Fascinating insight into “travelling with Trump” - from a hack who just spent five days on Air Force One
I know this will bitterly disappoint many PBers, but on this basis Trump is clearly not gaga. He takes five press conferences (unlike Biden), does hours of interviews, seems entirely lucid, and comes across as “in complete control”
The interesting point to me is that Trump / Starmer shared a helicopter, which seems wildly risky.
Other than that, to me it's journos (and arguably Starmer in some respects) allowing themselves to be treated like mushrooms by Trump. The Fox News on continuous play on the journo compartment in Air Force One, and the complete cut off of the press from the outside world to be kept in the Trump bubble, is interesting.
Yes, you would have hoped that someone might have pointed out that the area we might find most use/need for the aircraft carrier is in the cold north so let’s test it, the crew, the planes etc under cold wet conditions. Does everything work when it’s caked in ice? Does the onboard heating work? Can planes land safely on a potentially icy deck.
No point sending it to any war with China as it won’t last long, won’t add much to the US fleet.
The cruise is to the fleshpots of SE Asia and the sunny climes of Australia because if they went north the Joint Force Lightning recruitment/retention situation would escalate from crisis to catastrophe.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
Yes, you would have hoped that someone might have pointed out that the area we might find most use/need for the aircraft carrier is in the cold north so let’s test it, the crew, the planes etc under cold wet conditions. Does everything work when it’s caked in ice? Does the onboard heating work? Can planes land safely on a potentially icy deck.
No point sending it to any war with China as it won’t last long, won’t add much to the US fleet.
The cruise is to the fleshpots of SE Asia and the sunny climes of Australia because if they went north the Joint Force Lightning recruitment/retention situation would escalate from crisis to catastrophe.
Do a Napoleon “invasion of Egypt” effort and just don’t tell anyone, except the absolutely necessary bods, where the destination is until suitably far out on the journey.
Also, do these crews think that if they are sent somewhere they don’t like, say for example, to war (which is sort of their job), they can just say, “nah thanks, drop me off at the next stop please.”
Is the Navy so much worse than the Army at accepting that you just get sent to shitty places, that’s the job?
The dynamic is now the other way round. We've spent tens of billions on a highly compromised airframe and its marginally capable carriers. Which deliver very little in the mainland European theatre.
The navy has nobbled the RAF by persuading governments to go for prestige over defence capacity.
That wasn't how we got here.
In the late 90s the government decided it wanted to replace the Invincibles. After much faffing an order was placed for the QE class ten years later. We couldn't remotely afford CATOBAR so STOVL it was. This resulted in having a choice of exactly one aircraft - F-35B. This aircraft was eventually rolled into the FOAS program to replace Tornado resulting in a joint RAF/RN enterprise that the RAF runs just like JFH and with similar results.
The RN would have rather stayed out of the fixed wing business altogether and had helicopter carriers that the RAF couldn't fuck around with but they have to pretend that the QE/F-35B combo is a brilliant idea. The F-35A acquisition is partially running out of money and partially discovering that if you send F-35B to sea without sufficient engineering support they come back completely fucked so the solution is to buy more aircraft that can never go to sea.
So now we've got JFL running at about 50% of the required humanpower because the RAF (and civvies) don't want to be drafted on to it because they don't want to go to sea. It takes a year to prepare for a cruise, most of the surface fleet a year to execute one and a year to recuperate. The government chooses to counter the apparently deadly serious emergent threat of the Russians by sending the CSG to the Timor Sea rather than the Baltic or the High Arctic. Bloody well done to all involved.
Whether or not you exonerate the navy top brass, the effect is the same.
We have one of the most cost effective air to air missiles in existence, and the F35 can't carry it. Ditto our most newest air to ground weapon. The A version has a third greater range, greater payload, and is cheaper to maintain and fly, so it at least makes a bit more sense than the crippled navy version.
Fascinating insight into “travelling with Trump” - from a hack who just spent five days on Air Force One
I know this will bitterly disappoint many PBers, but on this basis Trump is clearly not gaga. He takes five press conferences (unlike Biden), does hours of interviews, seems entirely lucid, and comes across as “in complete control”
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
The UK’s headline inflation rate jumped to 3.6% in June, according to official figures, while a BRC-NielsenIQ monitor of food price inflation increased to 4% this month. The BRC said its own forecasts showed that food inflation would accelerate to 6% by the end of the year.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
My only grip with it was successful applicants could not come to the U.K.
Much of the outrage was, and still is, performative. ‘Oh look at me, I’m being worthy’
Indeed, it should have been an offshore processing centre. I am surprised Starmer didn't try to convert it to one, although it is possible the agreement with Rwanda would have allowed them to refuse the change
Starmer could have had the greatest academics in the world show him proof that Rwanda would work but he still wouldn’t have done it with a required tweak because it was a Tory policy and the Left had spent years blindly attacking it as a solution for multiple reasons.
That's a bit theoretical and moot imo.
They had the opportunity to demonstrate it would work; they chose to run away.
Why was that? What conclusion does the application of Occam's Razor support?
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
Interesting. I had thought Jacky Fisher had turned things round and modernised the navy? Certainly he prioritised a rigorous approach to gunnery.
Of course, he was brought back by Churchill as First Sea Lord at the beginning of WW1, but soon fell out with him (over Dardanelles) and departed. A fascinating person. Jan Morris's short biography of him is worth a read.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
That is what I would guess too. I just wondered if anyone has specific experience of the new regime.
As an aside, this seems likely to effect up the government's housebuilding targets.
Good morning everyone. A choice between Vance/Trump jnr and Harris would be like a choice between eating shit and drinking piss. Ok, I’ll let all you old men get back to your military discussion.
Peter La Fleur: [after Patches hits Justin in the face with a wrench] Yeah, uh, Patches... are you sure that this is completely necessary?
Patches O'Houlihan: Necessary? Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine?
Peter La Fleur: Probably not.
Patches O'Houlihan: No, but I do it anyway because it's sterile and I like the taste.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
In the solicitors' profession "light touch regulation" means that in theory, a sole practitioner or two partner law firm, must have similar processes, policies, monitoring systems, in place to Clifford Chance. To be truly compliant, the principals of a small firm would have to spend more time on compliance than actually doing their job.
Yes, you would have hoped that someone might have pointed out that the area we might find most use/need for the aircraft carrier is in the cold north so let’s test it, the crew, the planes etc under cold wet conditions. Does everything work when it’s caked in ice? Does the onboard heating work? Can planes land safely on a potentially icy deck.
No point sending it to any war with China as it won’t last long, won’t add much to the US fleet.
The cruise is to the fleshpots of SE Asia and the sunny climes of Australia because if they went north the Joint Force Lightning recruitment/retention situation would escalate from crisis to catastrophe.
Do a Napoleon “invasion of Egypt” effort and just don’t tell anyone, except the absolutely necessary bods, where the destination is until suitably far out on the journey.
Also, do these crews think that if they are sent somewhere they don’t like, say for example, to war (which is sort of their job), they can just say, “nah thanks, drop me off at the next stop please.”
Is the Navy so much worse than the Army at accepting that you just get sent to shitty places, that’s the job?
It's not the Navy that's the problem. Due to the J in Joint Force Lightning much of the engineering and support for F-35B which has to be embarked on a cruise is RAF or civvie. Such is the shortage of engineering 'talent' in the RAF they can choose not to be posted to the F-35 force in the first place and simply go to another posting to avoid even the possibility of going to sea. The recent NAO report on F-35 covers all this in agonising detail.
