Cancelling the Type 32 Frigate would be ‘national self harm’

I would think that unless something in the next few years gives rise to the crucial need to re-design to better accommodate whatever that technology development turns out to be, that indeed surely just build a batch 2 T31 with whatever updates deemed advisable from having been learned from the first batch. Be stupid to otherwise re-invent the wheel.

I think Jeremy Hunt would genuinely like to increase defence spending. But when you have the nations balance sheet in your hand it’s never so simple. The spring defence review should be interesting, and I’m guessing it will include lessons learnt so far from Ukraine.

A navy isn’t going to do much against a nuclear Iran or korea. Keeping the gulf open for sure will need naval assets, but that isn’t about protecting Europe, well at least not directly.
Plus that would probably need properly armed and protected ships. Iran/korea has plenty of anti ship missiles, they would soon saturate a t31 if they wanted to push the point, meaning outside just being there to fly the flag they would be useless keeping the waters open. The challange is the world is getting more deadly with their capability and going further into the bottom end, when it comes to ships, means their jobs will be mainly policing, at which point they are overpriced and overarmed.

Just ask Russia, it’s ships in the black sea are now pretty much useless, post the sinking, as they just can’t defend themselves. They have a she’s load of offensive capability but very little by the way of defensive.

Navy not needed for nuclear Iran or NK?! Keeping the Gulf open not about protecting Europe?! What are you smoking , drinking ,or otherwise imbibing there? The dots are not that hard to connect.

How is a navy going to stop a nuke? A threat has to be balanced with the appropriate capability, a warship is no use against a nuclear missile.

Mainlining bleach.

Sorry, was not explicit enough in reference to full spectrum of RN capabilities; actions may start w/ GP frigates and progress through LRG(s), unrestricted SSN warfare, CSG(s), and ultimately CASD. Probably w/in coalition of the willing. Difficult to predict every conceivable future scenario.

Those British Army issue socks must be all over your house, hence your anger!

Agreed, Poland was habitually ignored, if not worse because of their fascination with Russia – turns out those who were under Moscow’s domination for decades were better able to asses the status quo than those who sheltered under Washington’s protective umbrella.

Its a bit of a morality tale for our age.

Would be interesting to understand what the british intel actually said. We know they warned constantly about russian influence in the Uk and that May told them to specifically not investigate if russian influence had impacted the election. We know that Boris was considered a security threat by both May and the US. We also know that significant russian donations were made to the conservative party and that rumours of links between Corbin and russia. We finally know there were hundreds of russian billionares that were aligned with Putin but living in London, and with a large numbers having UK citizenship. We also know similar issues existed in the US with the Trump adminstration. Its entirely possible that the government were warned about the threat but were too far in russian pockets to risk doing anything. I doubt I will be alive when the files get declassified, to find out, if they ever do.

We are more than capable Esteban, look at the results so far from one small country determined to defend their land from mighty Russia. Joke!

All over in a week at best. Think back to the two gulf wars and how they began. It’s called Airpower.

As for our combined ground forces…

Ha ha!

Stick to being a fan boy, your suited to it.

If you look at it logically an upgrade of T31 makes sense and numbers count. When WW2 started most of the destroyers were the A- H classes and they did sterling work. They were either clapped out or sunk by 1945. Their replacements were the J’s a new class. Point being you need to build in numbers and then change and maximise R & D.

and don’t forget those splendid Tribal class destroyers- more or less the same time as the JKL class.

The damage was done in the early 80’s when Labour and the Scots media worked together to paint the ‘Tories’ as ‘English’ and ‘anti Scottish’. It was all worked out between Donald Dewar and Gus McDonald. The anti English card worked a dream for Labour. Until it didn’t. The beautiful irony is the same Scots media that worked for Labour then switched straight over to the SNP when they took over. 😂 😂

The mindset that we must set an example for others to follow is a pure western liberal one who seem to think that we must be whiter than white and which is abused by third world countries for a lot of free cash. So after Paris, the first world set in motion a plan of action to cut emissions with a goal to cut emissions to 40% of 1990 by 2030.

