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This post makes good points about the Ajax disaster.

https://x.com/MilitaryBanter/status/1997728259585233266
Questions should also be raised when the programme is described as a firm-price contract of approximately £5.4 billion, and when delays are framed as “not over budget, just late.” For example: who funded the User Validation Trials (UVT) at Millbrook Proving Ground? These trials were required to independently demonstrate to General Dynamics (GD) that issues existed with the vehicle. GD did not cover the cost; the public did. Taxpayers ultimately paid to provide evidence that the platform had faults.

GD’s response to the identified vibration issues was a “comfort pack,” which mounted crew controls and seating on rubber isolators to reduce vibration exposure. The company then asserted that the issue was resolved. During UVT, however, the permitted use was heavily constrained—initially about 90 minutes of driving per day, later increased to six hours per day when Initial Operating Capability (IOC) was declared. How this was considered a viable operational capability remains unclear.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) and GD still do not have clarity on the long-term impact that vibration may have on the vehicle’s electronic architecture, weapon systems, engine, and other components. Despite this, IOC was declared.

Responsibility is shared between MOD Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) and GD. The programme has been under significant political pressure. When GD was placed in contractual default and nearly £1 billion in payments was withheld, the company emphasised the potential risk to roughly 700 local jobs and about 5,000 jobs globally that were said to depend on the AJAX programme. This led to ministerial pressure on the MOD to continue pushing the programme forward.

The "jobs" argument is a dreadful one.
There is no job security in failing programmes.

Pumping more billions into what is extremely likely to be a vain effort to resolve a fatally flawed design will, of course, mean less funding elsewhere for more productive and sustainable programs.

Government can support employment. This is just about the worst way to go about it.

FPT: I would make a broader point that any specific government intervention to "support jobs", except at a UK-wide or perhaps regional scale, is usually bad policy. The purpose of something like Ajax should be to provide the army with a new armoured vehicle - no more, no less.

"Supporting jobs" = supporting low productivity. We want massive drone factories with only a few dozen employees. We want railways built quickly and efficiently. We want an NHS that depends less on doctors and nurses and more on technology and wider public health interventions. There are national security motivations for retaining production in the UK - but they should be linked to outcomes (e.g. new warships built per year, anywhere in the UK), not the number of people employed on the Clyde.

A Labour MP was making the jobs argument in the Commons just yesterday in favour of ploughing on with the rolling disaster.
If it's that important they'd be better off cancelling the contract, buying the redundant factory off GDLS for a nominal price, and retooling it to manufacture the CV90.

Spending billions on propping up failure ends only one way.

A fair test of who reads the header before commenting! Also, nice idea but Britain is nowhere near Canada and the Royal Navy is nowhere near big enough to defend Canadian waters.

We need a bigger Royal Navy

We've just decided to increase spending on families who don't work by £4bn.

I think this is the third time I've pointed out to you that the majority of households affected by the two-child limit are in work.

Unfortunately, work simply isn't enough to keep many families out of poverty - particularly large ones. And there are some cases where a mother decided to have a large family because there were two decent jobs and a stable relationship - and have ended up single and destitute instead. This effects all of us - poverty is strongly associated with long-term health, education, crime outcomes. If I get mugged today, it will almost certainly be by someone from one of these kinds of backgrounds.

James Marriott:

"The big tech companies like to see themselves as invested in spreading knowledge and curiosity. In fact in order to survive they must promote stupidity. The tech oligarchs have just as much of a stake in the ignorance of the population as the most reactionary feudal autocrat. Dumb rage and partisan thinking keep us glued to our phones.

And where the old European monarchies had to (often ineptly) try to censor dangerously critical material, the big tech companies ensure our ignorance much more effectively by flooding our culture with rage, distraction and irrelevance.

These companies are actively working to destroy human enlightenment and usher in a new dark age.

The screen revolution will shape our politics as profoundly as the reading revolution of the eighteenth century.

Without the knowledge and without the critical thinking skills instilled by print, many of the citizens of modern democracies find themselves as helpless and as credulous as medieval peasants — moved by irrational appeals and prone to mob thinking. The world after print increasingly resembles the world before print."

https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1

Good morning.

Thank @TheScreamingEagles for publishing my piece.

I wrote it demonstrate that there *is* a viable geopolitical possibility for the UK (and Canada) that breaks from a seeming choice between ever-greater US subordination, dependence on a dysfunctional EU, or dwindling into irrelevance.

I don’t encourage a full merger, but something akin to the EU, with alignment of foreign and trade policy, a common market, freedom of movement, military integration, and shared energy and industrial policy. Currencies might remain separate but central banks would co-ordinate (unlimited currency swaps etc).

I read that UK and Canada are “too far apart” but I’d just ask people to look at a map and the breadth or length of the other global powers of the current era: US, China, Russia, India.

The combined entity would have a population up there with Russia’s or Japan’s (with more favourable demographics), and be a top 4 or even 3 economic, military, and trading power.

Brexit has crystallised the issue of British identity. Who are we and what are we for? There was merit in being in the EU for trade but our vastly different legal system does not sit well within the Code Napoleon of most of Europe. We are now adrift. GW's idea of seeking out a political alignment with a country with a similar Common Law basis has merit as a point of discussion but it seems unambitious. Surely the prize is to merge with the US which has far more resources than Canada. After all, the US President has far stronger links to the UK than a transient banker.

Good, timely article GW. Hope it puts the Brexit discussion to bed (I hope)

Surely, if we find it difficult to work with the CN legal system of Europe we would find it impossible to work with a country that has effectively no legal system at all?

A fair test of who reads the header before commenting! Also, nice idea but Britain is nowhere near Canada and the Royal Navy is nowhere near big enough to defend Canadian waters.

We need a bigger Royal Navy

We've just decided to increase spending on families who don't work by £4bn.

Most of the families affected by the two child cap have got an adult in work.

Or are you thinking of pensioners?

"We need to improve our terrible birthrate and stop relying on immigration"

Also

"We need to stop helping out people in work on modest salaries who have larger families"

"We need to find a way of coping with a declining population"

Why try to think of ways of trying to get people to do something they don't want to, and instead face up to reality?

Well, I don't necessarily disagree.
But - while this is a complex subject with many causes - my view - and I think this is backed up not just by personal experience and anecdata but also by vaguely remembered polling - is that people want to have children. They just can't afford to. Children are crippling expensive for all but the very rich and very poor. And also essentially incompatible with working for a living if the workplace is not the home.

My wife and I were reflecting on this yesterday as we juggled the various appountments are children needed to be at. How we would have coped before working from home I have no idea, even without the inheritance we received which enabled us to afford our second and third children.