In the Navy you go where the fuck you are told and generally almost everyone does. In my day you used to get a draft on thick Admiralty paper with the anchor watermark that 'requested and required' you to go somewhere and that you would 'answer to the contrary at your peril'. It's probably all on an app now.
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
My only grip with it was successful applicants could not come to the U.K.
Much of the outrage was, and still is, performative. ‘Oh look at me, I’m being worthy’
Indeed, it should have been an offshore processing centre. I am surprised Starmer didn't try to convert it to one, although it is possible the agreement with Rwanda would have allowed them to refuse the change
Starmer could have had the greatest academics in the world show him proof that Rwanda would work but he still wouldn’t have done it with a required tweak because it was a Tory policy and the Left had spent years blindly attacking it as a solution for multiple reasons.
That's a bit theoretical and moot imo.
They had the opportunity to demonstrate it would work; they chose to run away.
Why was that? What conclusion does the application of Occam's Razor support?
I think the problem for late stage, life support Tory gov, was that the party had invested so much capital (financial and political) in the original half-arsed stupid plan that didn’t allow for successful applicants to come to the UK that they couldn’t turn around at that stage and say “yes it’s a bit crap we need to change things” as they had an election coming down the track and frankly were casting around for anything that might stop them getting a shoeing at the election. I think they knew it was highly flawed but had to stick.
I do think there is a chance, had Sunak made the biggest miracle happen and won the election, that they might have changed it to be sensible, less brutal and more effective once they had proper breathing room.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
I think it might be. The Stupidest Government Ever. From Skyr Toomakersson to Tiny Tears and from there on down. Utter fuckwits
The post Brexit Tories were pretty dumb, but they still had some intellects. People that might, say, understand how the internet works
I cannot see anyone like that in the Cabinet
Well look who did they sent onto Newsnight to "argue" (well roll their eyes and act like a child) for the OSA, a tech bro, a former scientist, even somebody with some business experience, no, a former professional musician who managed to f##k up so badly their lost their seat at the GE.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Yes, you would have hoped that someone might have pointed out that the area we might find most use/need for the aircraft carrier is in the cold north so let’s test it, the crew, the planes etc under cold wet conditions. Does everything work when it’s caked in ice? Does the onboard heating work? Can planes land safely on a potentially icy deck.
No point sending it to any war with China as it won’t last long, won’t add much to the US fleet.
The cruise is to the fleshpots of SE Asia and the sunny climes of Australia because if they went north the Joint Force Lightning recruitment/retention situation would escalate from crisis to catastrophe.
Do a Napoleon “invasion of Egypt” effort and just don’t tell anyone, except the absolutely necessary bods, where the destination is until suitably far out on the journey.
Also, do these crews think that if they are sent somewhere they don’t like, say for example, to war (which is sort of their job), they can just say, “nah thanks, drop me off at the next stop please.”
Is the Navy so much worse than the Army at accepting that you just get sent to shitty places, that’s the job?
It's not the Navy that's the problem. Due to the J in Joint Force Lightning much of the engineering and support for F-35B which has to be embarked on a cruise is RAF or civvie. Such is the shortage of engineering 'talent' in the RAF they can choose not to be posted to the F-35 force in the first place and simply go to another posting to avoid even the possibility of going to sea. The recent NAO report on F-35 covers all this in agonising detail.
In the Navy you go where the fuck you are told and generally almost everyone does. In my day you used to get a draft on thick Admiralty paper with the anchor watermark that 'requested and required' you to go somewhere and that you would 'answer to the contrary at your peril'. It's probably all on an app now.
And the 'B' exacerbates the engineering and support problem, irrespective of whether it's embarked or onshore.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
No amount of over-reaction to Grenfell can be criticized. It would be career-ending to do so.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
That is what I would guess too. I just wondered if anyone has specific experience of the new regime.
As an aside, this seems likely to effect up the government's housebuilding targets.
In some ways, builders are being squeezed by what government, and the public, want.
The government want them to build quality new houses, with car chargers and ideally solar panels. They want the houses to be well-insulated and energy-efficient. Oh, and no more Grenfell's, please.
The public want cheap housing, ideally detached or semi-detached, with a garage and garden. (yes, there are people who are happy with a flat, but the British ideal is that.)
A problem is that the former increases the cost of building a house, sometimes by a lot; and the things that may be able to be built cheaply (e.g. flats) are not what many of the public want.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Fascinating insight into “travelling with Trump” - from a hack who just spent five days on Air Force One
I know this will bitterly disappoint many PBers, but on this basis Trump is clearly not gaga. He takes five press conferences (unlike Biden), does hours of interviews, seems entirely lucid, and comes across as “in complete control”
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
I think it might be. The Stupidest Government Ever. From Skyr Toomakersson to Tiny Tears and from there on down. Utter fuckwits
The post Brexit Tories were pretty dumb, but they still had some intellects. People that might, say, understand how the internet works
I cannot see anyone like that in the Cabinet
Well look who did they sent onto Newsnight to "argue" (well roll their eyes and act like a child) for the OSA, a tech bro, a former scientist, even somebody with some business experience, no, a former professional musician who managed to f##k up so badly their lost their seat at the GE.
A friend of mine has been working with Ms Debbonaire for a year on a quite important overseas project. Most of his opinion is unprintable on PB, but “wholly insufferable” gives you a flavour
Having lost last time it is very unlikely the Democrats would nominate Harris for President next time. It would be like the Democrats nominating Kerry not Obama in 2008 or the Republicans picking Dole not Bush in 2000.
She would have been better off running for California governor if she did want to return to public service, a solid blue state
i think you need to quote what he was remarking on: "This is why @Nigel_Farage has said most of Reform’s Cabinet will not be MPs."
Farage seems to be dreaming of a US model with a de facto President (him) and a cabinet of appointees with no political base or legitimacy of their own.
The US has more checks and balances for their model. We have a parliament which has untrammelled power.
How can MPs hold Cabinet Ministers to account if they can't ask them questions in the Commons? Does Farage even know how this parliamentary democracy game works? Also speaks volumes about the calibre of parliamentary candidate he is expecting to attract if he's already ruling them out for Cabinet positions.
They could be held accountable in committees but not the chamber itself
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
The Royal Navy was so dominant after Waterloo that we didn't fight a naval war until WW1. There had then been several generations of new tech that could only be learned theoretically.
Amazing to think that a ship of the line in 1815 sailed and fought pretty much like one of 1715, whereas by 19 15 we had superdreadnoughts and torpedo-firing submarines
A new one I learnt recently was that we had hunter-killer subs as well from 2017 - R-class.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually he is still pretty controversial. There was a discussion about whether he should be reburied in Serbia, and the general view was not positive.
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
I think it might be. The Stupidest Government Ever. From Skyr Toomakersson to Tiny Tears and from there on down. Utter fuckwits
The post Brexit Tories were pretty dumb, but they still had some intellects. People that might, say, understand how the internet works
I cannot see anyone like that in the Cabinet
Well look who did they sent onto Newsnight to "argue" (well roll their eyes and act like a child) for the OSA, a tech bro, a former scientist, even somebody with some business experience, no, a former professional musician who managed to f##k up so badly their lost their seat at the GE.
Putting her into the HoL at least saves Labour from the unpalatable option of at some point putting her into a Westminster seat where her likeability and ability to peruade might fall a little short.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually, regarding him as a hero is a bit of a “tell”, in Serbia.
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
The Royal Navy was so dominant after Waterloo that we didn't fight a naval war until WW1. There had then been several generations of new tech that could only be learned theoretically.
