probably a lot more likely.

Anyway my bet is (if it happens) a nuclear war will be fought in the East rather than Western Europe so other than all our cheap goods and general lack of foodstuffs we’d probably fare pretty well.

😐

I like Viewsonic stuff but you rarely find decent inbuilt speakers, for £200 notes you can probably get a goodish 22" screen and have money left over for external speakers should the internal ones not live up to your expectations.

For a 24" screen at your budget;

Viewsonic Review

It'd be to live in for probably 5 years or so.

I'm working full time so will only do the simple stuff, and having had a go at plastering & basic plumbing a few years back know good tradesmen are worth paying for.

http://www.wdmbc.co.uk

There are usually club rides on Wednesday nights, Saturdays and Sundays. No matter how fast/slow serious or casual you are there will be people of similar ability and commitment in the club.

Just downloaded it but unfortunately it is Intel only. Bugger, another useful bit of software that won't run on the Powermac…

Trying to decide which bike to take – Fuel EX 8 or Stumpjumper HT, any advice from anyone?

EvilJoe – I think one of our team members has dropped out and no replacement yet found. I'll call the team captain later to find out, send me an email.

BigEars

wwaswas,

They pretty much gave up on the big gun battle-cruisers/ships when so many of them were sunk in WW2 by submarines and carrier borne aircraft.

IIRC the UK's last battleship was scrapped in the 1950's but the USA kept hold of a couple for a lot longer. The USS New Jersey saw action in 1991 softening up Iraqi coastal defences.

I did hear a rumour that there were plans to fit a 155mm gun to some RN ships as shells are considerably cheaper than missiles. It was probably just a Lewis Page story though!

epicyclo

We need it because the French have them.

On a serious note, the UK is still a Great Power able to influence events on the world stage along with France, Russia, China. The USA is the only superpower & Germany and Japan are Economic Great Powers. Considering how much of our economy relies upon imports & exports across the oceans we would be mad to give up a 1st rate submarine fleet.

Yes I'm sure the Russian's etc could detect & destroy one of these boats but that really would depend on the crew sailing her and Russia (or whomever) having the intelligence to know where to start looking (once she is at sea!)

I received a CV from a guy who claimed to have worked for a month at a central London bank and migrated their main system from Sybase to SQL Server.

Now having managed an outsourced team that supported that bank a while ago I knew this was a big piece of work. After a quick IM to a former colleague I found out this chap spent only 9 days there and wrote an awful report that was of no use and had to be completely re-written.

Don't lie, most industries are quite incestuous and someone will know someone who'll know you are lying.

Makes me laugh when people talk about bad driving on 'the continent' – at least they know how to drive on motorways!

Having driven across Holland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy & Spain I can say that I don't understand this oft quoted phrase – the majority of motorway on the continent are only 2 lane so no middle lane to hog.

Italians are without doubt the worst/least safe drivers. Spanish motorways were for the most part empty and a pleasure to drive on.

Trident is an independent nuclear deterrent and the warheads are produced entirely in the UK but supposedly part based on US design. The warheads can also be wound up from a tactical nuke to small city destroyer and each missile can also carry multiple warheads.

The missiles however are US built and a missile that has been in a US sub can later find itself in a UK sub. The UK did have it's own missile program in the 1960's but due to spiraling costs once the US offered Polaris it was sensible to take that. The UK missile program did eventually put a single satellite into orbit but was closed down in the 1970's and the designs given to France. The French/EU space agency rockets are descendants of this.

Politically trident presents the UK with an ability to negotiate(or bully) with other countries and also implies that we could nuke a large airbase (or other installation) without necessarily turning a whole country into a mutant infested wasteland or putting large numbers of conventional forces at risk.

In an ideal world would we have it, no of course not.

A good (if out of date website) is here http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html

Are you sure you have it formatted with the FAT32 file-system as opposed to NTFS? The Xbox can only read FAT or FAT32 partitions.

Absolutely nothing wrong with Vista SP2 you just need plenty of RAM and a good graphics card to get the best out of it.

Windows 7 definitely feels nicer to use than Vista on lower spec kit but you still want more than 1Gb of Ram. It is really just Vista R2 and in my experience not yet as stable.

You won't go wrong with XP SP3 on that old kit especially if you have 1Gb of RAM but I would backup data and format the drive. You won't need to upgrade office as Office 97 or 2000 runs quite happily on XP if that is all you have.

Agree with the Sweede, it borders on being boring, best to get in a group and chat away whilst taking in the scenery.

The last leg is definately the best bit as you are up highest get good views and a nice fun descent 🙂

I'll just add that Mount Pleasant is capable of supporting the E3 Sentry. If it looks like things might heat up I'm sure one can be sent south quickly enough.

Berm Bandit.

The Vanguard class submarines which carry Trident did not enter service until 1994, the Resolution class submarines only ever carried Polaris missiles which received upgraded missiles & warheads (Polaris A3TK) in the early 1980's but these certainly were not Trident.

If what you are saying is correct and that the Royal Navy did deploy Trident equipped bombers the 1980's then you have access to information that is not in the public domain!

This is a good source of information on the UK Nuclear weapons programmes;

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org//Uk/UKArsenalDev.html

Depressing stuff that so much money and scientific knowledge has had to be committed to such destructive weapons. 🙄

Clearly TandemJeremy attended the idealistical 1930's school of politics and internataional diplomacy.

It's a dog eat dog world, always has been and always will be. The Chilean proposal would not have worked, at least not to the Islanders or UK advantage and I very much doubt it would have been a sorted deal by 1983 – just look at Cyprus and countless other parts of the world where compromise deals have been reached. Hatred and hostilities is ever present bubbling just under the surface.

