Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Serious question: what does Australia get, apart from an excuse to break the financially ruinous French deal, from nuclear-powered submarines? Very long patrol times are great for nuclear weapons, which Australia does not have, and for intelligence-gathering, which Australia does not need. Am I missing something or is it simply about money and influence?
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Yes. The Australians (some of them) have been talking about nuclear subs for years. This is because if you add up the requirements for submarines that come from the geographic issues, the answer to the question is go nuclear. This hasn't happened previously, due to cost and politics.
The French sub deal drove the cost of subs into the range where nuclear was possible cost wise (is that ironic?)
The Americans would love to increase the ordering rate for Virginia class boats, to reduce costs. I strongly suspect that the way this will go is that the machinery will be US (reactors, turbines etc) in Australian built hulls. See the UK and HMS Dreadnought - where people joked that the aft end of the sub was the "American Zone".
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
According to The Times (posted up thread) Australia approached the UK first over submarines because the French contract was well over budget and very late - it was the UK that suggested expanding it into a broader scope project and not just “a submarine deal”. The UK and Australia then worked through the US system to get it agreed.
The funny thing is that while Macron was strutting his stuff at the G7 in Cornwall with stories of “isolated Britain” the biggest strategic alliance in decades was being cooked up behind his back.
France doesn’t want any narrative to get out about post-Brexit Britain being other than isolated which is why they are pretending it had little to do with us.
DVLA has now admitted it has lost youngest's application for a provisional licence for a aecond time. He's now filling in a third. 8 months since he turned 17 and first did it.
Got my new licence in the post on Thursday, having applied online last Sunday.
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
The B29s shut down what was left of Japanese maritime trade - see the forgotten aerial mining campaign.
The Lancaster nuke thing is one of those bits of history that don't make sense when you examine the reality. The Lancaster didn't have the range. The B29 was a vastly bigger plane, all round - for equivalent projects look at the the British 75 and 100 ton bomber projects (cancelled) ....
A Lancaster could have carried Little Boy. Fat Man would have been a problem (width). But it would have had very little range while doing so, and would have been flying very low, and very slow compare to the B29.
The RAF demanded and got B29s after the war, because of the performance issues.
Indeed, the Lancaster wasn't perfect for the job. But the US had massive problems getting the B-29 flying, yet alone the modified versions for carrying nukes. For every B-29 lost to enemy action, two more were lost due to engine, technical or other failures. They were far from sure in 1944 whether the bird could do it. The Lancaster was about the only other alternative they had.
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Serious question: what does Australia get, apart from an excuse to break the financially ruinous French deal, from nuclear-powered submarines? Very long patrol times are great for nuclear weapons, which Australia does not have, and for intelligence-gathering, which Australia does not need. Am I missing something or is it simply about money and influence?
Getting to places. The whole region is vast. So you end up spending long, long times getting from port to patrol areas. Nuclear subs can transit much faster - a modern nuke can run silently at 20 knots*. As to intelligence gathering - that has been a requirement for Australian subs from way back.
*The US Navy stated that the Seawolf class was quieter at 20 knots, than the Improved Los Angeles class was at 5 knots.
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
DVLA has now admitted it has lost youngest's application for a provisional licence for a aecond time. He's now filling in a third. 8 months since he turned 17 and first did it.
Got my new licence in the post on Thursday, having applied online last Sunday.
I've had to get a new one twice in the past year and it took days both times.
“If the definition of political courage is making big calls crisply and effectively, despite obvious risks and unknowable consequences, then it seems to me that President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson qualify right now. They’ve made calls recently that go beyond the usual mush of compromise and calculation and might even merit being called bold.”
“Biden braved the Blob and got out of Afghanistan. We will debate how he did so, and with what consequences, for quite some time. But he still did it. Obama tried and failed. Trump made a big song and dance and signed a surrender deal. But Biden actually got us out…”
“Equally this week, the sudden and surprise announcement that the UK, the US and Australia would form a new military and intelligence alliance in the Pacific, including new nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, was a bold signal to China that the US is not about to abandon that region, or its allies there. It came seemingly out of the blue, but had been in the works, apparently initiated by Australia, for some months.”
But as usual when he withdraws, he did it chaotically, incompetently, at the wrong moment leading to highly unfortunate consequences including people being unexpectedly completely screwed.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
LOL.
For an Anglophobe like yourself that stream of nonsense possibly makes you sleep better at night.
However back here on Planet Earth that's just not true. And Britain and British technology is integral to all this.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
The B29s shut down what was left of Japanese maritime trade - see the forgotten aerial mining campaign.
The Lancaster nuke thing is one of those bits of history that don't make sense when you examine the reality. The Lancaster didn't have the range. The B29 was a vastly bigger plane, all round - for equivalent projects look at the the British 75 and 100 ton bomber projects (cancelled) ....
A Lancaster could have carried Little Boy. Fat Man would have been a problem (width). But it would have had very little range while doing so, and would have been flying very low, and very slow compare to the B29.
The RAF demanded and got B29s after the war, because of the performance issues.
Indeed, the Lancaster wasn't perfect for the job. But the US had massive problems getting the B-29 flying, yet alone the modified versions for carrying nukes. For every B-29 lost to enemy action, two more were lost due to engine, technical or other failures. They were far from sure in 1944 whether the bird could do it. The Lancaster was about the only other alternative they had.
The other, real alternative was different engines for the B29. See the XB39 & B29D (aka B50).
There was serious consideration given to the XB-39 for Silverplate, IIRC.
EDIT: without aerial refuelling (multiple times), the Lancaster (or Lincoln) couldn't get from the islands to Japan.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
Europe needs France in NATO to contain Putin, whatever disagreements over how to contain China. In western Europe France and the UK are the main military powers
I'm not sure that's true. We contained the Soviet Union whatever France did during the Cold War. And the Soviet Union was more of a military threat than Putin's Russia.
France is a nice to have, not an essential.
We only contained the Soviet Union with a big US military presence in Europe, that is no longer a given. In that case Franch support is essential to contain Putin.
Putin's Russia is more of a threat to us than the USSR was under Gorbachev for example
It's a different type of threat. And not one that needs a huge US military presence in Western Europe any more.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States as part of the known universe?
Don't you know for the modern Remainer-Left that Rochdale has wholeheartedly embraced the entire universe is the European plate only?
“If the definition of political courage is making big calls crisply and effectively, despite obvious risks and unknowable consequences, then it seems to me that President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson qualify right now. They’ve made calls recently that go beyond the usual mush of compromise and calculation and might even merit being called bold.”