Amazing to think that a ship of the line in 1815 sailed and fought pretty much like one of 1715, whereas by 19 15 we had superdreadnoughts and torpedo-firing submarines
A new one I learnt recently was that we had hunter-killer subs as well from 2017 - R-class.
I don't see how she gets past the primaries. It's not normal for election losers to do so.
I know Trump did but a lot of dubious practices including pretty open bribery were involved.
Andy Beshear, Josh Stein, Tim Buttigieg, or possibly Jon Ossoff if he holds his senate seat look like better bets.
O'Rourke might won too if he wins the Texas Governorship or Senate seat next year.
Harris didn't even win the 2020 Democratic primaries, Trump had at least won the 2016 GOP primaries and general election, Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders all got more votes and states and delegates than she did. She only got the 2024 nomination as Biden's VP
i think you need to quote what he was remarking on: "This is why @Nigel_Farage has said most of Reform’s Cabinet will not be MPs."
Farage seems to be dreaming of a US model with a de facto President (him) and a cabinet of appointees with no political base or legitimacy of their own.
The US has more checks and balances for their model. We have a parliament which has untrammelled power.
How can MPs hold Cabinet Ministers to account if they can't ask them questions in the Commons? Does Farage even know how this parliamentary democracy game works? Also speaks volumes about the calibre of parliamentary candidate he is expecting to attract if he's already ruling them out for Cabinet positions.
MPs can ask them questions, they just need to change their standing orders.
When Lord Cameron became FM, it was suggested he could be questioned at the Bar of the House, and it was a suggestion from the Commons Procedure Committee.
(AFAIK there is no actual precedent of anyone being questioned there since John Junor in 1957. I'm not aware of it ever being done to a Lord Minister.)
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
If this government doesn’t leave the ECHR then the next government will, without question. So Labour might as well do it in a way that gains the benefit and is less unpalatable
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
The Royal Navy was so dominant after Waterloo that we didn't fight a naval war until WW1. There had then been several generations of new tech that could only be learned theoretically.
Amazing to think that a ship of the line in 1815 sailed and fought pretty much like one of 1715, whereas by 19 15 we had superdreadnoughts and torpedo-firing submarines
A new one I learnt recently was that we had hunter-killer subs as well from 2017 - R-class.
1917 presumably? Even I would be a little surprised if the UK hadn't managed it until 2017.
Imaginative ship handling sank with Adm. Tyron on HMS Victoria. Hoist “TA”….
The R class were pretty much a failure - they hadn’t got enough diesel power to recharge their batteries at sea. So they could dive once at sea, then had to return to port.
The other fun bit was their shallow max depth (like all WWI subs) - 150 feet. Due to high underwater speed, they could exceed that from periscope depth in seconds. So the crews nearly never used the high speed while submerged.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
I heard an imaginative solution to the ECHR issue - remove it for England only.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
If this government doesn’t leave the ECHR then the next government will, without question. So Labour might as well do it in a way that gains the benefit and is less unpalatable
If Labour advocate leaving they will be lucky to poll double digits . Chasing Reform voters has got them nowhere so far .
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
If this government doesn’t leave the ECHR then the next government will, without question. So Labour might as well do it in a way that gains the benefit and is less unpalatable
Problem is you can’t leave the ECHR without rewriting the Good Friday agreement in a way that Ireland agrees with.
So the issue is that you have reform saying do X, with the reason why X not being done being way more complex (and too boring) to allow an easy answer.
Reality is we need the ECHR to change their viewpoint on migration which is likely to occur because all of Europe have the same problem an needs it fixed
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually, regarding him as a hero is a bit of a “tell”, in Serbia.
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Hatred for Churchill (who was obviously flawed), is where the horseshoe effect comes into play, uniting people like David Irving, and Geofffrey Wheatcroft, on one side, and Tariq Ali and Clive Ponting, on the other.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
I heard an imaginative solution to the ECHR issue - remove it for England only.
Devolved admins can keep it.
Or disapply it to the law relating to immigration and asylum.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
The Royal Navy was so dominant after Waterloo that we didn't fight a naval war until WW1. There had then been several generations of new tech that could only be learned theoretically.
Amazing to think that a ship of the line in 1815 sailed and fought pretty much like one of 1715, whereas by 19 15 we had superdreadnoughts and torpedo-firing submarines
A new one I learnt recently was that we had hunter-killer subs as well from 2017 - R-class.
1917 presumably? Even I would be a little surprised if the UK hadn't managed it until 2017.
Imaginative ship handling sank with Adm. Tyron on HMS Victoria. Hoist “TA”….
The R class were pretty much a failure - they hadn’t got enough diesel power to recharge their batteries at sea. So they could dive once at sea, then had to return to port.
The other fun bit was their shallow max depth (like all WWI subs) - 150 feet. Due to high underwater speed, they could exceed that from periscope depth in seconds. So the crews nearly never used the high speed while submerged.
Indeed - but still innovative, and could well have been developed more if the war had continued.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
If this government doesn’t leave the ECHR then the next government will, without question. So Labour might as well do it in a way that gains the benefit and is less unpalatable
As a radical centrist I'd be fine with us leaving the ECHR and setting up a new CHR that better reflects the modern world and inviting other countries to join. Just because something currently "is" doesn't make it optimal for us today.
Reform of the ECHR is tricky as needs unanimity across 46 countries aiui. Italy have been leading calls for reform.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually, regarding him as a hero is a bit of a “tell”, in Serbia.
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Not sure if he's still regarded in South Wales as 'the man who shot the miners'.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
If this government doesn’t leave the ECHR then the next government will, without question. So Labour might as well do it in a way that gains the benefit and is less unpalatable
75% of Labour voters want to stay in the ECHR, so no chance of that happening.
Overall 51% of voters want to stay in it, 27% to leave, though 72% of Reform voters and 54% of Tory voters want to leave the ECHR
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
No amount of over-reaction to Grenfell can be criticized. It would be career-ending to do so.
It may be career ending for politicians but for the country there is a trade off between safety and cost. If we could have new homes at 5% less cost with 1% increase in accidents, then "What should we do?" is a perfectly valid question which some organisation, whether politicians or quango, needs to decide and makes a real difference to our economy and health.
So (from my anonymous pulpit) happy to criticize over reaction to anything and typically prefer proportionate reaction.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
No amount of over-reaction to Grenfell can be criticized. It would be career-ending to do so.
It may be career ending for politicians but for the country there is a trade off between safety and cost. If we could have new homes at 5% less cost with 1% increase in accidents, then "What should we do?" is a perfectly valid question which some organisation, whether politicians or quango, needs to decide and makes a real difference to our economy and health.
So (from my anonymous pulpit) happy to criticize over reaction to anything and typically prefer proportionate reaction.
Yes, however the "more dangerous" place you wish to shift it to needs an evidenced case made.
But-but-buttery is not enough where safety is concerned.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Inspections require people to go out and actually do real work.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
That is what I would guess too. I just wondered if anyone has specific experience of the new regime.
As an aside, this seems likely to effect up the government's housebuilding targets.
In some ways, builders are being squeezed by what government, and the public, want.
The government want them to build quality new houses, with car chargers and ideally solar panels. They want the houses to be well-insulated and energy-efficient. Oh, and no more Grenfell's, please.
The public want cheap housing, ideally detached or semi-detached, with a garage and garden. (yes, there are people who are happy with a flat, but the British ideal is that.)
