I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
Sort of off topic, but given the way this thread had gone, maybe not. Son 2, who lives in Thailand wants to go to China on business in September. By then he will have been vaccinated in Thailand, but with what vaccine he isn't sure. Yet, anyway. However, apparently the Chinese will only accept evidence of vaccination with a Chinese vaccine as 'evidence of vaccination'. Equally, as he understands it, the British authorities will NOR accept vaccination with a Chines vaccine as evidence of vaccination. Is he right, and if so what to do?
Whether Western countries will accept Chinese vaccines is a hot topic of discussion in the sandpit, where both Sinopharm and Pfizer vaccines are in use. Thankfully with a choice in most cases. The answer is that we don’t yet know, but there’s potential for chaos in situations as your son finds himself.
A sensible approach (yes I know) would be for everyone to follow the WHO list of approved vaccines, which at the moment is Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZenica, Johnson & Johnson, and Sinopharm. Not yet Sputnik, Sinovac or some of the newer vaccines coming downstream.
Thanks for that. Agree about the recipe for chaos. It might also be that if he lands in Beijing with a record of, let us say, Pfizer vaccination he might be OK, but he has, I think, customers in towns served by smaller airports.
Indeed. It will get more complicated over time too, with family members travelling together having had different vaccines, and with Pfizer now approved from age 12 in some countries, might it be required for children to also be vaccinated? Over here the Sinopharm vaccine arrived first, so many of the older expats took that one as the best vaccine is the one available. Obviously once you’ve had your vaccine you can’t get another one, as there’s no private market for them yet.
While most of the West will likely be done with the virus in the coming months, for the rest of the world it’s still going be an issue for years. Parts of the world that are international travel hubs, are going to deal with a nightmare of different vaccines, certificates and rules.
Could No 10 really just check in with Hancock once a week or so to see how things were going, especially when Boris's principal advisor was clearly convinced that Hancock could not be trusted or relied upon? Not a chance.
The appropriate cabinet response would have been to sack Hancock and replace him.
Instead he is still in place, as others have noted acting purely as a human shield for BoZo, destined to be eviscerated at the public enquiry.
If he was smarter, he would quit.
The judgements and discussions about Hancock's performance, as outline by Cummings, were i believe almost all centred on the period of March/April last year and the first wave. I think it is far from certain that a public inquiry covering the whole of the pandemic - second wave, vaccination programme and all - will be quite as damning as you seem to believe. From May 2020 onwards, he basically seems to have been on the right side of every decision taken.
And indeed, was a mover behind many of those later decisions.
can't help cynically thinking that the wedding was timed to diffuse fall-out from the Cummings appearance - afterall, "everything is political" - it would be interesting to see when it was booked in!
I'm not sure about that. A greater slice of the public are likely to take more interest in the wedding than Cummings ramblings, particularly how Boris managed to get married in a Catholic church and whether/ if he's reconverted and what that might mean.
It's a simple human interest story.
The cynical view of the wedding as a dead cat does not really work because if anything, it underlines Cummings' charge that Boris was distracted by his romance with Carrie from taking key pandemic decisions.
Maybe Johnson married her quickly so she can't give evidence against him. If that is a thing in real life and not just on American TV.
That rule was abolished a long time ago. I suspect she's as hard as nails and had no intention of ending up as another discarded mistress with a child.
Are you sure @Cyclefree? I am not an English lawyer but the CPS website says that a spouse is only compellable by the prosecution in cases that are concerned with:
An allegation of an assault on, or injury or a threat of injury to the spouse or civil partner; An allegation of an assault on, or injury or a threat of injury to a person who was at the material time under the age of sixteen years; An alleged sexual offence against a victim who was at the material time under the age of sixteen years; or Attempting, conspiring or aiding and abetting, counselling and procuring to commit the offences in the categories above.
Nothing about wallpaper there. That said, in Scotland at least the protection covers communings within the marriage and would not cover information received whilst a fiancée.
I thought that in such cases the law used to be that wives could not be compelled to testify against their husbands hence the need to make it explicit that this is no longer the law.
I'm not aware of any law stating that wives cannot testify against husbands over fraud, for instance. (I may be wrong on this, though.) To be honest, some of the most interesting whistleblowing cases were often from pissed off partners dobbing their husbands in .....
AIUI, albeit you are the lawyer and I am not, the law used to be that the law was wives were *not allowed* to testify against their husbands, whether they wanted to or not.
Whereas now the law is that they cannot be *forced* to give evidence except under certain circumstances, but can do so *if they wish to*.
Which might explain the confusion.
Wasn't that always the case that the wife could give evidence but not compelled? IANAL but iirc it was a key plot point in an episode of Rumpole.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
Boris and Carrie getting married was the biggest "fuck you" the pair could give to Cummings this week. A reminder of why he got the boot - being mean about the PM's intended.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
IIRC they had the arrangements set up and put them into practice pretty quickly for the long distance convoys. I'm not so sure about the coastal convoys - but the issue there might have been Churchill's insistence in forcing them through the Channel after France and Belgium were overrun.
PS It was the US Navy who were difficult about convoys to begin with, IIRC, when the war came to them - also in terms of imposing coastal blackouts.
Sort of off topic, but given the way this thread had gone, maybe not. Son 2, who lives in Thailand wants to go to China on business in September. By then he will have been vaccinated in Thailand, but with what vaccine he isn't sure. Yet, anyway. However, apparently the Chinese will only accept evidence of vaccination with a Chinese vaccine as 'evidence of vaccination'. Equally, as he understands it, the British authorities will NOT accept vaccination with a Chinese vaccine as evidence of vaccination. Is he right, and if so what to do?
Edit; proof-reading!
Take both...
Side-effects?
Take the British vaccine and offer the customs official 100 yuan to say it was actually Sinopharm when he gets to China.
(Not that it’s likely there would be side effects given how poor the performance of Sinopharm/Sinovac is.)
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
'Dominion' by CJ Sansom was a counter-factual based on that very premise. By 1953 or so, in the book, the fighting was somewhere about short of the line of the Urals, but then Hitler died and the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht took to fighting each other.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
I think we should start from the premise that Labour are favourites unless a convincing explanation is given to the contrary.
And I've not seen anything to convince me that the Conservatives should be favourites.
No, we should start from the premise that the Conservatives are favourites, because that is what they are.
Batley & Spen Conservative 8/15 or 1/2 generally Labour 13/8
If your analysis is that Labour *should* be favourites then it is clear where the value lies.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
A Germany that wasn't fighting on two fronts might well have won the Battle of Moscow, particularly if they had started the invasion a month or so earlier.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
To all intents and purposes, it was committing suicide. Especially in the U-boats. 793 boats were lost, a 75% rate for submariners - the heaviest loss of any group in WW2.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
I'm leaning to Labour here too.
Re the Woollens, that's a hardcore racist vote, so whilst all votes count one, and all parties need votes, you'd have to ask yourself some hard questions if that bloc moves en masse to a party that you lead, are a member of, or support.
What evidence is there that the Woolens are racists? Or that they're people who view UKIP as too soft?
I see this accusation bandied about a lot - especially by those on the left - but I've not seen any evidence of it.
These are people who abandoned UKIP when UKIP marched to racist policies post-referendum, and their website doesn't mention race at all.
Abandoning UKIP when UKIP is going outright racist is a good thing not a bad one in my eyes.
Their materials and rhetoric are a tell. And check out the leader. Plus people I know in the area confirm this. My brother and family live up there. Or talk to Rochdale or TSE on here if you can't accept anything from me.