“Biden braved the Blob and got out of Afghanistan. We will debate how he did so, and with what consequences, for quite some time. But he still did it. Obama tried and failed. Trump made a big song and dance and signed a surrender deal. But Biden actually got us out…”
“Equally this week, the sudden and surprise announcement that the UK, the US and Australia would form a new military and intelligence alliance in the Pacific, including new nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, was a bold signal to China that the US is not about to abandon that region, or its allies there. It came seemingly out of the blue, but had been in the works, apparently initiated by Australia, for some months.”
But as usual when he withdraws, he did it chaotically, incompetently, at the wrong moment leading to highly unfortunate consequences including people being unexpectedly completely screwed.
It was a mess. But I’ve yet to see a convincing alternative which wouldn’t have been.
In Covid, as in so many other areas, the government is not in control of events. The fire at the interconnector is the straw that will break the camel´s back. Utility prices are already 50% up, and already steel production is being cut, because electricity prices are too high for the steel plants to compete. Inflation is already over shooting, and utility costs, plus the "supply chain issues" will send inflation way above target, to the point that even the government´s poodle at the Bank of England will have to take action to avoid a Sterling crisis. There has not been a mortgage rate rise for 15 years, and yet almost no one has been prepaying.
We are on the eve of a major domestic economic crisis and Johnson is more interested in undermining efficiency and our global competativeness with nonsense like returning to gills and ounces while play stupid geopolitical games that tie us to the declining United States and antagonise our neighbours and the rising powers of Asia.
When inflation hits and the promised pay rises dont come for key workers then we will see serious industrial unrest added to the mix. It really is back to the seventies.
The utter incompetence, the stunning arrogance, the sheer bloody awfulness of this government will absolutely not be able to cope with "events, dear boy, events". So I think that there is a pretty good chance that they will not just be beaten in 2024, but flayed. Odds on sub 200 seats for the Tories then?
DVLA has now admitted it has lost youngest's application for a provisional licence for a aecond time. He's now filling in a third. 8 months since he turned 17 and first did it.
Got my new licence in the post on Thursday, having applied online last Sunday.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Yes, I don't mean Biden went cold calling, I can imagine it came from Oz, and I'm sure they had good reasons. My main point is the "Aukus" stuff is essentially dressing (to this mega bipartite sub supply deal) and what we are is the name to give the whole thing some "Anglosphere" spin and add a bit of class.
DVLA has now admitted it has lost youngest's application for a provisional licence for a aecond time. He's now filling in a third. 8 months since he turned 17 and first did it.
Got my new licence in the post on Thursday, having applied online last Sunday.
Edit. He has applied Online. But had to send off original ID. These have been returned. Guarantors have been contacted by DVLA twice. No licence has followed.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
In Covid, as in so many other areas, the government is not in control of events. The fire at the interconnector is the straw that will break the camel´s back. Utility prices are already 50% up, and already steel production is being cut, because electricity prices are too high for the steel plants to compete. Inflation is already over shooting, and utility costs, plus the "supply chain issues" will send inflation way above target, to the point that even the government´s poodle at the Bank of England will have to take action to avoid a Sterling crisis. There has not been a mortgage rate rise for 15 years, and yet almost no one has been prepaying.
We are on the eve of a major domestic economic crisis and Johnson is more interested in undermining efficiency and our global competativeness with nonsense like returning to gills and ounces while play stupid geopolitical games that tie us to the declining United States and antagonise our neighbours and the rising powers of Asia.
When inflation hits and the promised pay rises dont come for key workers then we will see serious industrial unrest added to the mix. It really is back to the seventies.
The utter incompetence, the stunning arrogance, the sheer bloody awfulness of this government will absolutely not be able to cope with "events, dear boy, events". So I think that there is a pretty good chance that they will not just be beaten in 2024, but flayed. Odds on sub 200 seats for the Tories then?
That's why Johnson will cut and run with an election in Spring 2023.
The polls will need to be better for the Tories than we are seeing now - particularly as such an election would be fought on existing bounaries.
The children at my school are being offered flu vaccines in school this year. Don’t remember this happening before.
Not sure whether it’s a school initiative or a government one. Would be a rare moment of sense if the latter as it would definitely help reduce flu transmission and therefore pressure on the NHS, as well as hopefully reducing school absence.
This concerns me. Through my work I’ve booked a flu jab for 28 September. Neither of my parents (75 and 73) have been offered a flu jab yet.
The children at my school are being offered flu vaccines in school this year. Don’t remember this happening before.
Not sure whether it’s a school initiative or a government one. Would be a rare moment of sense if the latter as it would definitely help reduce flu transmission and therefore pressure on the NHS, as well as hopefully reducing school absence.
This concerns me. Through my work I’ve booked a flu jab for 28 September. Neither of my parents (75 and 73) have been offered a flu jab yet.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States as part of the known universe?
Don't you know for the modern Remainer-Left that Rochdale has wholeheartedly embraced the entire universe is the European plate only?
Outside of Europe 'ere be dragons.
If America used British imperial measures you may have a point. But they don't...
DVLA has now admitted it has lost youngest's application for a provisional licence for a aecond time. He's now filling in a third. 8 months since he turned 17 and first did it.
Got my new licence in the post on Thursday, having applied online last Sunday.
Passed at last! Congrats
No more trains?
LOL I passed back in 1997!
Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms tube stations open on Monday...
I don't read enough opinion pieces to know for sure, but interesting to hear one suggesting it is not imagination, there really are more complaints about them now. it felt like a turning point, a shift from when readers merely disagreed with a column to disagreeing and therefore assuming the columnist is A Bad Person. All newspaper columnists will have experienced degrees of that shift over the past five years, and this is not – as some have said – about holding them accountable for their opinions; it’s a refusal to accept that not everyone sees things the same way.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
In Covid, as in so many other areas, the government is not in control of events. The fire at the interconnector is the straw that will break the camel´s back. Utility prices are already 50% up, and already steel production is being cut, because electricity prices are too high for the steel plants to compete. Inflation is already over shooting, and utility costs, plus the "supply chain issues" will send inflation way above target, to the point that even the government´s poodle at the Bank of England will have to take action to avoid a Sterling crisis. There has not been a mortgage rate rise for 15 years, and yet almost no one has been prepaying.