The UK hit that target in 2019, and has increased its own target to 68% by 2030. The EU has a target of 55% by 2030
Meanwhile the biggest polluter China has a cop out to not start cutting emissions until…2030. The same goes for the third highest polluter India

But it gets even better, Paris saw the formation of a green fund to date only a few Western countries (As well as Korea and Aus are chipping in.) China one of the richest countries (and the biggest polluter) in the world is a recipient of monies from the Green fund, as is India, Pakistan, Iraq, Brazil, Malaysia and even North Korea. Bangladesh is paying China to build 3 of the worlds biggest coal power station, with another one which opened in 2018. Yet Bangladesh is demanding an even bigger cut of the green fund as it claims it is more at risk of rising sea levels, whilst omitting that the vast maj of the country is built on the worlds biggest river delta with no part of that river dealt higher than 12 metres which contains a population of 170 million (in 1980 the pop was 84 Million)
 Between 1877 and 1995, Bangladesh was hit by 154 cyclones—including 43 severe cyclonic storms and 68 tropical depressions—or one severe cyclone every three years creating storm surges that are sometimes in excess of 10 meters

Pic shows who chips into the green climate fund:

The principal of taking responsibility for your fair share has nothing to do with “liberal”. In fact, the belief in fairness is the quintessential defining characteristic of Britain.

But there is a more fundamental moral issue here. If everyone around you litters, or steals, or worse, is it ok for you do the same? No, of course it’s not.

So you advocate we do nothing.
Everybody else then does nothing.
And together we watch civilisation collapse.

Yes China is still building coal-fired power stations… but that is vastly outstripped by its offshore wind generating capacity, increasing at 50% per annum.
China is now the largest generator of electricity by wind, generating 25GW of the 55GW produced globally. I doubt the Chinese are doing this because they’ve adopted ‘western liberalism’.

Don’t get fixated on sea-levels, that’s just going to be a minor inconvenience. The failure of crops, mass migrations from areas that become uninhabitable, release of previously unknown viruses and bacteria from melting permafrost, etc, are all going to make the future rather biblical.

As for Bangladesh… 2/3rds of the population live less than 15 feet above sea-levels. But the increased frequency and intensity of monsoons means they’ll experience plenty of inland flooding in addition to coastal flooding. The government, like most, is putting temporary political expediency above what is best for its population.

We may be only 1% now, but that’s because we have reduced our emissions. How high do you think our contribution to carbon emissions was during the industrial revolution onwards when we burnt coal like crazy? 

Here is a chart of collective carbon emmissions upto 2021, I think that since then Japan and Canada have gone above the Uk:


“”Or are you simply one of these climate-change deniers…?””

I find on the otherside of the coin as the climate change deniers are those who throw abuse at anybody who doesn’t listen to what they have to say. What a lot of protesters (of all ilks) fail to understand is that the name of the game is get the other feller to join your cause because he/she agrees with you and not because they have been coerced into joining your band of brothers

You state the Uk should set an example for the rest of the world to follow, Well here is the top half of the front page of the Uk govs report on Greenhouse gas emmssions dated 01/02/2022 and it states that as of 2020, the Uk has cut 49% of its 1990 emmssions . seeing as the Paris Target for 2030 was to cut emmssions to 40% (and with 10 years left on the slate) I think we can all agree that the Uk has set the perfect example for others to follow.

and just for the record, having spent over 14 years in Germany, I am as green as anybody can be, (if not more) and Ive been doing more than my bit for over 20 years

I am from Canada and we have had nine climate plans since 1990. We have never met a single target that has been set.

I’d agree, the nutters at Extinction Rebellion etc only harm the cause of reducing carbon emissions by alienating the general population. Their virtue-signalling and advocation of returning to subsistence farming has more to do with a hatred of capitalism than concern for the climate.

With a science background, I’ve been doing my bit since the 90’s… though it has been tempting not to; owning a car would have made life easier at times.