I really wouldn't expend too much energy going in to bat for these guys if I were you. It'll make you look a bit silly to on the one hand be so sharply attuned to racism that you're able to call Rebecca Long Bailey a "disgusting antisemite" and yet fail to see racism writ large and obvious when it's exhibited on the right.
can't help cynically thinking that the wedding was timed to diffuse fall-out from the Cummings appearance - afterall, "everything is political" - it would be interesting to see when it was booked in!
I'm not sure about that. A greater slice of the public are likely to take more interest in the wedding than Cummings ramblings, particularly how Boris managed to get married in a Catholic church and whether/ if he's reconverted and what that might mean.
It's a simple human interest story.
The cynical view of the wedding as a dead cat does not really work because if anything, it underlines Cummings' charge that Boris was distracted by his romance with Carrie from taking key pandemic decisions.
Maybe Johnson married her quickly so she can't give evidence against him. If that is a thing in real life and not just on American TV.
That rule was abolished a long time ago. I suspect she's as hard as nails and had no intention of ending up as another discarded mistress with a child.
Are you sure @Cyclefree? I am not an English lawyer but the CPS website says that a spouse is only compellable by the prosecution in cases that are concerned with:
An allegation of an assault on, or injury or a threat of injury to the spouse or civil partner; An allegation of an assault on, or injury or a threat of injury to a person who was at the material time under the age of sixteen years; An alleged sexual offence against a victim who was at the material time under the age of sixteen years; or Attempting, conspiring or aiding and abetting, counselling and procuring to commit the offences in the categories above.
Nothing about wallpaper there. That said, in Scotland at least the protection covers communings within the marriage and would not cover information received whilst a fiancée.
I thought that in such cases the law used to be that wives could not be compelled to testify against their husbands hence the need to make it explicit that this is no longer the law.
I'm not aware of any law stating that wives cannot testify against husbands over fraud, for instance. (I may be wrong on this, though.) To be honest, some of the most interesting whistleblowing cases were often from pissed off partners dobbing their husbands in .....
AIUI, albeit you are the lawyer and I am not, the law used to be that the law was wives were *not allowed* to testify against their husbands, whether they wanted to or not.
Whereas now the law is that they cannot be *forced* to give evidence except under certain circumstances, but can do so *if they wish to*.
Which might explain the confusion.
Wasn't that always the case that the wife could give evidence but not compelled? IANAL but iirc it was a key plot point in an episode of Rumpole.
No. Or at least, certainly wasn’t the case in 1929 which is when my knowledge of the law concerned dates from. If I had to guess when it changed, I’d go for 1960s but I don’t know.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
IIRC they had the arrangements set up and put them into practice pretty quickly for the long distance convoys. I'm not so sure about the coastal convoys - but the issue there might have been Churchill's insistence in forcing them through the Channel after France and Belgium were overrun.
Yes - convoys were instituted from day 1. Also, they embarked on a massive escort building program as part of rearmament - Flower class*, to be followed by the frigates. Depth charges and ASDIC were supposed to have seen off the submarine.
The problem (at first) was the counter tactic of attack on the surface, and the packs. Another issue was that in WWI hunter killer groups had been tried without success - and so were not set up. It took a while to realise that with Huff-Duff, Radar and single intelligence, hunter-killer groups could actually locate submarines efficiently.
*A part of the history to be written is what happened to the UK turbine building capacity. In WWI they were putting turbines in everything. in WWII, the turbine builders seemed to have a much reduced capacity, despite rearmament.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
I think we should start from the premise that Labour are favourites unless a convincing explanation is given to the contrary.
And I've not seen anything to convince me that the Conservatives should be favourites.
Did you call Hartlepool right, Ricardo?
Not being funny, just curious and I can't recall if you did.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Plus Germany would not have been blockaded and so would have been able to import oil and other raw materials.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Yes.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
A Germany that wasn't fighting on two fronts might well have won the Battle of Moscow, particularly if they had started the invasion a month or so earlier.
I’m reading a superb book about Churchill and this period of the war - 1940-41 - the Blitz to Barbarossa. It’s called The Splendid and the Vile. A number 1 NYT bestseller and deservedly so
It makes the point, firmly, that Britain staying in the war was crucial to America entering the war. If Britain had succumbed in 40-41, America would have stayed neutral, Hitler would have taken Moscow. Endex
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
My dad voted for the Yorkshire Party in the GE, would you believe. We don't talk about it.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
Yes - the alternate idea to fighting on (as Churchill did) was not for the UK to surrender, but to implement the plan from WWI if France was overrun and the BEF forced out.
Which was to build up the Navy, protect against invasion, but *not* attack the continent.
Without a military threat, Hilter could have moved millions of men East for starters. And not having every armament program interrupted by bombing*, let alone the cost of defending against bombing**.
*By 1943 the bombing was far from indiscriminate. See Oboe etc. **Though if the US had gone to war against Germany, there would have been B36 raids against Germany in late 1945, probably.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
I think we should start from the premise that Labour are favourites unless a convincing explanation is given to the contrary.
And I've not seen anything to convince me that the Conservatives should be favourites.
No, we should start from the premise that the Conservatives are favourites, because that is what they are.
Batley & Spen Conservative 8/15 or 1/2 generally Labour 13/8
If your analysis is that Labour *should* be favourites then it is clear where the value lies.
A fair pedantic point.
And I do feel Labour are value and bet on them when the market opened and at even longer odds.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
To all intents and purposes, it was committing suicide. Especially in the U-boats. 793 boats were lost, a 75% rate for submariners - the heaviest loss of any group in WW2.
The terrible U-boat losses came later in the war, after we had broken naval enigma and developed anti-U-boat arms and tactics; the classic images we have of sonar and depth charges were usually unsuccessful. The Youtube channel lindybeige has some entertaining videos on this.
At the start of the war, there were only a dozen or so U-boats in the Atlantic because Hitler started the war too early for the Kriegsmarine, and because most of Germany's raw materials had been taken by Goering, and then the army. Nonetheless, the early U-boat successes were remarkable.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
IIRC they had the arrangements set up and put them into practice pretty quickly for the long distance convoys. I'm not so sure about the coastal convoys - but the issue there might have been Churchill's insistence in forcing them through the Channel after France and Belgium were overrun.
Yes - convoys were instituted from day 1. Also, they embarked on a massive escort building program as part of rearmament - Flower class*, to be followed by the frigates. Depth charges and ASDIC were supposed to have seen off the submarine.
The problem (at first) was the counter tactic of attack on the surface, and the packs. Another issue was that in WWI hunter killer groups had been tried without success - and so were not set up. It took a while to realise that with Huff-Duff, Radar and single intelligence, hunter-killer groups could actually locate submarines efficiently.
*A part of the history to be written is what happened to the UK turbine building capacity. In WWI they were putting turbines in everything. in WWII, the turbine builders seemed to have a much reduced capacity, despite rearmament.
Indeed. Just rechecked a paperback on the shelf to confirm a memory - 'Convoy Commodore' by Kenelm Creighton. He was a retired Rear Admiral in 1938 when he was allocated the job of being an oceanic convoy commodore (i.e. RN officer allocated to command the merchant ships element of a convoy) if war happened. He was sent on a course of training in early 1938. Just an example of the planning that was happening.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
I think we should start from the premise that Labour are favourites unless a convincing explanation is given to the contrary.
And I've not seen anything to convince me that the Conservatives should be favourites.
Did you call Hartlepool right, Ricardo?
Not being funny, just curious and I can't recall if you did.
I didn't make a call on Hartlepool.
I was certain that BXP had taken more votes from the Conservatives than Labour in 2019 but whether that was enough to stop the Conservatives from winning I didn't know.