We are on the eve of a major domestic economic crisis and Johnson is more interested in undermining efficiency and our global competativeness with nonsense like returning to gills and ounces while play stupid geopolitical games that tie us to the declining United States and antagonise our neighbours and the rising powers of Asia.
When inflation hits and the promised pay rises dont come for key workers then we will see serious industrial unrest added to the mix. It really is back to the seventies.
The utter incompetence, the stunning arrogance, the sheer bloody awfulness of this government will absolutely not be able to cope with "events, dear boy, events". So I think that there is a pretty good chance that they will not just be beaten in 2024, but flayed. Odds on sub 200 seats for the Tories then?
That's why Johnson will cut and run with an election in Spring 2023.
The polls will need to be better for the Tories than we are seeing now - particularly as such an election would be fought on existing bounaries.
I'm not sure - if he does not feel the situation is likely to improve, polls wise, to clear win territory, then he might well conclude better to go early regardless.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
Good post but you are not correct about UK in this
The US/UK nuclear subs are built under total confidentiality between both countries and each is integral to the whole.
UK is not a convenient addendum but absolutely integral to AUKUS without which the subs could not have been supplied to Australia
We are key to supplying the subs? Are you sure about that? It's not my understanding. But I'm happy to learn on this - it's not one of my specialist topics, military kit, far from it.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Yes, I don't mean Biden went cold calling, I can imagine it came from Oz, and I'm sure they had good reasons. My main point is the "Aukus" stuff is essentially dressing (to this mega bipartite sub supply deal) and what we are is the name to give the whole thing some "Anglosphere" spin and add a bit of class.
"By appointment to HM The Queen."
Like on the marmalade.
Don’t think that’s true. There is a logic to having the U.K., especially if you start combining the assets eg having the US Marines’ F-35s on HMS Queen Elizabeth. It’s easy to see a scenario where you start to have combined crews. The advantage of that is sending a message that “if you attack one, you attack all”
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
According to The Times (posted up thread) Australia approached the UK first over submarines because the French contract was well over budget and very late - it was the UK that suggested expanding it into a broader scope project and not just “a submarine deal”. The UK and Australia then worked through the US system to get it agreed.
The funny thing is that while Macron was strutting his stuff at the G7 in Cornwall with stories of “isolated Britain” the biggest strategic alliance in decades was being cooked up behind his back.
France doesn’t want any narrative to get out about post-Brexit Britain being other than isolated which is why they are pretending it had little to do with us.
I just find some of the arguments a bit inconsistent - it's meaningless but a huge betrayal. Britain had nothing to do with it really but our tagging along is somehow still a major outrage. It'll provoke China, which implicitly should not be resisted in any way, if we are to judge whether to do things on whether another country complains. We should work with allies, but not this way (presumably all must be treated the same way?)
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Hmm, the Americans managed to lose two spacecraft by muddling imperial (US) and metric!
DVLA has now admitted it has lost youngest's application for a provisional licence for a aecond time. He's now filling in a third. 8 months since he turned 17 and first did it.
Got my new licence in the post on Thursday, having applied online last Sunday.
Edit. He has applied Online. But had to send off original ID. These have been returned. Guarantors have been contacted by DVLA twice. No licence has followed.
Should also add. In the meantime, eldest lost theirs. And got a new one within days as per other posters. This did not improve familial harmony.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
Good post but you are not correct about UK in this
The US/UK nuclear subs are built under total confidentiality between both countries and each is integral to the whole.
UK is not a convenient addendum but absolutely integral to AUKUS without which the subs could not have been supplied to Australia
We are key to supplying the subs? Are you sure about that? It's not my understanding. But I'm happy to learn on this - it's not one of my specialist topics, military kit, far from it.
Yes we are integral with the US on the production of our nuclear subs and the technology is not shared with anyone else.
That is why this is a unique deal with Australia as they will also share the technology
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Serious question: what does Australia get, apart from an excuse to break the financially ruinous French deal, from nuclear-powered submarines? Very long patrol times are great for nuclear weapons, which Australia does not have, and for intelligence-gathering, which Australia does not need. Am I missing something or is it simply about money and influence?
Getting to places. The whole region is vast. So you end up spending long, long times getting from port to patrol areas. Nuclear subs can transit much faster - a modern nuke can run silently at 20 knots*. As to intelligence gathering - that has been a requirement for Australian subs from way back.
*The US Navy stated that the Seawolf class was quieter at 20 knots, than the Improved Los Angeles class was at 5 knots.
Probably the most immediate benefit, and the least commented on, is that US subs will be able to use the RAN base in Perth. Given the issues with the Philippines and that the US doesn’t have other reliable bases anywhere near, it’s a big plus.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Hmm, the Americans managed to lose two spacecraft by muddling imperial (US) and metric!
Yes, that shows how insidious the metric system can be, if you let it get the tiniest foothold in your country!
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
I agree, metric for everything. Hard line from now on - you know what they're like, give them 2.54 cms and they'll take 1.61 kilometres!
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Yes but then they still, almost uniquely, write their dates backwards.
There aren't many experiences happier than a hearty lunch on the sunny balcony of a mountain hof, after a morning's walking, looking out at an alpine panorama.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Serious question: what does Australia get, apart from an excuse to break the financially ruinous French deal, from nuclear-powered submarines? Very long patrol times are great for nuclear weapons, which Australia does not have, and for intelligence-gathering, which Australia does not need. Am I missing something or is it simply about money and influence?
From SubBrief, perhaps misremembered: Australia is large, and so are the areas of ocean they want to patrol. The Collins class have an 11,000+ nautical mile range surfaced (slightly less submerged). As a comparison, the German Type-212 has an 8,000 nautical mile range.
If they went for a shorter range, they might have the expense of another base (say on the east coast), and lots of other issues as well. With the replacement Attack class, they wanted 18,000 miles range. This requires a heck of a lot of fuel. Worse, the faster you go, the faster the fuel goes. Nukes have essentially no range limit; food and other consumables become the limiting factor.
A balanced view would be that it should be lawful for anyone to use only one or the other, as it is ridiculous to create crimes without good reason, but that commercially the obvious choice for big outfits now is to use both. Market stalls in Barnsley can cash in on selling apples and bananas by the pound, those in Shoreditch can do the opposite.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States as part of the known universe?
Don't you know for the modern Remainer-Left that Rochdale has wholeheartedly embraced the entire universe is the European plate only?
Outside of Europe 'ere be dragons.
If America used British imperial measures you may have a point. But they don't...
They don't use metric which is what you claimed.