Climate is changing, but the idea that countries will stop it is wishful thinking. I don’t believe that the large emitters will put their economic growth at risk for environmental ideology. To be frank, they are not. Regardless of any agreements they may sign, China, Russia, India will do what is best for their economies. In fact most countries put their economy first which is why targets are never met. In the West, we pretend that we must “try harder’ and we pretend that it will make a difference. But I doubt most senior political figures really believe their own rhetoric. They do what they do because it is simply too difficult to sell the reality of what is actually going to happen. So we all just keep pretending.

Roy wrote:

But I doubt most senior political figures really believe their own rhetoric

The Paris agreement set a target of cutting emmisions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2030. As mentioned above, the Uk reached that level by 2019 and rejigged that target to 68% by 2030. A target the Gov wants to hit by banning Hydrocarbon powered cars, cutting how much meat we eat, Central heating and the production of plastic KFS and fast food boxes and yet despite setting a target of almost 75% over what Paris set, Starmer stated at the end of last year, that if (when) Labour get in, he would set a target of 100% by 2030. It will be interesting to see how he would achieve that. The only way I can see that is by having all the plebs having a crystal fitted in the palm of their hand and when that person hits 30, they are turned into solyant green, anybody who doesnt want to be turned into food will have transwohmen hunt them down them with a loaded weapon between their legs., no wait that’s Scotland.

Really? Because history proves you wrong. Countries united, at cost, to change their industries to eliminate CFCs that were destroying the ozone layer. CFCs are also bad for climate-change too, we’d be seeing an additional 1C rise in global temperatures from CFCs had we not taken action.

The UK had already hit, surpassed even, it’s international targets. Other countries are doing better, others are progressing well, while others are lagging. That’s the nature of things, no two countries are starting from the same position, and sadly the climate is not amongst the top priorities of all countries.

Meanwhile China has in the space of a few years ramped up its offshore wind generation of electricity, so that 25GW of the 55GW generated annually are produced by Chinese offshore wind farms. Their annual increase is currently running at an incredible 48%…. But you’ll probably bleat about them still having coal-fired power stations too 🤦🏻‍♂️

Ridiculous, Climate always changed.

Politics is the only Religion that promises to control climate.
And the faithful believe that.

Climate and the atmosphere do indeed change, fortunately so as they originally support human life. Science has also shown that man is capable of changing it too, and we have dramatically, bringing about the fastest changes in the history of the planet. Science advises we also make efforts to prevent further change, if our civilisation is to continue in a recognisable form.
During the pandemic science advised the politics, and in general the politicians listened and acted. As a result the death toll was lower and we have new vaccines.

The same situation exists with climate change. The science is undeniable, and reluctantly the politicians have been forced to act.

Of course there’s always going to be some anti-science flat-earthers like yourself who will deny man-made climate change because you don’t understand science and instead view everything through the warped lens of your political bias.

You have no history of climate with even with miserable precision for more than 150 years and just last 30 or so with satellites and that don’t explain anything so why you have the gall to talk about “fastest changes” !?

You don’t believe in science , you believe in propaganda and scientism just because it was repeated in quantity enough for you to believe it.

It is impossible to know what is driving the climate.

We have many records of climate and weather change, just because you’re ignorant of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Ice core samples provide details if atmospheric composition, including the amount of carbon-dioxide present, for tens of thousands of years. For shorter periods of time examination of sequoia trunks show climatic changes, as an example.

Wrong, there are weather records relating to the U.K. going back to the 1600’s.

It’s impossible to prove 100% that climate-change is man-made, but that is the case of the majority of things in life. Which is why reasonable people make decisions based on the balance of evidence, and the overwhelming scientific evidence now is that it is man-made.

You can stomp your feet and throw as many tantrums as you like, it’s not going to change the facts.

And the ice cores show that temperature increase started before CO2 increase, so using your kind of “science” i can even say that temperatures drives CO2 increase and not the inverse.
I don’t affirm it because it is unprovable that is a driver. There are a lot of factors in climate, not only we do not know the weight of the factors we don’t even know what are factors: earth magnetism changes, cosmological changes including the earth tilting variation, or just the plain simple effects of cumulative climate. Past climate affects today climate don’t you know? how much is that and it affects what?
No one knows. Climate understanding is a vast endeavour that only started recently and started quite badly negating Scientific Method.
When milking this multigenerational power play run its course basically when a new generation will be bored by it another “crisis” will occur to change the generational pack of cards as a way to change the power towards then current generation.

