I could understand the Nimrod decision. The aircraft had been condemned as not airworthy, and there was a case to be made that we were throwing good money after bad. However, the capability represented by the Nimrods is still needed – especially maritime co-ordination in the event of a major incident. We need a replacement.

What also need emergency tugs, and for £12 million a year we have four, covering the whole of the UK on contract to the Coastguards, ready to pull ships out of danger before a crisis becomes a disaster. One was called to recently to help HMS Astute on its way after its Captain became too attached to the seabed.

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This is incredible and entirely unacceptable.
UK Government is taking on a stalinesque character.

Stalin was far more generous to the Soviet armed forces. This is just another small step in the spiral towards oblivion.

So the UK is spending 1 billion pounds on useless wind farms and neglects basic security measures to protect it's coastline
for potential shipping disasters.
It only takes a single oil tanker accident and heads will role. This is outrageous but it reminds me of the eighties.

In the eighties I had the pleasure to visit British companies to negotiate export contracts, mostly with the board of directors.
On several occasions I had the 'luck' to witness a fire drill.

A fire drill without exception resulted in the entire board to simply walk out on the meeting. With a short remark like "Sorry for the inconvenience old chap. Please feel free to make a new appointment with our secretary. Have a nice day",
the entire board of directors stepped into their cars and simply took off for the remainder of the day.

There was absolutely no consideration for my schedule, the fact that my return ticket was already booked and my time was limited. There was no consideration for their own company either because they obviously didn't care if their company received a big order or not. What remained was a huge disconnect.

British companies in the eighties were not the most reliable partners you could wish for. The word 'dead line', not always due to the occasional strike, didn't exist and the quality of the goods ordered was below standards.
It didn't take very long before we scouted for other suppliers and canceled our cooperation leaving their faith and the fight against what we called the "British Virus" in the hands of Margaret Thatcher.

Today I have the inescapable impression that the 'British Virus' has emerged again, this time in a much severe form and it has infected your political establishment.
I'm afraid that the only effective cure is to sack those infected immediately. Sack them all before it develops into a full blown epidemic.

How difficult can it be to scrap overseas aid?

Could it be that the cancellation of the rescue tug contract is in preparation for the responsibility for coastal shipping being made part of the EU's responsibilities?

No rhaan

We are spending £150 Billion in the next 9 years on offshore BigWind.

Say £1.4 Billion per MONTH.

And of course this will involve construction workers trying to erect 10,000 bird shredders, in the middle of the North Sea, in rain, hail, snow or blow.

Of course if this could be accomplished at a stroke by waving Sooty's little wand, it would do absolutely nothing for CO2 emissions, let alone the Climate.

But whether or not - they aren't going to need an effective Coastguard?

Really?

They want to engineer an oil disaster so they have an excuse to limit oil shipments to the UK to wean us off the black stuff so we have to plough more taxpayers money into whatever mandatory crap state solutions the noble geniuses can come up with to replace it.

EU Coastguard ... hmmmm

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... ckens.html
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... n-sea.html
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/0 ... -away.html

Nah ... couldn't be ...

http://inshore-ireland.com/index.php?op ... Itemid=144
http://ec.europa.eu/echo/civil_protecti ... _stone.pdf

No wonder the opinion polls put them behind the lunatic children of McSnot.....

I just do not know what to think about these latest cuts and,they are real cuts,to our infrastructure, services and defence.You could,in the past,rely on the Conservatives to Conserve what was good about Great Britain,but,this lot,are just a bunch of useless arm'oles. You can't say it's the Lib Dims influence,it's really is old puddun face and his 'Big Society',their total obedience to the religion of AGW and their subservience to all things EU. Tunisia,Egypt and now Algeria,Yemen and other places are beginning to kick off. I have a very good feeling that that sort of pressure will also kick off in European countries in the not too distant future and, that will be before out next election.

Thanks for the financial update.

Now I understand. The wind mills will keep the ships away from the shores and if a raging storm emerges causing a ship to sink there is always a wind mill available for the crews to climb into and save their souls.
Additional rigs would only increase the collision risks with the wind farms and we can't have that can we.

This decision can't be based on budget cuts only. A sophisticated risk analysis based on the best computer models available must have played a significant role as well.

I thought that the idiot "call me Dave" couldn't sink any lower, I obviously misjudged him. It would appear that he will do whatever it takes to destroy our Country. What, if anything remains of the "conservative" party must wake up and sack him before it is too late, we are definitely running out of time. What the hell is the man thinking of, he has passed through socialism to some strange pacifism stage where he believes that no one will hurt us if we bow the knee. This is far, far worse than Chamberlain's little bit of paper, it could be that it bought us some time. Does he kneel six times a day to some strange god of the trees, or is it just " how much money can I scam off the suckers before getting caught". I knew he was an EU lover but this is beyond belief, scrapping the tug deal when we live on an island, scrapping a hundred partly trained pilots and on and on. When do we bring back asylums for the criminally insane, he certainly qualifies.

I wonder who owns the tugs... This could prove to be a very false economy should another nuclear sub go aground... 10+% of the value of one of those, salvaged under a Lloyds Open Contract, could prove to be somewhat expensive.

It has been my opinion that we should just about have a British defense force, with an air wing and a Coast guard of sorts when it all shakes out in the next few years.
If you have been filling in the dots on defense for the past 30 years, it is clear that the plan is to de fang the UK. Why? Not sure.
We can look back to the Falklands war, we were just about to scrap a carrier, merchant navy was reduced. Vulcan and victors being scrapped. We just managed to pull it off with a bit of luck and bad Argie planning.
The Nimrod AEW was a disaster, more was spent on it than the E3 which was bought. The Nimrod replacement only drained billions without any result. The VC10 fleet well beyond its time.
It would be impossible to make such a shambles by incompetence, its been deliberate.
Its been one horrendous cockup after another without any party being held to account. Ergo, somebody's plan is going along quite sweetly.