Quite frankly it's pretty irrelevant nowadays whether you wish to use British imperial, US imperial or metric. They're all interchangeable.
If I'm following a recipe on a website that calls for an ingredient in US imperial I can just ask Alexa to convert that to ml or British imperial or whatever I want to use. It isn't difficult.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Hmm, the Americans managed to lose two spacecraft by muddling imperial (US) and metric!
Yes, that shows how insidious the metric system can be, if you let it get the tiniest foothold in your country!
US measures have been defined in metric terms since 1893. So they don't seem as confidently independent minded as you'd think
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Hmm, the Americans managed to lose two spacecraft by muddling imperial (US) and metric!
Yes, that shows how insidious the metric system can be, if you let it get the tiniest foothold in your country!
Just imagining mapping the area of, say, Copernicus crater in acres, roods, perches and square rods.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
Good post but you are not correct about UK in this
The US/UK nuclear subs are built under total confidentiality between both countries and each is integral to the whole.
UK is not a convenient addendum but absolutely integral to AUKUS without which the subs could not have been supplied to Australia
We are key to supplying the subs? Are you sure about that? It's not my understanding. But I'm happy to learn on this - it's not one of my specialist topics, military kit, far from it.
There has been serious integration of technical knowledge between the US and UK on subs - we essentially use their reactor designs for example. We in turn shared the design of pumpjet propulsors that worked.
It is quite possible that this has resulted in entangling patents and commercial rights to the point that the UK needed to get involved - while most such deals on sharing technology are secret, the ones that have been revealed in other contexts have clauses about third parties getting access - usually that the party who supplied the IP in the first place has to say yes.
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
The B29s shut down what was left of Japanese maritime trade - see the forgotten aerial mining campaign.
The Lancaster nuke thing is one of those bits of history that don't make sense when you examine the reality. The Lancaster didn't have the range. The B29 was a vastly bigger plane, all round - for equivalent projects look at the the British 75 and 100 ton bomber projects (cancelled) ....
A Lancaster could have carried Little Boy. Fat Man would have been a problem (width). But it would have had very little range while doing so, and would have been flying very low, and very slow compare to the B29.
The RAF demanded and got B29s after the war, because of the performance issues.
Indeed, the Lancaster wasn't perfect for the job. But the US had massive problems getting the B-29 flying, yet alone the modified versions for carrying nukes. For every B-29 lost to enemy action, two more were lost due to engine, technical or other failures. They were far from sure in 1944 whether the bird could do it. The Lancaster was about the only other alternative they had.
The other, real alternative was different engines for the B29. See the XB39 & B29D (aka B50).
There was serious consideration given to the XB-39 for Silverplate, IIRC.
EDIT: without aerial refuelling (multiple times), the Lancaster (or Lincoln) couldn't get from the islands to Japan.
The XB-39 first flew in December 1944. Far too late to become reliable enough to trust, and to be modified for such an important mission. The XB-44 first flew in May 1945, so was right out of the question.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
I am sure you would take this position if the roles of France and the UK had been reversed.
I'm not really taking a position, I'm just giving my take on what's going on here. Being it's nothing great or terrible for the UK and it's smart politics from Johnson. Hardly an overtly biased or damning assessment. If it were France putting its name to some distracting Macron-boosting bollocks as cover for America torpedoing OUR deal to supply Oz with subs, then I'd be saying that. Least I hope so. But I'm not French so my insight into their affairs isn't on a par with things pertaining to England. But whatever, any hypothetical about turn from me would be as nothing cf the fury you'd have seen from many of the posters who're in love with Aukus as is. Haven't seen such glee since the EU screwed up the vaccines!
Medium-sized demonstration in Camden, marching from Regent's Park down to the Tube. Odd flags. Quite young, but not all young. A few families. NHS? Anti-vaxxers? Some weird red and white flags
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States as part of the known universe?
Don't you know for the modern Remainer-Left that Rochdale has wholeheartedly embraced the entire universe is the European plate only?
Outside of Europe 'ere be dragons.
If America used British imperial measures you may have a point. But they don't...
They don't use metric which is what you claimed.
US forces use metric for many applications per NATO STANAG.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Hmm, the Americans managed to lose two spacecraft by muddling imperial (US) and metric!
Yes, that shows how insidious the metric system can be, if you let it get the tiniest foothold in your country!
Just imagining mapping the area of, say, Copernicus crater in acres, roods, perches and square rods.
Is that an African or European swallow?
Allowing there to be 2 Copernicus craters is a stupidity which puts competing measurement systems in the shade.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
They do not use British imperial measures.
Eh?
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
Yes but then they still, almost uniquely, write their dates backwards.
I'm not going to defend that piece of lunacy. Nor indeed their gun laws.
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
The B29s shut down what was left of Japanese maritime trade - see the forgotten aerial mining campaign.
The Lancaster nuke thing is one of those bits of history that don't make sense when you examine the reality. The Lancaster didn't have the range. The B29 was a vastly bigger plane, all round - for equivalent projects look at the the British 75 and 100 ton bomber projects (cancelled) ....
A Lancaster could have carried Little Boy. Fat Man would have been a problem (width). But it would have had very little range while doing so, and would have been flying very low, and very slow compare to the B29.
The RAF demanded and got B29s after the war, because of the performance issues.
Indeed, the Lancaster wasn't perfect for the job. But the US had massive problems getting the B-29 flying, yet alone the modified versions for carrying nukes. For every B-29 lost to enemy action, two more were lost due to engine, technical or other failures. They were far from sure in 1944 whether the bird could do it. The Lancaster was about the only other alternative they had.
The other, real alternative was different engines for the B29. See the XB39 & B29D (aka B50).
There was serious consideration given to the XB-39 for Silverplate, IIRC.
EDIT: without aerial refuelling (multiple times), the Lancaster (or Lincoln) couldn't get from the islands to Japan.
The XB-39 first flew in December 1944. Far too late to become reliable enough to trust, and to be modified for such an important mission. The XB-44 first flew in May 1945, so was right out of the question.
They are delayed, deliberately, by the decision to go with the "original" B29 as good enough (just).
If the B29 engine situation had been even slightly worse, then both would have been given crash status. As well as the B32.
IIRC Hap Arnold was arguing for crash status for XB-39 anyway.
Yes we are integral with the US on the production of our nuclear subs and the technology is not shared with anyone else.
That is why this is a unique deal with Australia as they will also share the technology
Integrated in that there is a lot of US technology in UK submarines but not a lot in the opposite direction.