The fact that the Belgrano was sailing away from the exclusion zone really means very little, she was a potential danger. The fact that after she was sunk the Veinticinco de Mayo, her escorts and fighter bomber aircraft returned to port and stayed there speaks volumes the effect of the Belgrano's sinking had on the Argentine navy.

We are currently surrounded by a bubble 60 or so light years in diameter. There are a lot of stars within that and therefore if an alien race could travel just under the speed of light and were only 4 light years away they could have started popping up in the late 1940's had they detected the first high power TV transmissions or atmospheric atomic blasts.

It could also be coincidence that once science put rockets into the air and gave us supersonic secret aircraft that elves, pixies and fairies became aliens 🙂

Either way you have an explanantion.

I'm with TerraHawk, there is no saving them we should concentrate them all in a camp with any other undesirerables and do the decent thing.

In the mean time can we make them wear an armband identifying them in public?

LOL @ AndyP. Best send Sonja into town but a 7/10 for breakfast…

Seem to remember the Specialized concept store in Ruislip had a vacancy advertised in the window a little while ago. Probably gone but worth a call perhaps?

Cheers, the commute is 22ish miles each way, I have a very small locker so can leave shoes and perhaps a couple of carefully folded shirts but no more. I probably wouldn't use panniers all the time but nice to have the option.

If I forget about the panniers a CX bike like the Orbea is very tempting as I already have a proper road bike.

Personally if I had that money to spend on a bike I wouldn't. I'd buy two bikes!

Get the EX9 and use the rest for hardtail or roadbike 🙂

I've got an Mg ZT-T 2.5 litre petrol. You can get a lot of car for the money and very nice to drive. Fuel consumption is fine if your milage is low but the boot is smaller than a Mondeo estate.

Which ever you can get a better deal on ie free games you want/will play.

Like it or not still being in possesion of 4 Trident armed submarines does still make us a major military power. Despite the government not living up to their responsibility to make sure the rest of the armed forces are properlly staffed and equipped for the world of today and tomorrow.

The Iranians know how to play this however, there is no way we can use the threat of massive retaliation (or even just a small bang) for a slap in the face which will probably be the arrest of more embassy staff.

This will remain in the realm of the diplomats for now.

If we are talking about it's use in the UK it should be assessed on how it would fit in with the UK legal system and not how it currently works or fails to in the US, China etc.

The argument that a civilized society does not execute is meaningless. A perfectly civilized society could exisit where the worst offenders are quickly and humanly executed. But then the legal system would probably not look quite like the one we have today…

As for comments about who would pull the trigger you will find no shortage of such people in Britain today, perhaps we are not the civilzed society that many allude to after all?

I usually reckon that a 1 hour road run equates to about 2.5 – 3 hours on the road bike. Even after 4 hours on the road bike my body still doesn't feel like it has taken the same pounding.

Off road it's different and harder to compare as it varies so much but I think twice as long on the bike.

Don't overlook the fact that the flex people talk about/notice is often in the wheel & not the fork. A good choice of rim & spoke well built into a QR wheel will be stronger/stiffer than a standard machine built bolt thru wheel.

With an average of 5.4 road deaths per 100,000 people in this country and cycling related deaths just 5% of that why does this argument get such attention? More effort should be spent on getting people to use lights on their bikes, wearing a helmet is not going to help you when you can't be seen by drivers whizzing past at 50mph. (Yes you the bloke on the A414 at 6.45am last week)

"It may be that some members of the public, or media commentators, will assert that the man Salem deserved what happened to him … and that you should not have been prosecuted and need not be punished,” he said.

"However, if persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse."

My bold. Now I suspect the defendant did not know the victims[?!] previous records but having now heard it is 50+ convictions I would say our system of criminal justice is on life support and if something is not done to either to re-educate repeat offenders or keep them off the streets we will see more of this type of thing.

Likewise we are not permitted to own firearms for self-defence any more (the law changed in England & Wales in the 1920's) as we should be able to rely upon the police to defend us and our property from violent criminals and the government & judicial system should ensure the police are adequately supported & equipped to do so.

The way I see it the English system has failed on two counts prior to the home-owner beating the living daylights out of this guy;

1) Getting the robber to mend his ways earlier in his criminal career or to keep him locked up.
2) To permit a law abiding citizen from being equipped to defend his family & home from the threat of violent attack or to ensure that the police are on the scene within moments of the such an act taking place.

The second potentially opens a can of worms, where does it stop? If you accept that the police cannot be on scene in minutes (which realistically they cannot) what is the next step? What would have happened if the previously law abiding home-owner was permitted (as in Texas) to carry a firearm and trained to use it?

Definitely won't get a virus. I thought about the yellow dog install and decided that other than doing it for something to do it was quite pointless if you already have a PC or Mac.

The PS3 only has 256Mb of Ram so you can't run much in Yellow dog compared to a modern home PC/Mac system before that becomes a problem. Fine if you have several PS3's to cluster together for a specific task though…

The WTC was designed with an aircraft strike in mind – being so close to several airports it had to be. The aircraft however was a 707 and they did not factor in it being full of fuel.

The aircraft that hit the WTC might look like 707's but they were in fact bigger and also carried plenty of fuel. The heat of the fires probably had little to do with office paper and more to do with burning jet fuel!

The WTC was also built without asbestos and used poorer quality fire proofing. Lots of burning jet fuel at high temperatures plus inadequate fireproofing plus lots more floors above equals building collapse.

I think this has been covered by enough TV programs now that even I can remember the basics!