I did pay attention to the PBers with local knowledge who were very vocal that the Conservatives would win and they were correct.
Now I don't see anyone giving a convincing explanation as to why the Conservatives should be favourites in Batley.
So that leaves me with my default assumption that Labour should be favourites.
Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
They key skills are being able to masturbate in complete silence and not minding that every meal tastes of WD40.
Is the second applicable to the nuke boats? I have to ask, as a (then rather obstreperous) school colleague ended up as a Commander RN on the deterrent side. Much to the horror of the former master when he chatted to us many years as Old Boys and discovered what this specimen was doing now, driving Trident around.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
To all intents and purposes, it was committing suicide. Especially in the U-boats. 793 boats were lost, a 75% rate for submariners - the heaviest loss of any group in WW2.
It was very much seen as an elite service, helped by propaganda no doubt. Günter Grass describes his boyish obsession with it in his excellent memoir Peeling the Onion. Stuka squadrons were viewed similarly, at the beginning anyway, with competition for entry. For better or worse Germany probably lost some of their brightest and best in these arms/units.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Yes.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
Wasn't the initial reason for taking Stalingrad to be able to block the Volga as a transport route and form a defensive position on the west bank ?
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
To all intents and purposes, it was committing suicide. Especially in the U-boats. 793 boats were lost, a 75% rate for submariners - the heaviest loss of any group in WW2.
It was very much seen as an elite service, helped by propaganda no doubt. Günter Grass describes his boyish obsession with it in his excellent memoir Peeling the Onion. Stuka squadrons were viewed similarly, at the beginning anyway, with competition for entry. For better or worse Germany probably lost some of their brightest and best in these arms/units.
The results from the Lothian Birth Cohorts suggest that the same applied to young Scots. The brightest of those born in the 20's have, on average, a much shorter life span than their less bright contemporaries.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
IIRC they had the arrangements set up and put them into practice pretty quickly for the long distance convoys. I'm not so sure about the coastal convoys - but the issue there might have been Churchill's insistence in forcing them through the Channel after France and Belgium were overrun.
Yes - convoys were instituted from day 1. Also, they embarked on a massive escort building program as part of rearmament - Flower class*, to be followed by the frigates. Depth charges and ASDIC were supposed to have seen off the submarine.
The problem (at first) was the counter tactic of attack on the surface, and the packs. Another issue was that in WWI hunter killer groups had been tried without success - and so were not set up. It took a while to realise that with Huff-Duff, Radar and single intelligence, hunter-killer groups could actually locate submarines efficiently.
*A part of the history to be written is what happened to the UK turbine building capacity. In WWI they were putting turbines in everything. in WWII, the turbine builders seemed to have a much reduced capacity, despite rearmament.
Indeed. Just rechecked a paperback on the shelf to confirm a memory - 'Convoy Commodore' by Kenelm Creighton. He was a retired Rear Admiral in 1938 when he was allocated the job of being an oceanic convoy commodore (i.e. RN officer allocated to command the merchant ships element of a convoy) if war happened. He was sent on a course of training in early 1938. Just an example of the planning that was happening.
DK Brown comments on the way that post WWI, a chunk of the RN became very ant-intellectual. But that the flame of various ideas was kept alive by various groups within the RN.
What is interesting is the way that re-armament was organised. In the end it was batter job that the Germans did - because of the amount of time and effort put into deep preparation.
This meant, sadly, that in 1939, the country wasn't ready. This was because it was clear that the Germans were aiming for war in 1942 - their naval preparations, for example.
So the plan was for the UK to be ready in 1941 - 4,000 B1/39 Standard Bombers (4 engine bombers between a B-17 and B29 in size, heavily armed and armoured), 400mph fighters, a dozen carriers, all battleships brand new, thousands of tanks, 17lbr anti tank guns...
The problem was that the Germans went to war before they were ready. Which caught us on the hop.
Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
They key skills are being able to masturbate in complete silence and not minding that every meal tastes of WD40.
When I was in prison - which must be similar to life on a submarine - it was accepted etiquette that you didn’t complain when your cellmate was masturbating, and thereby shaking the bunk bed
During my confinement I once felt the bed shake, in that characteristic way, and I stayed tolerantly silent, as ordained - while my cellmate did his business. When he was finished he said ‘do you want to see what I was wanking over’? And I said Yes. So he threw down his copy of the Daily Mirror which had a double page spread of a model in lingerie
She was American, age 23, called Julie. I knew all this because I’d been dating her just before I went inside
I told my cellmate in forlorn terms. ‘That’s my girlfriend! Or it was...’
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
A Germany that wasn't fighting on two fronts might well have won the Battle of Moscow, particularly if they had started the invasion a month or so earlier.
I’m reading a superb book about Churchill and this period of the war - 1940-41 - the Blitz to Barbarossa. It’s called The Splendid and the Vile. A number 1 NYT bestseller and deservedly so
It makes the point, firmly, that Britain staying in the war was crucial to America entering the war. If Britain had succumbed in 40-41, America would have stayed neutral, Hitler would have taken Moscow. Endex
As an aside, I too read that book last year, probably from a PB recommendation.
Covid produces another appalling revelation. British science has been bought and sold for Chinese gold
‘On Friday night, it emerged that leading scientific journals including Nature Medicine declined to publish evidence showing the virus may have been engineered in a lab.
‘Letters seen by The Telegraph show that last April vaccine specialists contacted several journals over concerns that structural details in the virus which looked man-made were being ignored, as well as pointing out flaws in previously published papers which suggested a natural origin.
‘Despite finding no fault with the analysis, Nature Medicine declined to publish the work, telling the authors that there were many other "pressing issues of public health and clinical interest that take precedence".
‘The Journal of Virology and the biology preprint server BioRxiv also turned down the work, even though one eminent professor told The Telegraph in confidence: "The paper seems good to me and the conclusions, whilst startling, seem valid." ‘
Legacy of the climate change thing. Big Science decides that dissent is intolerable and dissenting views unpublishable, and there you are.
Incredibly, even last week Nature was peddling this “it didn’t come from the lab”, “stop talking about the lab”, pro-Chinese Communist Party bullshit
“Divisive COVID ‘lab leak’ debate prompts dire warnings from researchers Allegations that COVID escaped from a Chinese lab make it harder for nations to collaborate on ending the pandemic — and fuel online bullying, some scientists say.”
We mustn’t investigate the likely lab origin of the virus that killed 7 million people, and is still rampaging around the world, because it might “fuel online bullying”
That’s their argument.
Nature and The Lancet, two great British science journals, two entirely trashed reputations. Sad
As with many companies, many of the scientific publishers are compromised because of their financial links with China. If they publish articles deemed critical, they suddenly find their contracts cancelled and Chinese academics barred from submitting articles. For the SP giants, China is seen as a key future engine of growth, especially given pressures in Western countries to reduce the costs of publication.
A small group of American scientists vigorously asserted that it was all due to contaminated meat and tried quite hard to silence anyone who said otherwise. Claims that scientists who spoke out on the issue were extremists and trying to torment war were common.
At least one of the silencers has since admitted that he knew it was a bio-weapon leak - but he was trying to protect peace......
can't help cynically thinking that the wedding was timed to diffuse fall-out from the Cummings appearance - afterall, "everything is political" - it would be interesting to see when it was booked in!
I'm not sure about that. A greater slice of the public are likely to take more interest in the wedding than Cummings ramblings, particularly how Boris managed to get married in a Catholic church and whether/ if he's reconverted and what that might mean.
It's a simple human interest story.
The cynical view of the wedding as a dead cat does not really work because if anything, it underlines Cummings' charge that Boris was distracted by his romance with Carrie from taking key pandemic decisions.