There seems to be some baffling point of nationalist pride at stake to pretend otherwise.
There is plenty of very clever British engineering in the F-35 (especially the wheelie bin variant) so take comfort in that,
Surely that depends on how you define 'British technology'. For instance, the new pumpjets in US submarines are from BAE Systems - just their US branch.
Covid has shown up quite how sparse our weapons against disease are. The vaccines were later then we needed, even fat a brilliantly accelerated development. Therapeutic developments have been very disappointing.
I would like to see a Manhattan Project on therapeutics. The world needs to throw billions into development of drugs and strategies that will help keep people out of hospital from even 'normal' illnesses such as flu.
An issue is that vaccines have been seen to work and, in a couple of cases, vastly profitable. The sector will throw lots of money into vaccines. But vaccines are inevitable delayed; they need to be developed for each individual illness. Therapeutic drugs and techniques can help with many different illnesses that attack in similar ways.
The Manhattan Project is a really bad analogy. Apart from the huge sums spent on research every year in any event, the problem is not a singular one amenable to a brute force approach like that. While it's true that some agents will prove useful in multiple diseases, defining what those might be and why is still as much as hoc as it is systemic.
Fundamentally we just need a lot more knowledge - a project which industry, government and academia are already spending hundreds of billions on.
The Manhattan project is frequently used as shorthand for a "Crash Program to do X"
The interesting bit about the Manhattan project was that the basic answers - "We need need kilos of U235 and Pu239" - were already known. As were the list of possible ways to get there. There was surprisingly little abstract science innovation in the project. It was an engineering competition to see which methods worked the best, by trying them all in competition with each other.
The COVID treatment issue equivalent would be if we had micro grams of various treatments that probably work in the labs, but need tons. And don't have the methods to make tons.
We don't have that. What we need (and is happening) is alot of primary science to find the treatment methods and ideas. Once we have the treatments, the pharma industry will give us the tons in fairly short order.
Point taken from both NigelB and yourself. I did indeed mean it as the sense of a crash project.
One thing that surprised me is that the Manhattan Project wasn't even the most expensive single US project of the war. The B-29 Superfortress project cost $3 billion to develop and build; the Manhattan Project only cost $1.9 billion.
I'd argue the Manhattan Project was also much more effective: the B-29 didn't end the war. The nukes did - and probably with much less loss of life than if the war had continued.
(And before anyone says 'Enola Gay'! - problems with the B-29 meant there were plans to use modified Lancaster bombers to drop the nuclear bombs. - although the Lancaster was less well-suited to the task - https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/project-silverplate )
The B29s shut down what was left of Japanese maritime trade - see the forgotten aerial mining campaign.
The Lancaster nuke thing is one of those bits of history that don't make sense when you examine the reality. The Lancaster didn't have the range. The B29 was a vastly bigger plane, all round - for equivalent projects look at the the British 75 and 100 ton bomber projects (cancelled) ....
A Lancaster could have carried Little Boy. Fat Man would have been a problem (width). But it would have had very little range while doing so, and would have been flying very low, and very slow compare to the B29.
The RAF demanded and got B29s after the war, because of the performance issues.
Indeed, the Lancaster wasn't perfect for the job. But the US had massive problems getting the B-29 flying, yet alone the modified versions for carrying nukes. For every B-29 lost to enemy action, two more were lost due to engine, technical or other failures. They were far from sure in 1944 whether the bird could do it. The Lancaster was about the only other alternative they had.
The other, real alternative was different engines for the B29. See the XB39 & B29D (aka B50).
There was serious consideration given to the XB-39 for Silverplate, IIRC.
EDIT: without aerial refuelling (multiple times), the Lancaster (or Lincoln) couldn't get from the islands to Japan.
The XB-39 first flew in December 1944. Far too late to become reliable enough to trust, and to be modified for such an important mission. The XB-44 first flew in May 1945, so was right out of the question.
The XB-44 was prototype to the B-29D, which was redesignated B-50 in December 1945.
The other "family member" was the Tu-4, the Soviet-built "copy".
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States as part of the known universe?
Don't you know for the modern Remainer-Left that Rochdale has wholeheartedly embraced the entire universe is the European plate only?
Outside of Europe 'ere be dragons.
If America used British imperial measures you may have a point. But they don't...
They don't use metric which is what you claimed.
US forces use metric for many applications per NATO STANAG.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
Europe needs France in NATO to contain Putin, whatever disagreements over how to contain China. In western Europe France and the UK are the main military powers
I'm not sure that's true. We contained the Soviet Union whatever France did during the Cold War. And the Soviet Union was more of a military threat than Putin's Russia.
France is a nice to have, not an essential.
We only contained the Soviet Union with a big US military presence in Europe, that is no longer a given. In that case Franch support is essential to contain Putin.
Putin's Russia is more of a threat to us than the USSR was under Gorbachev for example
It's a different type of threat. And not one that needs a huge US military presence in Western Europe any more.
It does need some US military presence though and it also needs France and the UK leading European security through NATO
Yes we are integral with the US on the production of our nuclear subs and the technology is not shared with anyone else.
That is why this is a unique deal with Australia as they will also share the technology
Integrated in that there is a lot of US technology in UK submarines but not a lot in the opposite direction.
There seems to be some baffling point of nationalist pride at stake to pretend otherwise.
There is plenty of very clever British engineering in the F-35 (especially the wheelie bin variant) so take comfort in that,
Surely that depends on how you define 'British technology'. For instance, the new pumpjets in US submarines are from BAE Systems - just their US branch.
Right, a system designed and built in the USA by an American company seems an elastic definition of British. Its distant progenitor in the Swiftsure boats was, however, as British as a Kat out of Eastenders having a red, white and blue shit.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
Europe needs France in NATO to contain Putin, whatever disagreements over how to contain China. In western Europe France and the UK are the main military powers
The US is the key to Europe's defence with UK and French support
Provided the US still commits to maintain bases in Europe and that is not a given given recent US administrations.
RAF Mildenhall is closing in 2027. Any plan that relies on the active long term engagement of the US isn't a plan.
Agreed. However, the French pique with a threat to leave the alliance will no doubt be very reassuring to their EU allies to the east. I have no doubt it will have been noted in the Baltic states in particular.
What are they threatening to leave now?
It can't be AUSUK because they aren't in that one .
This is really really bad news. Evergrande have fingers is all sorts of pies, not just real estate, they have 200k direct employees, 3.8 million indirectly. Also, China's largest high yield dollar bond issuer.