A problem is that the former increases the cost of building a house, sometimes by a lot; and the things that may be able to be built cheaply (e.g. flats) are not what many of the public want.
There’s also the inevitable reality that servicing suburbia (sewers, gas, electricity, road maintenance etc etc) is more expensive per capita than servicing denser housing.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
Always amuses me how parochial some brits are that the only two countries they can point to that are not members of the ECHR are Russia and Belarus. There’s 150 odd others.
How many of them are in Europe?
Lolz you just prove my point. As I said, totally parochial mindset.
It's parochial to ask how many countries that are not signatories to a treaty that only applies in Europe are in Europe?
Why do we need to be a part of a treaty cimply due to our geographical location. Now the EU, it has/had some advantages wrt VAT registration and triangulation being "inside the club"; but we don't need to be part of a supranational court simply because of our geographical location.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
Leaving the ECHR would cause huge problems with the GFA and the EU UK trade agreement . It would also send out a terrible message given Ukraine . The ECHR does need some reforms but Starmer would be toast if he even suggested the UK might leave . No one can argue with the overall provisions in the ECHR . The problem with say just having domestic legislation to protect rights is that can be changed by a government and not sure the public should really be trusting politicians to do the right thing !
If this government doesn’t leave the ECHR then the next government will, without question. So Labour might as well do it in a way that gains the benefit and is less unpalatable
75% of Labour voters want to stay in the ECHR, so no chance of that happening.
Overall 51% of voters want to stay in it, 27% to leave, though 72% of Reform voters and 54% of Tory voters want to leave the ECHR
This is somewhere where opinion can be led rather than just followed, most people have little understanding of it and its a proxy for Brexit.
Also what is the alternative if any? I wouldn't be in favour of leaving without some kind of replacement, but prefer either a reformed ECHR or new CHR to the status quo.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
I feel like maybe we should give the Greek response a go. Starmer could get away with that if we committed to maintaining or increasing the number of people we grant asylum via direct entry from UK Embassies in Turkey, Pakistan etc.
It's the queue-jumping that is really toxic here. Brits are typically exceptionally tolerant, and welcoming of refugees and even economic migrants, but a sense of of fair play is keenly felt. It's why there is a such a deep loathing of travellers in rural areas - when someone leaves litter all over the place and trespasses on someone's field for weeks...
Looking at the numbers and I hope I'm reading them right from here:
It seems half of asylum applications are approved (49%) in the year ending March 2025 compared with 61% in the year ending March 2024 and of the 109,000 requests for asylum, a third came from those arriving on "small boats" and just over a third had come to the UK on a visa.
So looking at that graph, the backlog of applications waiting to be processed or in process is down by 1/3 from 150k to 100k. That fits with a system which is simply being operated now, following years of resolute arse-sitting and PR stunts from the last 3 Conservative Prime Ministers.
And it with returns and repatriations having significantly increased percentage-wise from a fairly low level.
The PB question is how can the Govt make that stick, and get political benefit from it.
Reform and the Con Right aren't interested in fixing problems and making things work; they just want attack narratives they can leverage - not yet having any ideas of their own. Even if the immigration numbers improve by 99%, the permanent item is seeking controversy not engaging with reality, so it will just be a pivot to another "end of the world as we know it" story.
When Lee Anderson needed an asylum hotel to complain about last year and there was none locally, he just invented one out of whole cloth.
Similarly with the populist press. It was interesting reading a piece in the Express about the success of the Manchester Airport trial. Not a thing about our legal system working successfully to deliver a verdict, it was a demand for Labour MPs such as Paul Waugh who made edgy-to-some comments "BE HELD TO ACCOUNT". Not a thing about Constituency MPs having the role to represent their constituents.
It's quite eye-opening on some of the early expedients and issues, some never really addressed, and not just getting the safety ball-bearings out of a Violet Club (and, worse, getting them back in).
At one point in the early dats, the question came up of what to do if the balloon went up when the PM was incommunicado in his car. The suggestion came, get the PM to buy a sub to the AA.*
*Which had telephone boxes and patrolmen all over the place, and a HQ across the road from the major RAF command.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Inspections require people to go out and actually do real work.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
Are you paying £350 for a 3 minute inspection, or are you paying £350 for years of training that means the inspector only needs 3 minutes?
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
My only grip with it was successful applicants could not come to the U.K.
Much of the outrage was, and still is, performative. ‘Oh look at me, I’m being worthy’
Indeed, it should have been an offshore processing centre. I am surprised Starmer didn't try to convert it to one, although it is possible the agreement with Rwanda would have allowed them to refuse the change
Starmer could have had the greatest academics in the world show him proof that Rwanda would work but he still wouldn’t have done it with a required tweak because it was a Tory policy and the Left had spent years blindly attacking it as a solution for multiple reasons.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Inspections require people to go out and actually do real work.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
Are you paying £350 for a 3 minute inspection, or are you paying £350 for years of training that means the inspector only needs 3 minutes?
Gets a fag out, lights up, takes a deep drag....whichever, it still £350 mate....cash preferred.
Starmer is adept at U-Turns so he should just admit cancelling Rwanda was a bad idea, sent totally the wrong message, and bring it make with a tweak and call it the Labour version.
Simply because Labour knows it wouldn't work just as the Conservatives probably did.
In truth, no one has come up with a coherent, legal, practical, workable and above all inexpensive solution to the problem of "the boats". If such a solution existed, it would have been implemented by either this Government or the last Government.
If withdrawing from the ECHR is the panacea some seem to think it would have been done by this Government or the last Government.
You could try the Greek response and immediately arrest and deport all those who come over illegally but that wouldn't stop them coming.
And, small boat crossings have increased 50% since it was cancellled.
Nice weather.
I doubt your average Afghan boat person has any idea of the Rwanda deterrent, or now, lack thereof.
Before the election Today had regular interviews with charity people in the Calais region and former border officials working with organisations who were very clear that the Rwanda plan was well known by asylum seekers and the threat of it was real to potential boaters.
I know that’s not ideal, something you really don’t like actually working, but the evidence was clearly there and with tweaks such as allowing successful applicants to come to the UK and non successful to stay in Rwanda or confirm and return to their county of origin, it might have worked very well but too many people were blinded to Rwanda because it was the Tories’ plan or frankly, they just don’t want to do anything about the problem.
Rwanda was appalling on so many fronts. It was a Johnsonian stunt which was amoral, Rwanda was not and is not a stable, safe and reliable destination and the project was absurdly expensive. Rwanda was a jolly jape concocted by Johnson and as I mentioned above, serious Tories in Cabinet hated the idea. That is not to say a more workable third party country arrangement is not viable, it is just on any measure, Rwanda wasn't the answer.
Rwanda does however serve a political function, it allows more enthusiastic right wingers to argue we should join Russia and Belarus and jettison the ECHR.
I had no problem with Rwanda.
Neither did Matthew Parris or Ken Clarke.
My only grip with it was successful applicants could not come to the U.K.
Much of the outrage was, and still is, performative. ‘Oh look at me, I’m being worthy’
Indeed, it should have been an offshore processing centre. I am surprised Starmer didn't try to convert it to one, although it is possible the agreement with Rwanda would have allowed them to refuse the change
Starmer could have had the greatest academics in the world show him proof that Rwanda would work but he still wouldn’t have done it with a required tweak because it was a Tory policy and the Left had spent years blindly attacking it as a solution for multiple reasons.
The stupidity of politics.
If they showed proof that Rwanda would work they wouldn't be the greatest academics in the world would they? Academia doesn't use "proof" in the same way charlatan politicians do.