Maybe Johnson married her quickly so she can't give evidence against him. If that is a thing in real life and not just on American TV.
That rule was abolished a long time ago. I suspect she's as hard as nails and had no intention of ending up as another discarded mistress with a child.
Are you sure @Cyclefree? I am not an English lawyer but the CPS website says that a spouse is only compellable by the prosecution in cases that are concerned with:
An allegation of an assault on, or injury or a threat of injury to the spouse or civil partner; An allegation of an assault on, or injury or a threat of injury to a person who was at the material time under the age of sixteen years; An alleged sexual offence against a victim who was at the material time under the age of sixteen years; or Attempting, conspiring or aiding and abetting, counselling and procuring to commit the offences in the categories above.
Nothing about wallpaper there. That said, in Scotland at least the protection covers communings within the marriage and would not cover information received whilst a fiancée.
I thought that in such cases the law used to be that wives could not be compelled to testify against their husbands hence the need to make it explicit that this is no longer the law.
I'm not aware of any law stating that wives cannot testify against husbands over fraud, for instance. (I may be wrong on this, though.) To be honest, some of the most interesting whistleblowing cases were often from pissed off partners dobbing their husbands in .....
AIUI, albeit you are the lawyer and I am not, the law used to be that the law was wives were *not allowed* to testify against their husbands, whether they wanted to or not.
Whereas now the law is that they cannot be *forced* to give evidence except under certain circumstances, but can do so *if they wish to*.
Which might explain the confusion.
Wasn't that always the case that the wife could give evidence but not compelled? IANAL but iirc it was a key plot point in an episode of Rumpole.
Competent Vs compellable are the technical terms.
I do hate that acronym. It demands the response IFIST, drop me a pm
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
To all intents and purposes, it was committing suicide. Especially in the U-boats. 793 boats were lost, a 75% rate for submariners - the heaviest loss of any group in WW2.
It was very much seen as an elite service, helped by propaganda no doubt. Günter Grass describes his boyish obsession with it in his excellent memoir Peeling the Onion. Stuka squadrons were viewed similarly, at the beginning anyway, with competition for entry. For better or worse Germany probably lost some of their brightest and best in these arms/units.
The results from the Lothian Birth Cohorts suggest that the same applied to young Scots. The brightest of those born in the 20's have, on average, a much shorter life span than their less bright contemporaries.
In the First World War trenches, the group who fared worst, at one point having a life expectancy of just six weeks, was the subaltern officers fresh from public school and university, in Blackadder terms, the Lieutenant Georges.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Yes.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
Wasn't the initial reason for taking Stalingrad to be able to block the Volga as a transport route and form a defensive position on the west bank ?
The reason for taking Stalingrad was it would have opened the way to the oilfields of the Caucasus, which Germany desperately needed to control to get oil. Bearing in mind the other major sources of oil at the time were the Middle East (in effect controlled by the British) and the United States (which was controlled by, amazingly, the United States).
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Yes.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
Wasn't the initial reason for taking Stalingrad to be able to block the Volga as a transport route and form a defensive position on the west bank ?
The reason for taking Stalingrad was it would have opened the way to the oilfields of the Caucasus, which Germany desperately needed to control to get oil. Bearing in mind the other major sources of oil at the time were the Middle East (in effect controlled by the British) and the United States (which was controlled by, amazingly, the United States).
But the route to them had been blocked.
Hitler also wanted the symbolic triumph of taking a city named after Stalin
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
I think we should start from the premise that Labour are favourites unless a convincing explanation is given to the contrary.
And I've not seen anything to convince me that the Conservatives should be favourites.
Did you call Hartlepool right, Ricardo?
Not being funny, just curious and I can't recall if you did.
I didn't make a call on Hartlepool.
I was certain that BXP had taken more votes from the Conservatives than Labour in 2019 but whether that was enough to stop the Conservatives from winning I didn't know.
I did pay attention to the PBers with local knowledge who were very vocal that the Conservatives would win and they were correct.
Now I don't see anyone giving a convincing explanation as to why the Conservatives should be favourites in Batley.
So that leaves me with my default assumption that Labour should be favourites.
Your odds against bet is value then - hope it comes in. I think the Cons are favourites but this time (unlike Hartlepool) I feel quite good for Labour.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
Given the nature of the average British matelot ... But the Germans would have had to concentrate their air force (Stukas above all) on the RN, with the RAF joining in - would have made the channel convoy air battles in mid-1940 look like a tea party. And mining the Channel would be a mixed blessing for the invasion flotillas.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
MIT Technology Review @techreview · 34m If NASA is serious about getting back to the moon and wants to keep astronauts as safe as possible, it may be prudent to accelerate efforts to ensure that return happens before 2026—or wait till the decade is over.
MIT Technology Review @techreview · 34m If NASA is serious about getting back to the moon and wants to keep astronauts as safe as possible, it may be prudent to accelerate efforts to ensure that return happens before 2026—or wait till the decade is over.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Yes.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
Wasn't the initial reason for taking Stalingrad to be able to block the Volga as a transport route and form a defensive position on the west bank ?
The reason for taking Stalingrad was it would have opened the way to the oilfields of the Caucasus, which Germany desperately needed to control to get oil. Bearing in mind the other major sources of oil at the time were the Middle East (in effect controlled by the British) and the United States (which was controlled by, amazingly, the United States).
But the route to them had been blocked.
Holding Stalingrad would have guarded the flanks of a push to the oilfields but wasn't itself necessary.
The southerly push to the oilfields was being made by Army Group A whereas the easterly push to Stalingrad was made by Army Group B and was strategically defensive in nature.
Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
They key skills are being able to masturbate in complete silence and not minding that every meal tastes of WD40.
Is the second applicable to the nuke boats? I have to ask, as a (then rather obstreperous) school colleague ended up as a Commander RN on the deterrent side. Much to the horror of the former master when he chatted to us many years as Old Boys and discovered what this specimen was doing now, driving Trident around.
I've never been on an RN boomer but I would imagine so. I have briefly been on USS Los Angeles which wasn't that bad in terms of stench and amenities but I wouldn't fancy being on it for months on end.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
The main British contribution to WW2 was not losing. But quite an important one.
There is the story that in 1945, the Soviets interrogated the top Wehrmacht general, von Rundstedt, and asked which was the most crucial battle of the war, expecting him to say Stalingrad or some such. He told them, the Battle of Britain.
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia could have lost outright, after winning the Battle of Moscow, but as you say, the Germans might well have secured an advantageous peace in the East.
Could the Russians even have won the Battle of Moscow without the Arctic convoys from Britain and America, and if it had faced the entire German armed forces?
Yes.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
Wasn't the initial reason for taking Stalingrad to be able to block the Volga as a transport route and form a defensive position on the west bank ?
The reason for taking Stalingrad was it would have opened the way to the oilfields of the Caucasus, which Germany desperately needed to control to get oil. Bearing in mind the other major sources of oil at the time were the Middle East (in effect controlled by the British) and the United States (which was controlled by, amazingly, the United States).
But the route to them had been blocked.
Holding Stalingrad would have guarded the flanks of a push to the oilfields but wasn't itself necessary.
The southerly push to the oilfields was being made by Army Group A whereas the easterly push to Stalingrad was made by Army Group B and was strategically defensive in nature.
And of course, if Britain had been defeated or made peace in 1940, Germany could have had as much oil as it wanted from the Middle East.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
I think we should start from the premise that Labour are favourites unless a convincing explanation is given to the contrary.
And I've not seen anything to convince me that the Conservatives should be favourites.