Add in the likes of the US going nuts with the money printing / borrowing. It could be 2008 all over again.
I’ve been slowly selling off equities for months. Thank goodness.
You will have cost yourself money then unless it was all mining stock as apart from them most stocks are well above where they were June
There aren't many experiences happier than a hearty lunch on the sunny balcony of a mountain hof, after a morning's walking, looking out at an alpine panorama.
Reminds me of Cabaret - was there a blonde German youth on the slopes singing 'Tomorrow belongs to me'?
Must be hard for the Guardian to write this about Aukus
"From the British perspective, this is a triumph. Many diplomats had predicted the UK would become less important to the US once it had left the EU, since it had acted as the bridge between Washington and Brussels. That looks less true now. The Australian right is delighted because it has always seen Brexit as a path to a closer relationship with the British."
Medium-sized demonstration in Camden, marching from Regent's Park down to the Tube. Odd flags. Quite young, but not all young. A few families. NHS? Anti-vaxxers? Some weird red and white flags
Wow. How wrong was I? I thought AUUKUS would be a five-minute wonder. Didn't realize it would be the greatest diplomatic disaster in living memory, emboldening China and Russia and shredding the western alliances to ribbons.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Yes, I don't mean Biden went cold calling, I can imagine it came from Oz, and I'm sure they had good reasons. My main point is the "Aukus" stuff is essentially dressing (to this mega bipartite sub supply deal) and what we are is the name to give the whole thing some "Anglosphere" spin and add a bit of class.
"By appointment to HM The Queen."
Like on the marmalade.
Don’t think that’s true. There is a logic to having the U.K., especially if you start combining the assets eg having the US Marines’ F-35s on HMS Queen Elizabeth. It’s easy to see a scenario where you start to have combined crews. The advantage of that is sending a message that “if you attack one, you attack all”
Mainly true though. This is a deal between the US and Australia. We're part of the packaging. They get the better sell, Johnson gets the political boost. I think that's the essence of it. Future developments will show if this is right or wrong.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
"Australia was offered the nuclear option by America,"
That makes it sound as though the US made the first moves on this. I'm unsure that's correct.
It might equally be: The deal with the French for the Attack class submarines was a fiscal and technological nightmare, and Australia realised they had to get out of it. Therefore they looked at their requirements and the emerging threats and realised only nuclear-powered boats would suit.
The French are not innocent in all of this.
Serious question: what does Australia get, apart from an excuse to break the financially ruinous French deal, from nuclear-powered submarines? Very long patrol times are great for nuclear weapons, which Australia does not have, and for intelligence-gathering, which Australia does not need. Am I missing something or is it simply about money and influence?
From SubBrief, perhaps misremembered: Australia is large, and so are the areas of ocean they want to patrol. The Collins class have an 11,000+ nautical mile range surfaced (slightly less submerged). As a comparison, the German Type-212 has an 8,000 nautical mile range.
If they went for a shorter range, they might have the expense of another base (say on the east coast), and lots of other issues as well. With the replacement Attack class, they wanted 18,000 miles range. This requires a heck of a lot of fuel. Worse, the faster you go, the faster the fuel goes. Nukes have essentially no range limit; food and other consumables become the limiting factor.
Nukes made sense from the start.
As said, I think that points up how nuclear is a no brainer for the Pacific. Perhaps the final trigger was US willingness to do tech transfer?
There aren't many experiences happier than a hearty lunch on the sunny balcony of a mountain hof, after a morning's walking, looking out at an alpine panorama.
Reminds me of Cabaret - was there a blonde German youth on the slopes singing 'Tomorrow belongs to me'?
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
And what's a cup anyway?
An indeterminate measurement used in Youtube recipes by soccer moms from New Jersey. As such it should be used as a flag for who is first against the wall after the wevolution.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
According to The Times (posted up thread) Australia approached the UK first over submarines because the French contract was well over budget and very late - it was the UK that suggested expanding it into a broader scope project and not just “a submarine deal”. The UK and Australia then worked through the US system to get it agreed.
The funny thing is that while Macron was strutting his stuff at the G7 in Cornwall with stories of “isolated Britain” the biggest strategic alliance in decades was being cooked up behind his back.
France doesn’t want any narrative to get out about post-Brexit Britain being other than isolated which is why they are pretending it had little to do with us.
That sounds unlikely to me, that we were the driver. But I get the Times today so I'll check out the story.
I once heard the PM described as “the man [sic] you hire to do the things that you don’t want to think about but know that they need to be done”. I’ve never been able to track it down again though!
In a perfect world we wouldn’t do deals with Saudi. But they are not an existential threat to us in the way that China could be. Sometimes your enemy’s enemy is your friend (in this case to counterpoint Iran) for geopolitical reasons. Regardless of how distasteful they may be.
And when they overstep even those weak limits - as with that guy in the Saudi embassy in Turkey - then they need to be slapped down
In that case I’m glad we can dispense with cant about ‘fundamental’ values.
It’s not cant.
There is a powerful authoritarian dictatorship that threatens our way of life and that of our friends. I’m glad we are standing up for freedom and democracy
It also enables our way of life. It makes what we consume and lends us the money to buy it. China, QE, debt, low interest rates, these are key ingredients of the potion we use to stave off a painful readjustment.
Indeed. We need to rebuild the security of our supply chain. For example all the precursor molecules for paracetamol are only available from Chinese manufacturing sites. That’s a strategic risk.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
And what's a cup anyway?
An indeterminate measurement used in Youtube recipes by soccer moms from New Jersey. As such it should be used as a flag for who is first against the wall after the wevolution.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
And what's a cup anyway?
Half a US pint, or 8 fl oz
Unless you mean a US *legal* cup which is about 98.5% of a US cup, because that makes obvious sense.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
According to The Times (posted up thread) Australia approached the UK first over submarines because the French contract was well over budget and very late - it was the UK that suggested expanding it into a broader scope project and not just “a submarine deal”. The UK and Australia then worked through the US system to get it agreed.
The funny thing is that while Macron was strutting his stuff at the G7 in Cornwall with stories of “isolated Britain” the biggest strategic alliance in decades was being cooked up behind his back.
France doesn’t want any narrative to get out about post-Brexit Britain being other than isolated which is why they are pretending it had little to do with us.
That sounds unlikely to me, that we were the driver. But I get the Times today so I'll check out the story.