It's quite eye-opening on some of the early expedients and issues, some never really addressed, and not just getting the safety ball-bearings out of a Violet Club (and, worse, getting them back in).
At one point in the early dats, the question came up of what to do if the balloon went up when the PM was incommunicado in his car. The suggestion came, get the PM to buy a sub to the AA.*
*Which had telephone boxes and patrolmen all over the place, and a HQ across the road from the major RAF command.
Violet Club - the nuclear bomb so dangerous that the 1950s RAF didn’t want it.
The same RAF that was AOK with killing pilots faster than during the WWII. In peace time.
Yes, you would have hoped that someone might have pointed out that the area we might find most use/need for the aircraft carrier is in the cold north so let’s test it, the crew, the planes etc under cold wet conditions. Does everything work when it’s caked in ice? Does the onboard heating work? Can planes land safely on a potentially icy deck.
No point sending it to any war with China as it won’t last long, won’t add much to the US fleet.
The cruise is to the fleshpots of SE Asia and the sunny climes of Australia because if they went north the Joint Force Lightning recruitment/retention situation would escalate from crisis to catastrophe.
Do a Napoleon “invasion of Egypt” effort and just don’t tell anyone, except the absolutely necessary bods, where the destination is until suitably far out on the journey.
Also, do these crews think that if they are sent somewhere they don’t like, say for example, to war (which is sort of their job), they can just say, “nah thanks, drop me off at the next stop please.”
Is the Navy so much worse than the Army at accepting that you just get sent to shitty places, that’s the job?
It's not the Navy that's the problem. Due to the J in Joint Force Lightning much of the engineering and support for F-35B which has to be embarked on a cruise is RAF or civvie. Such is the shortage of engineering 'talent' in the RAF they can choose not to be posted to the F-35 force in the first place and simply go to another posting to avoid even the possibility of going to sea. The recent NAO report on F-35 covers all this in agonising detail.
In the Navy you go where the fuck you are told and generally almost everyone does. In my day you used to get a draft on thick Admiralty paper with the anchor watermark that 'requested and required' you to go somewhere and that you would 'answer to the contrary at your peril'. It's probably all on an app now.
TBF there's some justification for a Raff erk being worried.
One presumes - always dangerous, I know - that in the RN the recruitment system presumably provides at least some basic intro to life on board at sea, and a rough and ready check for seasickness tendency, before they get onto more sophisticated stuff than deck swabbing and paint chipping, aka F-35 maintenance. RAF, not so much. The selection is the other way round, leaving a real question about being able to hold in one's oggies and train smash, never mind actually doing any useful work in between the technicolor yawns.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
More regulation and more process state 👍
Well, first you need to kill some Head Count.
Think of them as a blood sacrifice on the altar of Process.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Inspections require people to go out and actually do real work.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
Are you paying £350 for a 3 minute inspection, or are you paying £350 for years of training that means the inspector only needs 3 minutes?
Cheaper than an emergency plumber in some places !
The problem with that is that consequences can be serious and unpredictable. I've seen examples where chimney breasts have been removed on the ground, with no consideration of the one in the bedroom above and the chimney at the top.
I'll happily have some things done in a "paperwork light" manner, and opt for a Plan B such as an indemnity policy when I sell it in 20+ years (notably 2G, where my window man got out of FENSA because of costs but still has a direct manufacturer contact which saves 4 figures a time) - but only if I am confident.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Inspections require people to go out and actually do real work.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
Are you paying £350 for a 3 minute inspection, or are you paying £350 for years of training that means the inspector only needs 3 minutes?
In my case it was (10 years ago) £200 for an inspector to come out, observe that the double glazing I was having installed had the relevant kitemark etched on the panes, tick the relevant box for me & hand me a sheet of paper that stated that the windows being installed were appropriately kitemarked.
You could try telling me that this inspection required years of training, but I don’t think I would believe you.
It might be reasonable to require such an inspection to avoid unsafe glass being installed by fly-by-night glazing installers under-cutting other companies of course. But £200 did seem a tad steep for such a service.
It's quite eye-opening on some of the early expedients and issues, some never really addressed, and not just getting the safety ball-bearings out of a Violet Club (and, worse, getting them back in).
At one point in the early dats, the question came up of what to do if the balloon went up when the PM was incommunicado in his car. The suggestion came, get the PM to buy a sub to the AA.*
*Which had telephone boxes and patrolmen all over the place, and a HQ across the road from the major RAF command.
Violet Club - the nuclear bomb so dangerous that the 1950s RAF didn’t want it.
The same RAF that was AOK with killing pilots faster than during the WWII. In peace time.
Quite. FAA too, to be fair. My dad was on a carrier for some months and was not impressed by the death rate of the folk on the roof. Never forgot the day three died before breakfast.
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
I think it might be. The Stupidest Government Ever. From Skyr Toomakersson to Tiny Tears and from there on down. Utter fuckwits
The post Brexit Tories were pretty dumb, but they still had some intellects. People that might, say, understand how the internet works
I cannot see anyone like that in the Cabinet
Well look who did they sent onto Newsnight to "argue" (well roll their eyes and act like a child) for the OSA, a tech bro, a former scientist, even somebody with some business experience, no, a former professional musician who managed to f##k up so badly their lost their seat at the GE.
A friend of mine has been working with Ms Debbonaire for a year on a quite important overseas project. Most of his opinion is unprintable on PB, but “wholly insufferable” gives you a flavour
She really did. It come over well in that clip on Newsnight.
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
It's a new system (2022) for high-rise buildings that came out of Grenfell, as such is probably quite reasonably non-negotiable, and the industry need to adapt.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Many of the provisions don’t make sense and aren’t safety related.
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
Inspections require people to go out and actually do real work.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
Are you paying £350 for a 3 minute inspection, or are you paying £350 for years of training that means the inspector only needs 3 minutes?
And those poor resident Doctors are only on 18 quid an Hour 🥲
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
The Royal Navy was so dominant after Waterloo that we didn't fight a naval war until WW1. There had then been several generations of new tech that could only be learned theoretically.
Amazing to think that a ship of the line in 1815 sailed and fought pretty much like one of 1715, whereas by 19 15 we had superdreadnoughts and torpedo-firing submarines
A new one I learnt recently was that we had hunter-killer subs as well from 2017 - R-class.
1917 presumably? Even I would be a little surprised if the UK hadn't managed it until 2017.
Imaginative ship handling sank with Adm. Tyron on HMS Victoria. Hoist “TA”….
The R class were pretty much a failure - they hadn’t got enough diesel power to recharge their batteries at sea. So they could dive once at sea, then had to return to port.
The other fun bit was their shallow max depth (like all WWI subs) - 150 feet. Due to high underwater speed, they could exceed that from periscope depth in seconds. So the crews nearly never used the high speed while submerged.
Indeed - but still innovative, and could well have been developed more if the war had continued.
Diving depth increases and control theory was needed.
Arguably not present until the end of WWII
Notably the design of depth control in subs had to move to a more aircraft style system.
Diving depth was massively increased by advanced pressure hull engineering theory. And welding, which gave much more consistency and enabled more efficient structures.
Stand-in England captain Ollie Pope, speaking to Sky Sports: "We're going to have a bowl first. There's a bit more grass in it this week, overcast conditions, it's a no brainer to bowl first."
Stand-in England captain Ollie Pope, speaking to Sky Sports: "We're going to have a bowl first. There's a bit more grass in it this week, overcast conditions, it's a no brainer to bowl first."