Did you call Hartlepool right, Ricardo?
Not being funny, just curious and I can't recall if you did.
I didn't make a call on Hartlepool.
I was certain that BXP had taken more votes from the Conservatives than Labour in 2019 but whether that was enough to stop the Conservatives from winning I didn't know.
I did pay attention to the PBers with local knowledge who were very vocal that the Conservatives would win and they were correct.
Now I don't see anyone giving a convincing explanation as to why the Conservatives should be favourites in Batley.
So that leaves me with my default assumption that Labour should be favourites.
Your odds against bet is value then - hope it comes in. I think the Cons are favourites but this time (unlike Hartlepool) I feel quite good for Labour.
There's certainly no equivalent of the Ben Houchen bandwagon vibe coming out of Batley.
Now things can change during a campaign but predictions of a Conservative win seem to rest on the complacent assumptions that the Heavy Wollens will switch the the Conservatives on mass and that because both Batley and Hartlepool are somewhere in the North then they will vote similarly.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
I'm leaning to Labour here too.
Re the Woollens, that's a hardcore racist vote, so whilst all votes count one, and all parties need votes, you'd have to ask yourself some hard questions if that bloc moves en masse to a party that you lead, are a member of, or support.
What evidence is there that the Woolens are racists? Or that they're people who view UKIP as too soft?
I see this accusation bandied about a lot - especially by those on the left - but I've not seen any evidence of it.
These are people who abandoned UKIP when UKIP marched to racist policies post-referendum, and their website doesn't mention race at all.
Abandoning UKIP when UKIP is going outright racist is a good thing not a bad one in my eyes.
UKIP always was racist Philip. If I remember correctly you admitted voting for them. You voted for a party that we knew and you knew was overtly racist. It's founder, Alan Sked, has said on a number of times that Farage, the man that reshaped UKIP in his own image was a racist. Even the Daily Mail reported it.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
To all intents and purposes, it was committing suicide. Especially in the U-boats. 793 boats were lost, a 75% rate for submariners - the heaviest loss of any group in WW2.
The terrible U-boat losses came later in the war, after we had broken naval enigma and developed anti-U-boat arms and tactics; the classic images we have of sonar and depth charges were usually unsuccessful. The Youtube channel lindybeige has some entertaining videos on this.
At the start of the war, there were only a dozen or so U-boats in the Atlantic because Hitler started the war too early for the Kriegsmarine, and because most of Germany's raw materials had been taken by Goering, and then the army. Nonetheless, the early U-boat successes were remarkable.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
The pre-war RN was very, very class conscious in the er.... non-progressive direction.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
The argument doesn't work. If DC thinks that, he would have thought it before as he knew Boris well enough to make the judgement and on the contrary he was obvs delighted to go to 10 Downing Street.
If Boris was what he says he would never have gone and being DC said why in great detail.
'The latest public engagement survey by PHW, which has spoken to 18,000 people since the start of the pandemic, said the proportion of adults "very worried" about catching Covid had dropped massively since the start of the year - falling from 31% to just 8%.'
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
The argument doesn't work. If DC thinks that, he would have thought it before as he knew Boris well enough to make the judgement and on the contrary he was obvs delighted to go to 10 Downing Street.
If Boris was what he says he would never have gone and being DC said why in great detail.
It's all so silly. Thise who don't like the Tories dress him as the devil incarnate predicting all sorts of future disaster for the party and think they are being clever political analysts. Yet we all know what happens to all politicians is pretty much the same - popularity wanes, things happen and the party ends. What the tories are uniquely good at so far is reinvention in time to keep power. All this crap about the devil reaping his price is just cheap and pretty bad prose. For Labour Tony Blair got it - and his party has never forgiven him for the lesson - that ideology is expendable if you want to win.
Good morning one and all. There's some cloud, apparently, drifting in from the North Sea and some of it's hanging over North Essex. However the forecasters assure us that it will soon break and we'll have another lovely day.
Able to sit in the pub garden by choice yesterday, after gardening, instead of by necessity! No-one, though, in the small group I was talking to, expects things to be back to 'normal', or very near it, next month. And the same thought is coming through other chats, on-line as well as face-to-face.
I fear you are right. The first item on the news this morning was some NHS wallah saying that NHS hospitals would be overwhelmed by all the backlog and other emergency treatments and therefore restrictions should continue. This is not so much shifting the goalposts as covering the entire bloody field in them.
Wouldn’t that make it easier to score??
It might inhibit the running around which I understand is traditional before a goal.
The phrase I think you were seeking is "This is not so much shifting the goalposts as taking them away altogether"
Sunday morning PB pedantry at its best....
I've had no sleep. At all. Plus I know nothing about football. It was the best I could do. I feel as sick as a parrot. I promise never to use a footballing metaphor ever again.
Will this do?
If you want more sleep, perhaps try watching more football?
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
The argument doesn't work. If DC thinks that, he would have thought it before as he knew Boris well enough to make the judgement and on the contrary he was obvs delighted to go to 10 Downing Street.
If Boris was what he says he would never have gone and being DC said why in great detail.
Not at all. All you have to know to square that circle is that Cummings goes into every project believing he can control everyone else involved or get rid of them. He believed he could control Johnson as PM in the same way he did during the referendum campaign. Of course he missed the obvious point that you can only control them if you have an ultimate sanction against them. And when dealing with a PM he had no ultimate sanction. So he failed.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
I'm leaning to Labour here too.
Re the Woollens, that's a hardcore racist vote, so whilst all votes count one, and all parties need votes, you'd have to ask yourself some hard questions if that bloc moves en masse to a party that you lead, are a member of, or support.
What evidence is there that the Woolens are racists? Or that they're people who view UKIP as too soft?
I see this accusation bandied about a lot - especially by those on the left - but I've not seen any evidence of it.
These are people who abandoned UKIP when UKIP marched to racist policies post-referendum, and their website doesn't mention race at all.
Abandoning UKIP when UKIP is going outright racist is a good thing not a bad one in my eyes.
UKIP always was racist Philip. If I remember correctly you admitted voting for them. You voted for a party that we knew and you knew was overtly racist. It's founder, Alan Sked, has said on a number of times that Farage, the man that reshaped UKIP in his own image was a racist. Even the Daily Mail reported it.
Sked is hardly a man to be trusted on the question of UKIP. If ever someone knew the meaning of a multi-decade Heathite sulk it was Sked. He never forgave Farage for taking away the party he founded from him.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
The pre-war RN was very, very class conscious in the er.... non-progressive direction.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
That’s a lot of words to tie himself in knots, saying Cummings never told the truth until now.
Like so many of the Commentariat, he starts with Boris Johnson = Lucifer, and works backwards from there...
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
Very much so. Something recognised by both Orwell and Churchill.
As the article notes, at the end of the Battle of Britain Orwell wrote;
"“the heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden and at present they still are kept under by a generation of ghosts.”
Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
They key skills are being able to masturbate in complete silence and not minding that every meal tastes of WD40.
Is the second applicable to the nuke boats? I have to ask, as a (then rather obstreperous) school colleague ended up as a Commander RN on the deterrent side. Much to the horror of the former master when he chatted to us many years as Old Boys and discovered what this specimen was doing now, driving Trident around.
I've never been on an RN boomer but I would imagine so. I have briefly been on USS Los Angeles which wasn't that bad in terms of stench and amenities but I wouldn't fancy being on it for months on end.
I think what would do it for me is the lack of natural light for six months at a time.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
The pre-war RN was very, very class conscious in the er.... non-progressive direction.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
The pre-war RN was very, very class conscious in the er.... non-progressive direction.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
Literal One-Dayism...