Hmm. This kind of has Boris written all over it - indulging in his usual fantasy by trying to be Churchill to Biden's FDR. Biden's going senile and is advised by idiots, so it's easy to see how they'd be persuaded. Quite why the Fella Down Under thought it would be a good approach remains mysterious.
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
Ah hello, Philip. Thanks for the mention. I've done a Deep Think about this Aukus thing and I have a take for PB perusal which if you don't mind I'll post here in reply to your little jest.
Taken seriously, it's the platform for a new NATO in a world where China not the USSR is the bogeyman. But you get a truer picture (imo) by taking it less seriously. Boris Johnson is involved, remember.
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
Presented in isolation this could have looked bald and mercantile, the bad faith element prominent, so they decided to add gravitas by packaging it up as something with a strategic “Anglosphere” air to it. For which they needed us, they needed our name on the tombstone as it were, and lo we have “Aukus”. It’s not a treaty with obligations, merely a statement of intent between the 3 countries with lots of waffle about future co-operation and sharing. It’s like the Political Declaration in the Brexit talks, dressing and mood music only, as compared to the real meat and potatoes of the Withdrawal Agreement / submarine deal.
For the UK, in strictly rational terms, it’s nothing to get too excited about either way but for Boris Johnson it’s great. He knows what he's doing with this and he's scored a bit of a win. A fear about Brexit was we'd become irrelevant on the world stage. This makes us look important. Moreover, it pushes the buttons of those many English people – some of whom write columns and OpEds and all of whom have votes in general elections – who feel reassured and comfortable with a view of the world and its affairs whereby we are naturally aligned with the English speaking nations rather than with Europe. Or some of the English speaking nations, to be more accurate. If you want a quick instinctive feel for who these nations are they are those who James Bond had a soft spot for in the Fleming novels.
LOL.
For an Anglophobe like yourself that stream of nonsense possibly makes you sleep better at night.
However back here on Planet Earth that's just not true. And Britain and British technology is integral to all this.
Bet you within quite a short space of time my take on this is mainstream. And it's far from Anglophobic btw. They needed us. Not for technology but for the certain "je ne sais quoi" that our name still brings to affairs. And great politics by your man the muscly magnificence too. Hate saying this but I have to be honest. Unbiased and balanced to a fault, see, this is how I've always rolled on PB and will continue to roll as long as I have the strength to hit the keys.
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
And what's a cup anyway?
An indeterminate measurement used in Youtube recipes by soccer moms from New Jersey. As such it should be used as a flag for who is first against the wall after the wevolution.
Hmm, the Americans managed to lose two spacecraft by muddling imperial (US) and metric!
Yes, that shows how insidious the metric system can be, if you let it get the tiniest foothold in your country!
Another thing that is Napoleon's fault .
Trudeau wants them to be first against the wall for the shevolution.
Trudeau Senior began metrication. Canada used US measures before 1970. Except for the gallon which was Imperial. Because that made a load of sense obviously.
Medium-sized demonstration in Camden, marching from Regent's Park down to the Tube. Odd flags. Quite young, but not all young. A few families. NHS? Anti-vaxxers? Some weird red and white flags
As Groucho Marx would say:
I don't know what they have to say It makes no difference anyway Whatever it is, I'm against it No matter what it is or who commenced it I'm against it
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
Gérard Araud seems to think France should pull out of NATO.
The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours.
And that for the benefit of @kinabalu is why AUKUS and not FR/GER are the "chaps we can trust."
French anger is directed at the US and Oz and the reason for this is we have little to do with what’s happening, which is all about the submarine deal. Australia was offered the nuclear option by America, said yes to that, therefore cancelled their order of lower tech ones from France. That's the essence of it.
According to The Times (posted up thread) Australia approached the UK first over submarines because the French contract was well over budget and very late - it was the UK that suggested expanding it into a broader scope project and not just “a submarine deal”. The UK and Australia then worked through the US system to get it agreed.
The funny thing is that while Macron was strutting his stuff at the G7 in Cornwall with stories of “isolated Britain” the biggest strategic alliance in decades was being cooked up behind his back.
France doesn’t want any narrative to get out about post-Brexit Britain being other than isolated which is why they are pretending it had little to do with us.
That sounds unlikely to me, that we were the driver. But I get the Times today so I'll check out the story.
"Britain is the driver" is something of an overstatement, here's the take of the NYT
Fact is all three countries really wanted this deal, for different but compelling reasons. So when Australia opened the talks they had a very receptive audience
The Australians, being bullied by China, were desperate to get out of a crappy French diesel sub contract, they really wanted nuke subs, and the French refused to share the tech. That really just left the US and UK as possible partners
When the Ozzies went to London, HMG realised this was a chance to build a bigger alliance - giving Britain that post-Brexit role AND pushing back against China (which is something the UKG genuinely desires)
So the two junior partners went to America, and the Americans leapt at the chance, because Biden is ruthlessly "pivoting to Asia" - (ie confronting China) what could be better than a big, strong, formal alliance spread around the world, including the entire continent of Australia, facing China across the Ocean. The Americans were happy to share precious nuke sub tech because it gives the alliance another edge over the Chinese navy. A key part of deterrence is unpredictability. China will now have to factor in a "nuclear-equipped" Australia as an adversary
Finally, this alliance was so politically and militarily beneficial to all three partners they were prepared to shaft Macron and humiliate France along the way,: it was an unavoidable and painful necessity
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
The imperial / metric debate is depressing. We're utter utter morons in this country - accepting that we need to use modern measures (metric) shared by the rest of the known universe. Yet still cling onto stupid like miles and pints and gallons.
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
You don't count the United States - the world's superpower and our largest trading partner - as part of the known universe?
You think US pints and gallons are like imperial pints and gallons?
What is depressing, but not surprising, is the attitude expressed by some environmental protestors that it is racist to question whether China should be doing more to cut emissions.
It also runs the risk of being counter productive. Let’s say that protestors tell Western nations they have to be responsible for reducing all global emissions. That gives a powerful incentive to China to become more dirty, knowing that Western nations would then have to cut faster and harder to satisfy the global commitments.
You almost think that the main priority of some is not global climate change but having the opportunity to swing against western governments.
Comments
Miles per bloody gallon! You don't buy fuel in gallons so why on earth we didn't convert to at least miles per litre measures I don't know. Personally I'd go full metric for everything. That pillock Worzel is likely to do the reverse and kill off "European" measures used by the entire world for some archaic crap that pretty much only we use.