6hrs time...India 350 for 2....
"We're glad to say, we're in the UK West Indian batsmen can bat all day"
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually, regarding him as a hero is a bit of a “tell”, in Serbia.
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Not sure if he's still regarded in South Wales as 'the man who shot the miners'.
Captain Haseeb Hameed's third century of the season helped title-chasing Nottinghamshire build a solid foundation in reply to Somerset's 438 on day two of their County Championship clash at Trent Bridge.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually, regarding him as a hero is a bit of a “tell”, in Serbia.
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Not sure if he's still regarded in South Wales as 'the man who shot the miners'.
Stand-in England captain Ollie Pope, speaking to Sky Sports: "We're going to have a bowl first. There's a bit more grass in it this week, overcast conditions, it's a no brainer to bowl first."
6hrs time...India 350 for 2....
given the earther today, more like no play due to rain
Given Trumps totally upended the US-Canada relationship (Wasn't NAFTA supposed to be free trade deal - what happened), and given his 'trade deals' rarely make things better anyway, I'd not be too worried.
Stand-in England captain Ollie Pope, speaking to Sky Sports: "We're going to have a bowl first. There's a bit more grass in it this week, overcast conditions, it's a no brainer to bowl first."
6hrs time...India 350 for 2....
given the earther today, more like no play due to rain
When you win the toss - bat. If you are in doubt, think about it - then bat. If you have very big doubts, consult a colleague - then bat.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
Also, why would France and Russia have simply signed their fleets over to Germany, rather than to an ally like Britain, or scuttled them?
I would not have chosen for Britain to remain neutral in WW1, I would have had us help our allies with our Navy. My issue lies with our disastrous involvement in the land war.
Firstly, the French (at least) would have scuttled.
The problem wasn’t the ships in existence.
A Germany supreme on the continent would have had the resources to build a One Ocean navy more powerful than the Home Fleet.
The secondary problem is this - Imperial Germany had a war cult. War is Good. War is God. Literally taught in the schools and universities.
It was already metastasising in fuckwit fanaticism - see the incident with the cobbler in Alsace pre WWI.
If Germany won WWI, it would have doubled and redoubled. The Cult of War would rule.
Which made WWII inevitable. Hell, the planned peace terms (occupation of Belgium, a big chunk of France) were about crippling France - for the next war. They were planning it.
So on the new timeline, in about 1928, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin makes a breakthrough in nuclear physics. Just as the drum beats for war are heating up, again…
Fun, n’est pas?
It's fascinating to look at the attitudes towards war. Italy was a new country, but joined in enthusiastically on the Isonzo. The pretext was of course irredentism - the idea that Italian-speaking Austrians should be Italian - but there was certainly a party that believed that the Italian nation needed to be blooded in a war. War was what nation-states did.
WW1 fuelled the rise of ethno-nationalism, but I am not sure what the alternative would have been, as the war destroyed Austria-Hungary's economy and administrative structures and the Poles certainly would have wanted their own country, although the 2nd Republic was of course multi-ethnic
Contrary to the WarMadContinent thesis, most nations in the run up to WWI didn’t want war. Germany was split between the WarIsGod types and the sensible. France, under the Revanche doctrine was determined to be attacked, not attack. Russia didn’t want it. The UK didn’t want it.
The AH empire wanted war. Maybe Serbia?
Specifically "Apis", Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian military intelligence and leader of the "black hand", a terrorist organisation sponsoring Serbian irredentism which organised the assassination in Sarajevo. He was an extraordinarily violent man, who was directly involved in the brutal murder of of King Alexander I Obrenovic and the return of the Karageorgevic dynasty in 1903.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Presumably, he's now considered to be a hero in Serbia.
Actually, regarding him as a hero is a bit of a “tell”, in Serbia.
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Hatred for Churchill (who was obviously flawed), is where the horseshoe effect comes into play, uniting people like David Irving, and Geofffrey Wheatcroft, on one side, and Tariq Ali and Clive Ponting, on the other.
That Churchill was a drunk is hardly controversial, that he seriously fucked up on several occasions and was only restrained on several more by the likes of Alanbrooke is also not contentious.
Captain Haseeb Hameed's third century of the season helped title-chasing Nottinghamshire build a solid foundation in reply to Somerset's 438 on day two of their County Championship clash at Trent Bridge.
Personally I'd say our decision to go to war with France and Russia against Germany in 1914 was where it all started to go wrong.
It killed almost a million men over some inconsequential tracts of Flanders, beggared the Empire, strengthened the United States, led to the Russian Revolution and Labour Governments and eventually to the Second World War.
Honourable mentions to Lloyd George's 1909 Budget that set us on the disastrous road to the current welfare junkie tax and spend doom loop, and the Attlee government that pushed us further in that direction and passed the current disastrous planning system.
This is Peter Hitchens' view IIRC.
It is - of course - worth remembering that British foreign policy for the last 500 years has been to avoid a European continental hegemon emerging. It led to us fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701–1714; the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, and then both the World Wars in the 20th Century.
The view - rightly or wrongly - was that Britain was strongest when Europe was fractured. (And I would argue that the fracturing of the European continent was -mostly- good for citizens too. It meant countries were competing and innovating.)
So... you can argue that Britain should have avoided the First World War, but you do have to remember that would have had consequences too.
We had no choice.
France and Russia would have both been defeated (Russia was as it is, and France came close in 1917) and we'd have faced a totally German dominated Europe. They could have united the fleets of up to 4 navies against us, and would have occupied the low countries and the Channel coast, which would have meant the UK's safety and its links to the Empire would have been utterly at its mercy. The Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to protect our independence.
We want to believe it was avoidable due to the terrible cost. But, whilst a catastrophe, the alternative for this country would have been worse.
We had to fight.
No, I don't really think that holds water. Even with whatever survived of France and Russia's Navies that had not been scuttled or come to us, Germany would not have been a serious naval threat. And where is the solid evidence that the Kaiser would have been more successful in conquering Russia than Napoleon before him?
A Germany that had only recently united itself acting as the overlord of an annoyed Europe would have had far more pressing problems than attacking Britain at sea.
It was just a catastrophical error. We have to accept it, forgive, and move on.
I suppose the evidence is that in 1918 Germany had successfully conquered Russia.
Yes, one only needs to read the Treaty of Brest-Litovskt. For France, look at the annexed territory in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871.
The Royal Navy had about 36 dreadnoughts to 21 German, roughly a 60% advantage, but nothing like an insurmountable one.
That is a bigger advantage than it seems, because not only do you have 60% more guns, but there's also 60% more of you to destroy. So in fact the advantage is not 1.6:1, it's 1.6^2:1 or 2.56:1. That IS close to insurmountable, especially given the generally much larger calibre of the Royal Navy's guns, and once the Royal Navy had addressed the poor quality of its heavy calibre shells and its disastrous ammunition handling practices.
Which is why the Germans, despite the better quality of their ships overall, never seriously contemplated a full fleet action during WW1, and, when they got trapped in one, at Jutland, their only thought was to flee as quickly as possible.
Interestingly there were a few months in late 1914 and early 1915 when the Germans did have rough equality in numbers in Dreadnoughts with the Royal Navy. But that changed once the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeths and then the Royal Sovereigns started arriving, and once the Americans sent their 6th Battle Squadron.
One detail point - I don't think the "sorted" shells were out until after WW1 (the Greenboy Shells). It's interesting how it is always about excellent people - Admiral Jellicoe fed back the information, but it did not aiui get implemented until he became First Sea Lord and forced it through himself.