First you say there’s no record of climate change until I point out we have it going back thousands of years thanks to ice cores. Now that you you’ve been proven wrong, you instead fabricate the results of ice core analysis.

I can’t decide. Do you refuse to believe the vast majority of the scientific evidence that climate change is being driven by carbon dioxide increase because:
(a) some weird politic dogma that like Corvid-denial sees the issue as part of a culture war
(b) that your life is so empty that you have to give it value by convincing yourself that you’re a plucky Luke Skywalker rebel-type against some huge conspiracy
(c) you’re too ignorant or lazy to bother with the science?

oh my god – do they mean we will sail over the edge? This will have serious consequences for the Royal Navy over the horizon policy and global force projection. 😀

Thank you. Well said.

Excellent post Sean- well written

Monmouth has already gone, stripped bare and pretty well hulked, Montrose goes in the spring.
This has been gone over repeatedly, they are done without a hell of a lot of money being spent (which has to be found from somewhere else in the budget) they are razor blades.
There is an insurmountable problem with our system. It takes 20+ years to design and build a new ship. And that has to depend on a cast iron long term plan.
A politician has maybe 5 years in post and is mainly interested in only one thing “where are the votes”.
NHS, OAP Triple lock are sacrosanct and they eat the majority of the budget.
Both are unsustainable long term as you would have rebuild the NHS, Nationalise the PFI hospitals and go against the Pensioners.
I don’t begrudge someone a pension but we are rapidly heading towards the State Pension being above the minimum living wage.
30 ships is what we need but 22 is what we may possibly afford.

Good luck on getting 22.

Should there be one thing I hate the Cons for, it is their trite “party of Defence,” not that Labour would ever have been believed.

I’m not sure our Tiktoc SoSfD was ever that good – he has made some blunders, but, the potential Labour SoSfD is equally lamentable for not shredding him to pieces.

Defence is the one thing I really want Labour to lead on so I don’t waste my vote, very soon.

Not sure what a Brit squaddie is. Not really scared at all about anything. Just curious what the hell is going on in the UK. I’m just saying. And if I hear somebody say punching above our weight one more time I’m going to throw up.

Yes you do. And “our weight”? Far to many inconsistencies in your typing and statements for anyone to believe your from the UK, as you have just stated you have no clue what a Brit squaddie is! Hilarious, sad, but hilarious.

That’s not the most ridiculous thing he’s come out with today.

Yep indeed…..Well what would happen if we wanted to take out Birmingham would that sort of match up with Glasgow…or Bristol we could remove Dundee maybe…..or if we took a random 1km2 bit of England and a random 1km2 bit of Scotland we could compare….gosh the totally made up comparisons are endless.

😄

If anything the point should have been take an area of England with roughly the same population and do a comparison. For Scotland there’s only a couple, Yorkshire & the Humber or West Midlands, in both instances Scotland has higher GDP per capita and has a lower deficit per capita, reality is London and South East do skew the figures for England and the UK as a whole. If in doubt go have a look at the National Audit Office figures.

Reality is many people seem to think Scotland or even Wales would be too poor to survive yet most countries in Europe are in the 3-10mil population range and get by just fine, if the end of the UK does happen in the next decade it would probably be a good thing for England as well as Westminster would be forced to reevaluate Defence as a whole and perhaps change how things are done with new priorities and goals.

Nope that’s an equally ridiculous and facile comparison invented to try and support a particular position. Compare England with Scotland, don’t cherry-pick artificial areas to compare. London and the South East skew the figures for England in the same way the Central Belt does in Scotland.
London skews the figures even more, because you have a population greater than that of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland squeezed into a single city. And the larger and more populous a city is, the more economically productive and efficient it is. Which is why improving public transport between neighbouring northern cities could greatly help the levelling up aspiration.

