Conservative Party's chronicles

Badenoch at PMQs

“The one ship which we are sending, HMS Dragon, is still in Portsmouth. The fact is, the type 45 cannot take out incoming missiles. This is not enough. He’s read out a long list…. the people who understand know it is not enough. He should be doing more.”

Royal Navy website

The Daring class consists of six Type 45 destroyers (HMS Daring, Dauntless, Diamond, Dragon, Defender and Duncan) that were purpose built for anti-aircraft and anti-missile warfare…

… The Sea Viper missile system can target and destroy multiple targets simultaneously

Designed to protect both land and sea forces from aircraft attacks and defend the naval fleet against supersonic anti-ship missiles, Sea Viper is the principle weapon system of the Daring Class of destroyers.

Comprising of long-range and missile-directing radars, a combat control centre and vertical missile silos, Sea Viper can launch eight missiles in under ten seconds and guide up to 16 missiles simultaneously.

Taking out incoming missiles is the one thing the T45 was designed to do above everything else, that being the next generation priority identified after that little skirmish in the South Atlantic where incoming missiles turned out to be a significant inconvenience. A single one of these ships sat between the South American mainland and the Falkland Islands would have ensured a very different outcome. From time to time the RN sails one of them south and has it patrol up and down, to make that very point.

The problem with the T45 is that there aren’t nearly enough of them, and those that were built (6 of the originally planned 12) were fitted with woefully inadequate power systems. All of them have had to have their hulls blowtorched open to get new engines in. The reason Dragon is going and other deployable T45s are not is that it has completed this ‘power improvement programme’ and so stands half a chance of not blowing a fuse in the warm waters of the Med.

To be fair to the Conservative Party for a moment, the shortcomings of the T45 programme belong to the Blair-Brown years, not the Coalition or subsequent Tory administrations.

[Dingbat]

Why is Badenoch, and Farage for that matter, so determined that we should send our armed forces into a war that has nothing to do with us?

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by Dingbat

Why is Badenoch, and Farage for that matter, so determined that we should send our armed forces into a war that has nothing to do with us?

Because Starmer is in a jam and and these comments cause him to dig a even bigger hole , face it UK couldn't defend itself ,never mind anyone else.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Dingbat

Why is Badenoch, and Farage for that matter, so determined that we should send our armed forces into a war that has nothing to do with us?

Er - our sovereign territory was bombed by the enemy.

For what my opinion is worth:

1. We could not have participated in initial strikes (see Israel for details).

2. We should not have prevented the USA from using our sovereign bases.

3. We were bombed - so now we are ivolved.

My understanding is that the USA was bounced into the war by Israel who, legitimately, attacked Iran. The USA rightly feared (because Iran so threatened) that their bases and assets would be legitimate target for Iran. So the USA legitimately attacked Iran.

Simples, really.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Dingbat

Why is Badenoch, and Farage for that matter, so determined that we should send our armed forces into a war that has nothing to do with us?

They're happy to surrender the UK's sovereignty to Trump in return for a nice write-up in The Daily Telegraph and GB News.

So, insecurity I guess on Badenoch's part and keeping his job at GB News on Farage's. Fortunately, Britons oppose US strikes on Iran by 49% to 28%.
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54...-iran-conflict

[Mr K]

The Torygraph has been sold to the Germans...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...nger-for-575m/

Telegraph to be sold to Axel Springer for £575m
German publisher gatecrashes The Daily Mail’s planned takeover in an all-cash deal

There are many exploded Brexiteer blood vessels in their readers comments

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Mr K

The Torygraph has been sold to the Germans...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...nger-for-575m/

There are many exploded Brexiteer blood vessels in their readers comments

From the article

The German publisher has an unusual corporate constitution which guarantees its support for European integration and the state of Israel. However, it has not applied this constitution to its non-German assets.

Yet.

[1andrew1]

The failed garden bridge project was a farce. This was a tragedy.

COVID inquiry latest: Boris Johnson's government wasted 'vast' sums on PPE, inquiry finds
The UK government wasted nearly two-thirds of the money it spent on protective equipment - almost £10bn - and had "perilous" stockpiles that were unprepared for the pandemic, the COVID-19 inquiry has found.

Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett said the waste of taxpayers' money during the outbreak was "vast" as she published her latest report from module 5 of the inquiry today.

Inadequate planning by ministers and officials caused unnecessary delays in providing PPE and other vital healthcare equipment, such as ventilators, to doctors and nurses.

This meant they worked without the equipment and were unable to properly protect themselves or patients from the disease, module five of the inquiry has concluded.

With no plans in place for emergency procurement or distribution, the UK was "not ready to compete" in the global market race to secure that healthcare equipment.

How much money was wasted?

The total spent across the UK government and devolved administrations on PPE, ventilators and testing equipment was more than £42bn between January 2020 and June 2022.

Approximately £14.9bn and £700m were spent on PPE and ventilators, respectively, but there were risks of waste caused by overbuying and the purchase of "substandard equipment", the report found.

'Favourable treatment' for some suppliers criticised

The report found the government's attempt to fast-track supply chains for COVID-19 medical equipment - known as the 'High Priority Lane' - was "misguided" and created unfairness in emergency procurement.

Some suppliers "received favourable treatment because they had connections to government", the report found - but no cronyism or corruption was identified by the inquiry.

The report doesn't feature any evidence on PPE firm Medpro - which is linked to Conservative peer Baroness Michelle Mone via her husband, Doug Barrowman - due to ongoing investigations into that company. Both deny any wrongdoing.

UK manufacturing of PPE could have started six weeks earlier, report finds

One of the key conclusions from today's report was that the UK was over-reliant on China for sourcing its PPE (see 12:00 post).

The report explains domestic production of PPE eventually became an "unexcepted success" - its capacity as a percentage of the country's demand was 30% in July 2020, and grew rapidly to 70% by December 2020.

But this was only reached "some time" after the height of the procurement crisis at the pandemic's outset, the report says.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-inq...ators-13561968

<cough, cough>

Test & Trace, £37 billion of outsourced nothingness…

<cough, cough>