And another on Jutland: the RN failed to take advantage of the extra range of their guns. They could have had 15-20 minutes of free fire, but cocked up the range estimates so the Germans opened fire first on the first engagement.
The Royal Navy hadn't really mastered modern battleship handling by WW1. They got complacent during the Victorian era and only had a few years to learn on Dreadnoughts before war broke out.
By WW2, Royal Navy gunnery was actually very good but, by that time, aerial attack had shifted the dial for what drove dominance at sea.
The Royal Navy was so dominant after Waterloo that we didn't fight a naval war until WW1. There had then been several generations of new tech that could only be learned theoretically.
Amazing to think that a ship of the line in 1815 sailed and fought pretty much like one of 1715, whereas by 19 15 we had superdreadnoughts and torpedo-firing submarines
A new one I learnt recently was that we had hunter-killer subs as well from 2017 - R-class.
1917 presumably? Even I would be a little surprised if the UK hadn't managed it until 2017.
Imaginative ship handling sank with Adm. Tyron on HMS Victoria. Hoist “TA”….
The R class were pretty much a failure - they hadn’t got enough diesel power to recharge their batteries at sea. So they could dive once at sea, then had to return to port.
The other fun bit was their shallow max depth (like all WWI subs) - 150 feet. Due to high underwater speed, they could exceed that from periscope depth in seconds. So the crews nearly never used the high speed while submerged.
Indeed - but still innovative, and could well have been developed more if the war had continued.
Diving depth increases and control theory was needed.
Arguably not present until the end of WWII
Notably the design of depth control in subs had to move to a more aircraft style system.
Diving depth was massively increased by advanced pressure hull engineering theory. And welding, which gave much more consistency and enabled more efficient structures.
But there was quite a lot of variation between navies in WW2:
US Balao-class submarines, for example, had a test depth of 400 feet (120m), but some, like the USS Tang, achieved depths of 612 ft (187 m) during tests according to Wikipedia. German U-boats typically had a test depth around 200-280 meters (660-920 feet). British T-class submarines had a diving depth of 300-350 feet, while U-class submarines had a depth of 300 feet. (AI)
Did we not have a specially large streamlined depth charge to get down there much ore quickly?
Captain Haseeb Hameed's third century of the season helped title-chasing Nottinghamshire build a solid foundation in reply to Somerset's 438 on day two of their County Championship clash at Trent Bridge.
He broke his finger. Then totally lost form and confidence for several seasons where he literally couldn't score more than single figures innings after innings, so much so Lancashire released him. It has only been the last 2 seasons I think that he has really started to show his talent again. The problem is that England have now gone all bazball and he is very much Boycott Ball.
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
It is remarkable that the Building Safety Regulator is rejecting 70% of applications. For comparison, the planning system rejects around 10% of applications, including on large sites. This is because delays are very costly for developers, so they try extremely hard to be compliant.
A 70% rejection rate suggests that developers *don't know how* to meet the standards the BSR is enforcing, presumably because they are unclear or unmeetable. This is very concerning. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1950564519111016667
This is the ultimate evolution of Process State thinking. People with no domain knowledge or skills create more and more regulations until doing anything legally and correctly becomes impossible.
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
That is what I would guess too. I just wondered if anyone has specific experience of the new regime.
As an aside, this seems likely to effect up the government's housebuilding targets.
In some ways, builders are being squeezed by what government, and the public, want.
The government want them to build quality new houses, with car chargers and ideally solar panels. They want the houses to be well-insulated and energy-efficient. Oh, and no more Grenfell's, please.
The public want cheap housing, ideally detached or semi-detached, with a garage and garden. (yes, there are people who are happy with a flat, but the British ideal is that.)
A problem is that the former increases the cost of building a house, sometimes by a lot; and the things that may be able to be built cheaply (e.g. flats) are not what many of the public want.
Np, it obviously goes further than that. There's no mileage for construction companies in having 70% of their applications turned down, whether they like the rules or not. It's pretty clear that the rules are actually incomprehensible in their current form.
Comments
https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social/post/3lv7ay5qz7c25
Other than that, to me it's journos (and arguably Starmer in some respects) allowing themselves to be treated like mushrooms by Trump. The Fox News on continuous play on the journo compartment in Air Force One, and the complete cut off of the press from the outside world to be kept in the Trump bubble, is interesting.
Also, do these crews think that if they are sent somewhere they don’t like, say for example, to war (which is sort of their job), they can just say, “nah thanks, drop me off at the next stop please.”
Is the Navy so much worse than the Army at accepting that you just get sent to shitty places, that’s the job?
We have one of the most cost effective air to air missiles in existence, and the F35 can't carry it. Ditto our most newest air to ground weapon.
The A version has a third greater range, greater payload, and is cheaper to maintain and fly, so it at least makes a bit more sense than the crippled navy version.
But narcissistic logorrhea ain't lucidity.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/31/tax-rises-autumn-force-prices-up-retailers-rachel-reeves
So the cowboys and scumbags become the only ones who can “get things done”
Guess what happens after that?
They had the opportunity to demonstrate it would work; they chose to run away.
Why was that? What conclusion does the application of Occam's Razor support?
Of course, he was brought back by Churchill as First Sea Lord at the beginning of WW1, but soon fell out with him (over Dardanelles) and departed. A fascinating person. Jan Morris's short biography of him is worth a read.
I just wondered if anyone has specific experience of the new regime.
As an aside, this seems likely to effect up the government's housebuilding targets.
Patches O'Houlihan: Necessary? Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine?
Peter La Fleur: Probably not.
Patches O'Houlihan: No, but I do it anyway because it's sterile and I like the taste.
Peter La Fleur: ...Okay.
In the Navy you go where the fuck you are told and generally almost everyone does. In my day you used to get a draft on thick Admiralty paper with the anchor watermark that 'requested and required' you to go somewhere and that you would 'answer to the contrary at your peril'. It's probably all on an app now.
“The UK's Science, Innovation & Technology Minister flunked secondary school, had to apply three times to get accepted on an "international development and environmental studies" course at a third rate university, scored a doctorate in "community development", and his work experience before politics consists entirely of youth charities, and talking about youth charities.
Until this precise moment, his life has never intersected with science, innovation or technology. He is the government minister for science, innovation and technology.
He is emblematic of a system - spanning both governing parties - that is stuffed with well-intentioned moralists with absolutely no technical skills or meaningful knowledge.
Which is why one of the most far-reaching and incompetent pieces of legislation in political history resembles a Simpsons "Won't Somebody Think Of The Children!" meme.”
https://x.com/platoonpod/status/1950614720764919838?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
I think it might be. The Stupidest Government Ever. From Skyr Toomakersson to Tiny Tears and from there on down. Utter fuckwits
The post Brexit Tories were pretty dumb, but they still had some intellects. People that might, say, understand how the internet works
I cannot see anyone like that in the Cabinet
I do think there is a chance, had Sunak made the biggest miracle happen and won the election, that they might have changed it to be sensible, less brutal and more effective once they had proper breathing room.
In the end even his own side were scared of what he might do and he was executed in 1917 at the behest of Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister.
Apis is one of those remarkable villains that had an outsize impact on history, The Obrenovici were a generally pro-Austrian dynasty, while the Karageorgevici were considered pro Russian, so the murder of King Alexander made Serbia switch sides, while the Austrian ultimatum after Sarajevo was, under the circumstances remarkably reasonable. Had Pasic given up Apis to the Austrians, when they asked during the July crisis, , then the war might have been avoided. In the end Apis was feared and hated, and he was remarkably unmourned. Given the direct consequences of his actions, he should be better known and more reviled.