All political careers end in failure. It is a sign of how inept and extraordinarily ill suited to leading the country Johnson is that many of us are hoping it ends with his (political) destruction but fearing that it may first end with our own and that of our country.
Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
They key skills are being able to masturbate in complete silence and not minding that every meal tastes of WD40.
Is the second applicable to the nuke boats? I have to ask, as a (then rather obstreperous) school colleague ended up as a Commander RN on the deterrent side. Much to the horror of the former master when he chatted to us many years as Old Boys and discovered what this specimen was doing now, driving Trident around.
I've never been on an RN boomer but I would imagine so. I have briefly been on USS Los Angeles which wasn't that bad in terms of stench and amenities but I wouldn't fancy being on it for months on end.
My next door neighbour is doing a degree here after serving in US boomers. He's never mentioned the smell, but we have discussed wanking.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
I notice that musicians leaving 10 DS is being adduced as evidence for the marriage and can't help remembering the role played by musicians at the Red Wedding. I do hope everything is OK.
Good morning one and all. There's some cloud, apparently, drifting in from the North Sea and some of it's hanging over North Essex. However the forecasters assure us that it will soon break and we'll have another lovely day.
Able to sit in the pub garden by choice yesterday, after gardening, instead of by necessity! No-one, though, in the small group I was talking to, expects things to be back to 'normal', or very near it, next month. And the same thought is coming through other chats, on-line as well as face-to-face.
I fear you are right. The first item on the news this morning was some NHS wallah saying that NHS hospitals would be overwhelmed by all the backlog and other emergency treatments and therefore restrictions should continue. This is not so much shifting the goalposts as covering the entire bloody field in them.
Wouldn’t that make it easier to score??
It might inhibit the running around which I understand is traditional before a goal.
The phrase I think you were seeking is "This is not so much shifting the goalposts as taking them away altogether"
Sunday morning PB pedantry at its best....
I've had no sleep. At all. Plus I know nothing about football. It was the best I could do. I feel as sick as a parrot. I promise never to use a footballing metaphor ever again.
Will this do?
If you want more sleep, perhaps try watching more football?
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
All that blather shows is that Rawnsley has been unable to find anything new it what Dom said.
And that his hopes of some 'killer reveal' have been dashed.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
Very much so. Something recognised by both Orwell and Churchill.
As the article notes, at the end of the Battle of Britain Orwell wrote;
"“the heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden and at present they still are kept under by a generation of ghosts.”
That can be over done - old school ties did rule in quite a few squadrons. Some squadron commanders promoted (or tried to) every non-commissioned pilot. One said he did it because it was a nuisance trying to remember who he could and couldn't drink with..... Others "kept them in their place".
There was also quite a bit of invented snobbery/elitism, from people who certainly weren't that posh.
can't help cynically thinking that the wedding was timed to diffuse fall-out from the Cummings appearance - afterall, "everything is political" - it would be interesting to see when it was booked in!
I'm not sure about that. A greater slice of the public are likely to take more interest in the wedding than Cummings ramblings, particularly how Boris managed to get married in a Catholic church and whether/ if he's reconverted and what that might mean.
It's a simple human interest story.
As for what it means, it means - if Boris really is now a Catholic - that he can't recommend bishops for the CoE to HMQ. So Paul Dacre won't get made a Bishop as consolation for not getting the Ofcom job. So there is that, I suppose.
Alas! He can't do that anymore.
The last PM to pick the 2nd suggested name was Maggie in 1986. There have about 100 appointments since then, and the convention changed to "pick the first name" in 2007.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
Given the nature of the average British matelot ... But the Germans would have had to concentrate their air force (Stukas above all) on the RN, with the RAF joining in - would have made the channel convoy air battles in mid-1940 look like a tea party. And mining the Channel would be a mixed blessing for the invasion flotillas.
The tenacity of the RN at every level struck observers. The scene in one film of gunners shooting at the attacking German aircraft off Crete, as the ship sinks under them was taken from several witnessed incidents.
They won’t marry even celibate gays because that’s “objectively disordered” but will happily marry a twice divorced ex-anglican who won’t admit how many kids he’s got.
They won’t marry even celibate gays because that’s “objectively disordered” but will happily marry a twice divorced ex-anglican who won’t admit how many kids he’s got.
What a joke of a religion.
Unlike all the other religions, who are of course totally logical and consistent in all their dogmas...
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
Very much so. Something recognised by both Orwell and Churchill.
As the article notes, at the end of the Battle of Britain Orwell wrote;
"“the heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden and at present they still are kept under by a generation of ghosts.”
That can be over done - old school ties did rule in quite a few squadrons. Some squadron commanders promoted (or tried to) every non-commissioned pilot. One said he did it because it was a nuisance trying to remember who he could and couldn't drink with..... Others "kept them in their place".
There was also quite a bit of invented snobbery/elitism, from people who certainly weren't that posh.
Certainly the slang in the various memoirs I’ve read tends to be relentlessly posh. I should probably go back and reread Ginger Lacey’s book (he joined as an NCO) to see how he comes across. What I do remember is that he was very much of the professional rather than tally ho approach.
Quite a sombre moment for my wife and I as about 1 mile off the front of our balcony in the Irish Sea we can see a salvage vessel has just raised the fishing vessel 'Nicola Faith' lost with all hands on the 27th January 2021
Their bodies were thankfully recovered, as my family knows just what it means to lose loved ones at sea and not recover them
To those of us who have close ties to the fishing communities, and many others, may the Good Lord hold the 3 men in his loving arms
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
Was it? Didn't the navy take some time to remember the lessons about convoys it had learned in the first world war?
They destroyed much of the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940, and established a close blockade of Germany. They made errors, but they kept shipping lanes open in terrifying circumstances. Talking of which, the one service I could never have volunteered for was to be a submariner.
The RN reduced to German surface navy to hiding in harbour. Cruisers ran from destroyers etc. Which led to the ultimate kind of victory - Hitler wanted to abolish the surface fleet and was only stopped by Doenitz wanting to keep it as a token threat.
Yes, at the time of the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940, the Kriegsmarine's operational (key word!) strength was, apart from the U-boats, just three cruisers and four destroyers.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
I always like the way that in order to get Sealion to work, various authors assume that the 1940 Royal Navy would go to the pub for a month or something.
An issue which vexes Marxist historians who think the received 1940 narrative praises the toffs in spitfires at the expense of the proles on the ships.
The RAF was moderately meritocratic - quite a few pilot officers from the "wrong" backgrounds. Not to mention sergeant pilots who led flights etc..
Very much so. Something recognised by both Orwell and Churchill.
As the article notes, at the end of the Battle of Britain Orwell wrote;
"“the heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden and at present they still are kept under by a generation of ghosts.”
That can be over done - old school ties did rule in quite a few squadrons. Some squadron commanders promoted (or tried to) every non-commissioned pilot. One said he did it because it was a nuisance trying to remember who he could and couldn't drink with..... Others "kept them in their place".
There was also quite a bit of invented snobbery/elitism, from people who certainly weren't that posh.
Certainly the slang in the various memoirs I’ve read tends to be relentlessly posh. I should probably go back and reread Ginger Lacey’s book (he joined as an NCO) to see how he comes across. What I do remember is that he was very much of the professional rather than tally ho approach.
To a certain extent the vocabulary has re-defined what is seen as posh - the apparently laid back, joking approach to everything.
The tally ho thing seems to have been a part of that joking style.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
The crews of HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious might disagree with that slightly superficial analysis.
It looks to me that the Conservatives have a ceiling of under 40% in Batley & Spen.