Most countries in Europe don’t depend on a large neighbour to subsidise them directly and indirectly.
A huge part of the economy of Wales and Scotland is hosting public sector agencies doing work for the entire U.K. They would lose that work if they gained independence.
The Scottish shipbuilding industry is an example of indirect subsidies, the loss of RN orders would decimate it. Even the Scottish SNP government is now placing orders for CalMac ferries abroad instead of in Scotland! 🤣

The U.K. is the biggest export market for Scotland and Wales, and suddenly they want to leave the U.K. free trade area and place a hard border between themselves and the rest of the U.K.?!?
While they may get better trading arrangements with the U.K. as part of the EU, there is no knowing how many years it would take for them to be admitted to the EU or if they would be admitted at all.

So you don’t want a whole nation comparison or a similarly based population comparison? Ireland was told it was too poor, as was Malta and numerous other countries that are no longer closely associated with the UK.

Just seems odd that you know how a country would function and somehow buck the trend of every other small nation in Europe. Fact is Scotland and Wales would survive and get by just fine, I do think it’s funny when people talk about deficits though especially as the UK hasn’t run a surplus since 2000/01, why should Scotland or Wales be held to a higher standard than the UK?

Anyway, original point is most of England is actually skint, London and the South East bail them out due to a horribly unbalanced economy and no amount of levelling up is going to change that anytime soon.

Only a bigoted propagandist such as yourself would do the kind of comparisons you advocate. Help of a lot more factors at play than simply counting bodies, but that’s too difficult for you.

Yeah let’s look at the trends of small nations in Europe… Portugal, Ireland, Greece… does the phrase “sovereign debt crisis” not ring any bells for you?

Fact is, England bailed Scotland out after it bankrupted itself with the Darien Scheme. And then in 2008/9 England had to bailout your banks yet again.
Quite a track record you have up there…

Big words for someone who clearly doesn’t want to look at facts. Go have a look at any small country in Europe and how they’ve performed over the last 20 years, ups and downs but all have remained sovereign even the much aligned Greek. If you want to compare by country then fair enough, compare to Finland, Slovakia, Czech Republic if you want to compare by population or to Portugal or Greece by size of economy, for context Scotland has a similar sized economy with half the population of either.

Also the financial crisis in 2008 was caused by US Banks, HBOS which was heavily indebted due to their mortgage arm (Halifax) and RBS (which is Nationwide outside Scotland) due to their investment banking arm, both banks were registered in London and with the vast vast majority of customers and deposits were from customers in England so please don’t let the name of the bank fool you into thinking it was somehow bailing Scotland out, that’s just ignorance of the facts.

You would recognise a fact if it smacked you in the face. In fact, you’ve already been smacked in the face by several and you’re too stupid too notice.

Trying to rewrite history, not surprised.

Please point out where I’ve tried to rewrite history? Just because you don’t agree with facts that doesn’t mean other people are lying, maybe go have a look at ONS figures published by the Westminster government before you make more of a fool of yourself.

Funny, as a Geordie I remember Prescott under the Blair administration organising referendums for regional devolution in England – a politically motivated ruse as they thought it would be jobs for life for labour politicians. They started with the North East and they abandoned their plans completely when they lost heavily, with 78% of votes against a regional assembly.

Ah all becomes clear now, from the North East so likes to talk down Scotland even though the North East is the least financially productive part of the UK.

UK average GDP per capita in 2020 £32,141
London £55,974 (1st, which as mentioned previously skews the data)
South East £34,516 2nd
Scotland £29,629 (3rd place)
West Midlands £26,281 (same population as Scotland, 7th)
Yorkshire and the Humber £25,696 (same population as Scotland, 9th)
Northern Ireland £25,575 (10th)
Wales £23,882 (11th)
North East £23,109 (12th, also last)

Figures from Office of National Statistics

Maybe time to go sit down and ask yourself what the Tories have done to fix the North/South divide, spoiler not much. Your problem isn’t Scotland either but please keep banging on about how Scotland gets more, yeah they do cause they contribute more as well.

What did the EU say about Catalonia and Scotland?

Could we agree to disagree?