The French sub deal drove the cost of subs into the range where nuclear was possible cost wise (is that ironic?)
The Americans would love to increase the ordering rate for Virginia class boats, to reduce costs. I strongly suspect that the way this will go is that the machinery will be US (reactors, turbines etc) in Australian built hulls. See the UK and HMS Dreadnought - where people joked that the aft end of the sub was the "American Zone".
The funny thing is that while Macron was strutting his stuff at the G7 in Cornwall with stories of “isolated Britain” the biggest strategic alliance in decades was being cooked up behind his back.
France doesn’t want any narrative to get out about post-Brexit Britain being other than isolated which is why they are pretending it had little to do with us.
https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1438944431734919175
*The US Navy stated that the Seawolf class was quieter at 20 knots, than the Improved Los Angeles class was at 5 knots.
But as usual when he withdraws, he did it chaotically, incompetently, at the wrong moment leading to highly unfortunate consequences including people being unexpectedly completely screwed.
For an Anglophobe like yourself that stream of nonsense possibly makes you sleep better at night.
However back here on Planet Earth that's just not true. And Britain and British technology is integral to all this.
There was serious consideration given to the XB-39 for Silverplate, IIRC.
EDIT: without aerial refuelling (multiple times), the Lancaster (or Lincoln) couldn't get from the islands to Japan.
Outside of Europe 'ere be dragons.
But I’ve yet to see a convincing alternative which wouldn’t have been.
How does that work?
Recalling is a snub but not recalling is a snub?
Schroedinger's diplomats now? Both a snub and not a snub and nobody knows until the French tell us?
https://twitter.com/cDaveCc/status/1439196420108689417?s=20
No more trains?
"By appointment to HM The Queen."
Like on the marmalade.
I booked mine ages ago and am having it next Wednesday.
Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms tube stations open on Monday...
it felt like a turning point, a shift from when readers merely disagreed with a column to disagreeing and therefore assuming the columnist is A Bad Person. All newspaper columnists will have experienced degrees of that shift over the past five years, and this is not – as some have said – about holding them accountable for their opinions; it’s a refusal to accept that not everyone sees things the same way.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/18/opinion-writing-has-changed-a-lot-since-i-started-out-its-time-for-something-new?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
You said, and I quote, that "we need to use modern measures ... shared by the rest of the known universe". I've pointed out to you that that is simply not true. The United States is very much part of the known universe, indeed an extremely successful part, and does not use them. So we clearly do not need to use such measures, and they are not shared by the rest of the known universe.
That is why this is a unique deal with Australia as they will also share the technology
If they went for a shorter range, they might have the expense of another base (say on the east coast), and lots of other issues as well. With the replacement Attack class, they wanted 18,000 miles range. This requires a heck of a lot of fuel. Worse, the faster you go, the faster the fuel goes. Nukes have essentially no range limit; food and other consumables become the limiting factor.
Nukes made sense from the start.
Quite frankly it's pretty irrelevant nowadays whether you wish to use British imperial, US imperial or metric. They're all interchangeable.
If I'm following a recipe on a website that calls for an ingredient in US imperial I can just ask Alexa to convert that to ml or British imperial or whatever I want to use. It isn't difficult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendenhall_Order
It is quite possible that this has resulted in entangling patents and commercial rights to the point that the UK needed to get involved - while most such deals on sharing technology are secret, the ones that have been revealed in other contexts have clauses about third parties getting access - usually that the party who supplied the IP in the first place has to say yes.
There seems to be some baffling point of nationalist pride at stake to pretend otherwise.
There is plenty of very clever British engineering in the F-35 (especially the wheelie bin variant) so take comfort in that,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-58607923
Allowing there to be 2 Copernicus craters is a stupidity which puts competing measurement systems in the shade.
If the B29 engine situation had been even slightly worse, then both would have been given crash status. As well as the B32.
IIRC Hap Arnold was arguing for crash status for XB-39 anyway.
The other "family member" was the Tu-4, the Soviet-built "copy".
It can't be AUSUK because they aren't in that one
https://twitter.com/WeAreTheMSM/status/1439204564159324163?s=20
Peak Clownism.
Or just plain moron.
"From the British perspective, this is a triumph. Many diplomats had predicted the UK would become less important to the US once it had left the EU, since it had acted as the bridge between Washington and Brussels. That looks less true now. The Australian right is delighted because it has always seen Brexit as a path to a closer relationship with the British."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/18/french-recall-of-ambassadors-indicates-extent-of-anger-over-aukus-rift
White riot - a riot of my own
Cough on them. Fight fire with fire.
Is this “AUKUS” or “weights and measures”?
And also used by nearly everyone else in the US.
It is about 8 fluid ounces. Usually. Another thing that is Napoleon's fault
And we need to wean ourselves off plastic crap
Unless you mean a US *legal* cup which is about 98.5% of a US cup, because that makes obvious sense.
Because that made a load of sense obviously.
I don't know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I'm against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I'm against it
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/us-france-australia-betrayal.html
Fact is all three countries really wanted this deal, for different but compelling reasons. So when Australia opened the talks they had a very receptive audience
The Australians, being bullied by China, were desperate to get out of a crappy French diesel sub contract, they really wanted nuke subs, and the French refused to share the tech. That really just left the US and UK as possible partners
When the Ozzies went to London, HMG realised this was a chance to build a bigger alliance - giving Britain that post-Brexit role AND pushing back against China (which is something the UKG genuinely desires)
So the two junior partners went to America, and the Americans leapt at the chance, because Biden is ruthlessly "pivoting to Asia" - (ie confronting China) what could be better than a big, strong, formal alliance spread around the world, including the entire continent of Australia, facing China across the Ocean. The Americans were happy to share precious nuke sub tech because it gives the alliance another edge over the Chinese navy. A key part of deterrence is unpredictability. China will now have to factor in a "nuclear-equipped" Australia as an adversary
Finally, this alliance was so politically and militarily beneficial to all three partners they were prepared to shaft Macron and humiliate France along the way,: it was an unavoidable and painful necessity
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58584976
What is depressing, but not surprising, is the attitude expressed by some environmental protestors that it is racist to question whether China should be doing more to cut emissions.
It also runs the risk of being counter productive. Let’s say that protestors tell Western nations they have to be responsible for reducing all global emissions. That gives a powerful incentive to China to become more dirty, knowing that Western nations would then have to cut faster and harder to satisfy the global commitments.
You almost think that the main priority of some is not global climate change but having the opportunity to swing against western governments.