Now you might mention the 12.2% who voted for the Heavy Wollens in 2019.
But are the people who voted for a no hope protest party in a general election really going to switch to a governing party in a byelection ?
Well the BXP voters in Hartlepool did you might say.
But those Hartlepool BXP voters were voting for the party they thought could win in 2019 whereas the Heavy Wollen voters were deliberately making a protest vote during a general election.
I think that Labour should be favourites.
Interesting analysis.... I also note that the Yorkshire Party got 9% in the Mayoral elections...not sure if their B&S candidate is up to much but there is more volatility in the vote in my opinion which makes it tighter than many suggest. Labour as favourites is perhaps too generous but I wouldnt stake much on a Tory gain
My dad voted for the Yorkshire Party in the GE, would you believe. We don't talk about it.
A few things.
From @another_richard analysis of the Yorkshire seats, it does seem as though the Heavy Woollens did take at least some of the progress out of the Tory vote in 2019. Looking at 2010-7, the Tories put on 5.8pc, certainly at the lower end of the selection for 2010-7 for those seats but not a million miles off.
However, I’d still see the value in Labour given the circumstances etc.
The one swing factor I think will be key will be the reaction to the Batley Grammar row. If the Woollens are UKIP-style in their views, then I can see them voting Tory off the back of that issue.
Quite a sombre moment for my wife and I as about 1 mile off the front of our balcony in the Irish Sea we can see a salvage vessel has just raised the fishing vessel 'Nicola Faith' lost with all hands on the 27th January 2021
Their bodies were thankfully recovered, as my family knows just what it means to lose loved ones at sea and not recover them
To those of us who have close ties to the fishing communities, and many others, may the Good Lord hold the 3 men in his loving arms
My favorite hymn, played at Prince Philip's funeral - For Those In Peril on the Sea. Indeed.
Quite a sombre moment for my wife and I as about 1 mile off the front of our balcony in the Irish Sea we can see a salvage vessel has just raised the fishing vessel 'Nicola Faith' lost with all hands on the 27th January 2021
Their bodies were thankfully recovered, as my family knows just what it means to lose loved ones at sea and not recover them
To those of us who have close ties to the fishing communities, and many others, may the Good Lord hold the 3 men in his loving arms
My favorite hymn, played at Prince Philip's funeral - For Those In Peril on the Sea. Indeed.
Do that for any random month anywhere in the 1800s and Wikipedia will know about often multiple shipwrecks per day. That's sailing without an engine to get you out of trouble.
Peak year for the UK was 1860 for which we coincidentally know of 1,860 shipwrecks.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
The crews of HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious might disagree with that slightly superficial analysis.
The Navy did much better against the Germans and Italians than against the Japanese.
I think that completely underestimates the interaction of the departments, particularly in a time of crisis.
Seemed to work well enough for hundreds of years, through several wars and at least one other pandemic.
I think a study of the UK state response to national crises would probably show that the response to the Covid pandemic is far from an outlier. In simplistic terms - poor start, dodgy middle, strong finish. Generally leaving a longer lasting historical perception that the system worked out pretty well.
It seems to match the way we have always fought wars as well - at least over the last two centuries.
1 - Start off woefully unprepared because we are still planning on fighting the same way as last time. Because of course we kind of won. 2 - Have a few really bad battles where a lot of men get killed unnecessarily because of outdated tactics. 3 - Learn lessons very very rapidly and bring in senior leadership who not only get the new paradigms but also have the ability to think ahead and create their own innovations 4 - Finish strongly with a victory that is completely misunderstood as meaning we got everything right and we now are secure with cutting edge strategy and tactics in case of future wars.
Return to number 1 and do it all over again a couple of decades later.
Crimea Boer War WW1 WW2
Every time we followed this same pattern.
Or not so rapidly, in the case of WW1... Churchill moving his way around the Cabinet table?!
I think you are being very generous about the British Army in WW2.... I am not sure British troops had a particularly strong victory apart from a few local battles... our friends from across the water, the commonwealth or the Urals did nearly all the heavy lifiting....
From late 1942, the army performed well. The record of the Royal Navy was outstanding from the beginning.
The crews of HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious might disagree with that slightly superficial analysis.
With names like those how bad could they have been?
In all tourist areas there is something of a tension between the need to bring in tourist spend and the understandable irritation that your area is full of tourists. But Scotland does seem to be going further than most in terms of the number and prominence of voices telling tourists that they aren't wanted.
In all tourist areas there is something of a tension between the need to bring in tourist spend and the understandable irritation that your area is full of tourists. But Scotland does seem to be going further than most in terms of the number and prominence of voices telling tourists that they aren't wanted.
Only English ones. Presumably white, middle aged, telegraph readers.
Comments
This guy says he did
https://twitter.com/biorealism/status/1398785421098721280?s=21
But you can still find it
As you say, Britain fighting on was key to the war. America was still neutral, and Germany would not have been fighting a two- or three-front war so could turn all its might against the Soviet Union, which might have been compelled to make peace and cede the Ukraine.
While most of the West will likely be done with the virus in the coming months, for the rest of the world it’s still going be an issue for years. Parts of the world that are international travel hubs, are going to deal with a nightmare of different vaccines, certificates and rules.
Rookie error, for such a massive brain....
(Not that it’s likely there would be side effects given how poor the performance of Sinopharm/Sinovac is.)
Batley & Spen
Conservative 8/15 or 1/2 generally
Labour 13/8
If your analysis is that Labour *should* be favourites then it is clear where the value lies.
I really wouldn't expend too much energy going in to bat for these guys if I were you. It'll make you look a bit silly to on the one hand be so sharply attuned to racism that you're able to call Rebecca Long Bailey a "disgusting antisemite" and yet fail to see racism writ large and obvious when it's exhibited on the right.
The problem (at first) was the counter tactic of attack on the surface, and the packs. Another issue was that in WWI hunter killer groups had been tried without success - and so were not set up. It took a while to realise that with Huff-Duff, Radar and single intelligence, hunter-killer groups could actually locate submarines efficiently.
*A part of the history to be written is what happened to the UK turbine building capacity. In WWI they were putting turbines in everything. in WWII, the turbine builders seemed to have a much reduced capacity, despite rearmament.
Not being funny, just curious and I can't recall if you did.
But actually, the key battle wasn’t Moscow, or even Leningrad. It was Stalingrad, and there was no realistic way the Germans could win that even if they had captured the city. I seem to remember a figure of 300km of defensive works on the east bank of the Volga. Imagine trying to fight through defensive positions that stretched from London to York against an enemy with comparable tech, a 3-1 edge in numbers and an indifference to the numbers of casualties.
I’m reading a superb book about Churchill and this period of the war - 1940-41 - the Blitz to Barbarossa. It’s called The Splendid and the Vile. A number 1 NYT bestseller and deservedly so
It makes the point, firmly, that Britain staying in the war was crucial to America entering the war. If Britain had succumbed in 40-41, America would have stayed neutral, Hitler would have taken Moscow. Endex
Which was to build up the Navy, protect against invasion, but *not* attack the continent.
Without a military threat, Hilter could have moved millions of men East for starters. And not having every armament program interrupted by bombing*, let alone the cost of defending against bombing**.
*By 1943 the bombing was far from indiscriminate. See Oboe etc.
**Though if the US had gone to war against Germany, there would have been B36 raids against Germany in late 1945, probably.
And I do feel Labour are value and bet on them when the market opened and at even longer odds.
At the start of the war, there were only a dozen or so U-boats in the Atlantic because Hitler started the war too early for the Kriegsmarine, and because most of Germany's raw materials had been taken by Goering, and then the army. Nonetheless, the early U-boat successes were remarkable.