The EU tied its own hands over Spain:
“”Article 4.2 of the 2009 Lisbon treaty states that the EU “shall respect” the “essential state functions” of its members, “including territorial integrity” and “maintaining law and order”. The EU has no power over how a member state decides to organise itself or its constituent regions.””

But the Uk is no longer in the EU which explains why Brussels has backed:
The Irish
The Spanish
The Scottish
The Welsh
Argentina
and even the French, I mean the first thing they said when the Uk left the EU was:
“You are no longer in the club, and so cannot access anything that comes with the club”
And yet
When it came to fishing rights, they demanded that we should allow EU states into British waters because that is what was allowed when the UK was in the UK.

lets be honest (and as I keeo saying, I am pro EU) All we have seen from the EU is infantile behavoir
Be it COVID
How we treat the others nationals (All I have seen is whislt demanding we treat EU nationals as if they are living in the EU, British nationals living across the EU are treated like shite)
Fishing (As mentioned)
Offering financial incentives for companies to relocate to the EU
Stating that UK flights will be banned from Irish airspace
Trying to claim credit for the Irish peace deal.
Deanding the Uk pays into any project still running in the EU until it ends, whislt denying the Uk access to them

and as I mentioned its the same with how the EU is going hell for leather in breaking up the UK, because the British public didnt want to be in the EU.

Living in London, most of my acquaintances are foreign, an include Czechs and Slovaks. They and their countries are still best buddies, many still think it a shame at the split.

While I was, many years ago in favour of the EEC, that changed when it became all too apparent that democracy took second place to politician aspirations and that they planned to create a federal European state whether nations’ populations wanted it or not. Ultimately it will fail, when it does I hope it is a velvet divorce like Czechoslovakia and not like the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia.
Hopefully thanks to Brexit we won’t be involved if it turns out to be the latter.

While I could see the EU rejoicing at punishing the U.K. by prising Northern Ireland away from the U.K., I think they are perhaps finally seeing sense. Our leadership among European nations in supporting Ukraine in the largest war in Europe since WW2 has perhaps reminded the EU how useful it can be to be on good terms with the U.K.
As for the other suggestions, I think they’re fanciful. For one thing, the Eurocrats aren’t that imaginative. 😏

Absolutely right. If i was a voter at the time of our entry to the EEC…hell yeah sign me up its a no-brainer. The EU is a different beast entirely.

There were never going to be any short term economic benefits from coming out of it, anyone who thought so was a fool. However im still 100% Brexit if the EU survives in its present form.

If it were to regress to an economic partnership of sovereign states with comparable economies and ideals without the superstate ambitions then i would love my country to be a part of that again.

Yeah he’s certainly one of the ‘in it for themselves’ brigade

Do you know about the EU fraud squad? OLAF?

They pick 1 in a 1000 (?) privatisations involving EU monetary support and picked the fmr Slovak State oil company by random chance and went to work.

Imagine the EU, let alone OLAF investigators finding out it had already been privatised and was owned by Meciar and friends, who had all just pocketed gazillions from the EU…. not happy.

😂😂

Being born in a BMH in Germany, I’m not English either.

So the US is lying when it says Scotland will not be able to join with current stance ?

Countries say a lot of things in order to try to deter a particular outcome. Once things change however, things change. The UK would become an entirely different entity with Scotland out, much weaker on many levels, much less politically important. The US would lament the loss, but it would have to move on.

Were Scotland to adopt a New Zealand type approach to (US) nuclear warships visiting her waters, the US might well respond by trying to freeze Scotland out – at least for a time. But I am not sure how long that approach would viable. The Americans live with Danish and Norwegian nuclear policies, with some sort of Scottish olive branch, they would probably live with Scotland’s as well.

Danish and Norwegians have nuclear power programs and keep quiet about nuclear weapons.

SNP’s CND style statements aren’t NATO compatible.

The super special independent UK deterrent will go away… That is always been a joke from day one.

Oh dear, you can always tell when you’ve found a pair of British Army socks in your dirty laundry, you get so wet and angry at us Brits 👜

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