Need to hear arguments in favour of it other than the usual soft power/not Russia/rules based order claptrap. All that's long gone.
I want to save the children
The government want them to build quality new houses, with car chargers and ideally solar panels. They want the houses to be well-insulated and energy-efficient. Oh, and no more Grenfell's, please.
The public want cheap housing, ideally detached or semi-detached, with a garage and garden. (yes, there are people who are happy with a flat, but the British ideal is that.)
A problem is that the former increases the cost of building a house, sometimes by a lot; and the things that may be able to be built cheaply (e.g. flats) are not what many of the public want.
She would have been better off running for California governor if she did want to return to public service, a solid blue state
F1: Vasseur staying at Ferrari.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/ferrari-hand-vasseur-new-multi-year-contract-to-continue-as-team-principal.5RIg7O4nudaiWncjPjjB7g
https://youtu.be/lxV9fQO4O1U?t=1283
Same way that people who bang on about Churchill being a drunk who fucked up the country is a tell.
Harris didn't even win the 2020 Democratic primaries, Trump had at least won the 2016 GOP primaries and general election, Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders all got more votes and states and delegates than she did. She only got the 2024 nomination as Biden's VP
(AFAIK there is no actual precedent of anyone being questioned there since John Junor in 1957. I'm not aware of it ever being done to a Lord Minister.)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/24/lord-david-cameron-face-questions-mps-commons-bar
The R class were pretty much a failure - they hadn’t got enough diesel power to recharge their batteries at sea. So they could dive once at sea, then had to return to port.
The other fun bit was their shallow max depth (like all WWI subs) - 150 feet. Due to high underwater speed, they could exceed that from periscope depth in seconds. So the crews nearly never used the high speed while submerged.
The answer to safety systems that are not met, is not imo to abolish the safety system at the first instance.
Devolved admins can keep it.
So the issue is that you have reform saying do X, with the reason why X not being done being way more complex (and too boring) to allow an easy answer.
Reality is we need the ECHR to change their viewpoint on migration which is likely to occur because all of Europe have the same problem an needs it fixed
As ever, the actual changes required had a raft of bullshit attached. Most of which is about paperwork compliance. Not physical compliance.
Because forklift palettes of paperwork improve building safety far more that some actual fucking inspections.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2lkp8rlenxt
Reform of the ECHR is tricky as needs unanimity across 46 countries aiui. Italy have been leading calls for reform.
Yes, I know he didn't. Or order the doing so.
Overall 51% of voters want to stay in it, 27% to leave, though 72% of Reform voters and 54% of Tory voters want to leave the ECHR
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/survey-results/daily/2025/06/06/7bca7/1
So (from my anonymous pulpit) happy to criticize over reaction to anything and typically prefer proportionate reaction.
But-but-buttery is not enough where safety is concerned.
Mind you I had Durham’s building control out yesterday to check some work - £350 for 3 minutes of an inspector saying - that’s fine and can I have a photo when yo do the next bit.
All for a piece of paperwork that no one would ask for unless they know the original layout of a 1950s house
Mind you £350 for someone to come out at less than 24 hours notice isn’t that bad
Also what is the alternative if any? I wouldn't be in favour of leaving without some kind of replacement, but prefer either a reformed ECHR or new CHR to the status quo.
Launch the B Ark
And it with returns and repatriations having significantly increased percentage-wise from a fairly low level.
The PB question is how can the Govt make that stick, and get political benefit from it.
Reform and the Con Right aren't interested in fixing problems and making things work; they just want attack narratives they can leverage - not yet having any ideas of their own. Even if the immigration numbers improve by 99%, the permanent item is seeking controversy not engaging with reality, so it will just be a pivot to another "end of the world as we know it" story.
When Lee Anderson needed an asylum hotel to complain about last year and there was none locally, he just invented one out of whole cloth.
Similarly with the populist press. It was interesting reading a piece in the Express about the success of the Manchester Airport trial. Not a thing about our legal system working successfully to deliver a verdict, it was a demand for Labour MPs such as Paul Waugh who made edgy-to-some comments "BE HELD TO ACCOUNT". Not a thing about Constituency MPs having the role to represent their constituents.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/V-Bombers-Frontline-Dr-Tony-Redding/dp/1911667874
It's quite eye-opening on some of the early expedients and issues, some never really addressed, and not just getting the safety ball-bearings out of a Violet Club (and, worse, getting them back in).
At one point in the early dats, the question came up of what to do if the balloon went up when the PM was incommunicado in his car. The suggestion came, get the PM to buy a sub to the AA.*
*Which had telephone boxes and patrolmen all over the place, and a HQ across the road from the major RAF command.
The same RAF that was AOK with killing pilots faster than during the WWII. In peace time.
One presumes - always dangerous, I know - that in the RN the recruitment system presumably provides at least some basic intro to life on board at sea, and a rough and ready check for seasickness tendency, before they get onto more sophisticated stuff than deck swabbing and paint chipping, aka F-35 maintenance. RAF, not so much. The selection is the other way round, leaving a real question about being able to hold in one's oggies and train smash, never mind actually doing any useful work in between the technicolor yawns.
Think of them as a blood sacrifice on the altar of Process.
The problem with that is that consequences can be serious and unpredictable. I've seen examples where chimney breasts have been removed on the ground, with no consideration of the one in the bedroom above and the chimney at the top.
I'll happily have some things done in a "paperwork light" manner, and opt for a Plan B such as an indemnity policy when I sell it in 20+ years (notably 2G, where my window man got out of FENSA because of costs but still has a direct manufacturer contact which saves 4 figures a time) - but only if I am confident.
You could try telling me that this inspection required years of training, but I don’t think I would believe you.
It might be reasonable to require such an inspection to avoid unsafe glass being installed by fly-by-night glazing installers under-cutting other companies of course. But £200 did seem a tad steep for such a service.
Labour have not really had good comms on this.
Where exactly is the border between Chalk Farm, Camden and Primrose Hill?
I lived within half a mile or so for several years, and never quite found out.
(Not helped by Estate Agents with "Oh yes, it's Primrose Hill".)
Arguably not present until the end of WWII
Notably the design of depth control in subs had to move to a more aircraft style system.
Diving depth was massively increased by advanced pressure hull engineering theory. And welding, which gave much more consistency and enabled more efficient structures.
6hrs time...India 350 for 2....
West Indian batsmen can bat all day"
Captain Haseeb Hameed's third century of the season helped title-chasing Nottinghamshire build a solid foundation in reply to Somerset's 438 on day two of their County Championship clash at Trent Bridge.
Hameed, who struck 15 fours and two sixes, also passed 1,000 first-class runs for the season
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/cd9jnvy8g1jo
WG Grace.
US Balao-class submarines, for example, had a test depth of 400 feet (120m), but some, like the USS Tang, achieved depths of 612 ft (187 m) during tests according to Wikipedia. German U-boats typically had a test depth around 200-280 meters (660-920 feet). British T-class submarines had a diving depth of 300-350 feet, while U-class submarines had a depth of 300 feet. (AI)
Did we not have a specially large streamlined depth charge to get down there much ore quickly?
Those with degrees in the cabinet range through PPE and law, to history.
The Leader of the House does have a Chemistry degree from Oxford.
There's no mileage for construction companies in having 70% of their applications turned down, whether they like the rules or not. It's pretty clear that the rules are actually incomprehensible in their current form.