I was certain that BXP had taken more votes from the Conservatives than Labour in 2019 but whether that was enough to stop the Conservatives from winning I didn't know.
I did pay attention to the PBers with local knowledge who were very vocal that the Conservatives would win and they were correct.
Now I don't see anyone giving a convincing explanation as to why the Conservatives should be favourites in Batley.
So that leaves me with my default assumption that Labour should be favourites.
Against that, the Royal Navy Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow had five capital ships, an aircraft carrier, 11 cruisers and 8 destroyers.
If that were not enough, the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had seven capital ships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 30 destroyers.
That is one reason Germany needed air superiority to enable the invasion.
What is interesting is the way that re-armament was organised. In the end it was batter job that the Germans did - because of the amount of time and effort put into deep preparation.
This meant, sadly, that in 1939, the country wasn't ready. This was because it was clear that the Germans were aiming for war in 1942 - their naval preparations, for example.
So the plan was for the UK to be ready in 1941 - 4,000 B1/39 Standard Bombers (4 engine bombers between a B-17 and B29 in size, heavily armed and armoured), 400mph fighters, a dozen carriers, all battleships brand new, thousands of tanks, 17lbr anti tank guns...
The problem was that the Germans went to war before they were ready. Which caught us on the hop.
During my confinement I once felt the bed shake, in that characteristic way, and I stayed tolerantly silent, as ordained - while my cellmate did his business. When he was finished he said ‘do you want to see what I was wanking over’? And I said Yes. So he threw down his copy of the Daily Mirror which had a double page spread of a model in lingerie
She was American, age 23, called Julie. I knew all this because I’d been dating her just before I went inside
I told my cellmate in forlorn terms. ‘That’s my girlfriend! Or it was...’
Of course he didn’t believe me.
True story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
A small group of American scientists vigorously asserted that it was all due to contaminated meat and tried quite hard to silence anyone who said otherwise. Claims that scientists who spoke out on the issue were extremists and trying to torment war were common.
At least one of the silencers has since admitted that he knew it was a bio-weapon leak - but he was trying to protect peace......
I do hate that acronym. It demands the response IFIST, drop me a pm
But the route to them had been blocked.
@techreview
·
34m
If NASA is serious about getting back to the moon and wants to keep astronauts as safe as possible, it may be prudent to accelerate efforts to ensure that return happens before 2026—or wait till the decade is over.
https://twitter.com/techreview/status/1398953098274615296
The southerly push to the oilfields was being made by Army Group A whereas the easterly push to Stalingrad was made by Army Group B and was strategically defensive in nature.
Now things can change during a campaign but predictions of a Conservative win seem to rest on the complacent assumptions that the Heavy Wollens will switch the the Conservatives on mass and that because both Batley and Hartlepool are somewhere in the North then they will vote similarly.
You can depict Mr Cummings, as the Johnson apologists do, as a bitter and twisted man on a quest for revenge. You can say – and I would agree – that he is hardly an example of sparkling purity himself. But it is not his motives that really matter, but the content and plausibility of his account. He painted an eviscerating and credible picture of a shambolic, cavalier, glib, narcissistic, reckless, contradictory, irrational, inept, indecisive, image-obsessed prime minister who “changes his mind day after day” like an out-of-control shopping trolley “smashing from one side of the aisle to the other” as officials tried to get him to make vital decisions at critical points of the pandemic.
The jaundiced view is that, for all the pyrotechnics of his performance, Mr Cummings won’t do much immediate damage to Mr Johnson because he was essentially telling us what we already knew or strongly suspected. Yet the Cummings testimony was still of great value in adding to our understanding of why the response to the pandemic has so often been so lethally atrocious. The damnation was in the vividness of the detail, much of which Number 10 has not made any serious effort to deny.
Tory MPs cannot publicly admit, even if a lot of them privately think it, that Mr Cummings’ core contention is absolutely correct. It is “completely crackers” that a man of Mr Johnson’s multiple, deep and frequently demonstrated character defects is prime minister when he is fundamentally “unfit for the job”.
Those who live only by their poll ratings eventually perish by them. When the public mood turns, Boris Johnson will become extremely vulnerable. For now, the Conservative party doesn’t seem to care how bad he is at being prime minister as long as their poll rating looks good. As Faust discovered, the devil will turn up one day to demand his price.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2608676/UKIP-founder-calls-Farage-dim-racist-alcoholic-poll-says-MP.html
The pre-war RN was very, very class conscious in the er.... non-progressive direction.
If Boris was what he says he would never have gone and being DC said why in great detail.
First dose 155,467
Second dose 381,816
Total doses 537,283
A reduction from last week very likely caused by a bank holiday weekend effect.
And this from the article
'The latest public engagement survey by PHW, which has spoken to 18,000 people since the start of the pandemic, said the proportion of adults "very worried" about catching Covid had dropped massively since the start of the year - falling from 31% to just 8%.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57281458
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/30/1940-middle-class-pilots-saved-england-and-what-that-meant-for-british-politics/
The raf was essentially middle class per Orwell, Churchill and waugh.
Like so many of the Commentariat, he starts with Boris Johnson = Lucifer, and works backwards from there...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/30/1940-middle-class-pilots-saved-england-and-what-that-meant-for-british-politics/
As the article notes, at the end of the Battle of Britain Orwell wrote;
"“the heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden and at present they still are kept under by a generation of ghosts.”
ἢ ὅθ' ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή: πόλλ' ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι,
χάρματα δ' εὐμενέτῃσι, μάλιστα δέ τ' ἔκλυον αὐτοί.
I am sure you are saying to yourself.
I notice that musicians leaving 10 DS is being adduced as evidence for the marriage and can't help remembering the role played by musicians at the Red Wedding. I do hope everything is OK.
And that his hopes of some 'killer reveal' have been dashed.
There was also quite a bit of invented snobbery/elitism, from people who certainly weren't that posh.
The last PM to pick the 2nd suggested name was Maggie in 1986. There have about 100 appointments since then, and the convention changed to "pick the first name" in 2007.
The 2nd is now in case something happens to No 1.
They won’t marry even celibate gays because that’s “objectively disordered” but will happily marry a twice divorced ex-anglican who won’t admit how many kids he’s got.
What a joke of a religion.
Their bodies were thankfully recovered, as my family knows just what it means to lose loved ones at sea and not recover them
To those of us who have close ties to the fishing communities, and many others, may the Good Lord hold the 3 men in his loving arms
The tally ho thing seems to have been a part of that joking style.
English tourists - Scotland is closed and doesn't want your money:
Just what our "beautiful isles" don't need; more Torygraph readers.
https://twitter.com/ruth_wishart/status/1398913746777612288?s=20
From @another_richard analysis of the Yorkshire seats, it does seem as though the Heavy Woollens did take at least some of the progress out of the Tory vote in 2019. Looking at 2010-7, the Tories put on 5.8pc, certainly at the lower end of the selection for 2010-7 for those seats but not a million miles off.
However, I’d still see the value in Labour given the circumstances etc.
The one swing factor I think will be key will be the reaction to the Batley Grammar row. If the Woollens are UKIP-style in their views, then I can see them voting Tory off the back of that issue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-how-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-suddenly-became-credible/
https://www.google.com/search?q=shipwrecks+October+1862
Do that for any random month anywhere in the 1800s and Wikipedia will know about often multiple shipwrecks per day. That's sailing without an engine to get you out of trouble.
Peak year for the UK was 1860 for which we coincidentally know of 1,860 shipwrecks.
Only English ones. Presumably white, middle aged, telegraph readers.