UK General Election 2015

[JustAnotherLogin]

wc98 said:

the mistake you make is assuming these floating lumps of metal will carry operational aircraft. it is very likely they never will. the f35 configured for carrier use will be no better than an overweight trainer. it will certainly never carry any armaments of significance ,in the unlikely event it ever comes into service.
in light of this i would say that the £6.2 b was a complete waste of money.

Well as even a quick google suggests
- the F35b will be operational this december and is already most of the way through its test flying
- that they weigh less than the much vaunted F-18 (vaunted even by Scuffers earlier)
- that there already seem to be a long list of weapons for which integration is expected/underway
- that 12 countries are buying the F35 (3 the F35b)

I would you are in the same non-expert camp as Scuffers and I have more faith in the countries experts

[JustAnotherLogin]

Axionknight said:

One quick point on ship staffing numbers - the USA have a man for every job, it's ridiculous, my brother in law is in the Fleet Air Arm as an airframe technician and their is no single US counterpart to his job. They have around six people all dedicated to smaller sections of what would be considered one persons responsibility in the UK armed forced and this is very common place, with them being so man power heavy, so the staffing numbers, whilst obviously higher, likely won't stack up in such a direct fashion.

My friend says that is true, but as they design their ships with that in mind, so you would need nearly the numbers
And also because they are older they need a lot more people to maintain them

[JustAnotherLogin]

Back to the main subject, its interesting to compare polls now with the actual result in 2010

Depends on which pol you pick of course but to take typical recent numbers:

Tories - 3%
Labour + 5%
Lib Dems - 15%
UKIP + 12%
Greens + 5%
Others -1%

(I know that doesn't add up to 0 - rounding errors as all the polls are rounded to integers)

So the interesting thing is that Tories have not actually lost much overall. But labour have caught up
So assuming the increase in Greens share is at Labour's expense

For every 10 voters the Tories have to lost to UKIP, they must presumably have gained approx 7 from the LibDems
and for every 10 votes Lab have gained from Lib Dems they must have lost 3 to UKIP

Those are guestimates I know but it needs to be something like that on movements I think

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wc98 said:

are you employed in the pr department of the us marine corps .
http://rt.com/op-edge/219655-f35-gun-software-disa...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/in...
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/03/04/new-...


have a look at the specs of the variants here,particularly the weight, and then have a guess what the extra weight of the stovl variant does to weapon carrying capacity. i do not care what your insider is telling you, he is wrong.

Edited by wc98 on Wednesday 25th March 21:46

Ever worked on a big programme that gets lots of media attention?

I have, several times and there are always loads of idiots that will criticise decisions, and media that will print them

90% of such abuse is complete rubbish.
Google shows very quickly that Pierre Sprey hated the F35 concept from the start. 13 countries are putting their money on him being wrong
Sure problems happen in big programmes, and those 2 articles point to some that may have (I don't know the truth on those). That doesn't stop the overall programme being a success
If it were easy to develop a 5th generation stealth fighter, then probably many countries would have them by now.

[JustAnotherLogin]

And yet so many defence ministries want to buy it
The pilots love it
And despite your unsubstantiated allegations of political pressure to go into service it is nearing that service

And you said the gun would be operational in 2019. More recent reports suggest 2017
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space...

And as far as I can see the other problems mentioned have been overcome

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wc98 said:

like most defence depts the committment to buy would have come long before it went into production. lets keep an eye on this and revisit periodically to see how it is getting on. i have no doubt that if enough money is thrown at it,some form of operational aircraft will be forthcoming. that however is a far cry from the initial claims of capability.
again looking at the weight penalty incurred by the ridiculous system used for the stovl variant precludes getting anywhere near established capabilities of the aircraft it is designed to replace ,before any of the issues specific to operational capability from our carriers are taken into consideration (currently it will have a far smaller operational window regarding weather and sea conditions than the harrier).

Since the most interesting aspects of performance will be classified so neither you nor I will know, lets leave that.

But care to back up the assertion on the weather window vs the harriers. That's not what I've been told

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wc98 said:

JustAnotherLogin said:

Since the most interesting aspects of performance will be classified so neither you nor I will know, lets leave that.

But care to back up the assertion on the weather window vs the harriers. That's not what I've been told

is that in relation to operation from us carriers or our carriers ? reports i have read state limited landing capability compared to harriers in rough weather due to extended length of deck required for take off/landing, as it is not a true vtol aircraft ?

Ours

My understanding was that ours are actually more flexible than the US ones because catching a catapult is tricky.

I thought the only issue was trying to return with a full load in certain conditions, and they have come up with this new idea of a "rolling vertical" landing to resolve that so they don't have to dump weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRVL

Any link to anything else?

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wc98 said:

JustAnotherLogin said:

Ours

My understanding was that ours are actually more flexible than the US ones because catching a catapult is tricky.

I thought the only issue was trying to return with a full load in certain conditions, and they have come up with this new idea of a "rolling vertical" landing to resolve that so they don't have to dump weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRVL

Any link to anything else?

from your wiki link "A number of defence analysts have suggested that operational SRVL landings may only be possible within a limited range of sea states.[4]"
there are still a myriad of issues to be resolved including this as stated in the link it is being worked on, certainly not resolved. like i said,it might only be a matter of money,and when the tax payer is footing the bill is suppose it is a limitless supply.

You really are stretching it now

And if you read properly you will see that it is only needed in the first place to bring back more weapons and fuel. Which in war you don't do. So it is just about saving money, not restricting its warfighting capability at all

http://aerosociety.com/News/Insight-Blog/2300/Carr...

And I see you still haven't managed to post any link to back up this or any of your other claims apart from some out of date reports for which the problems have been resolved

Why do you choose to knock UK industry and our armed services in this way without any real evidence?

[JustAnotherLogin]

wc 98.


I will just close by saying I never said either programme was perfect, and the carrier is not 10 years late

Apart from that I think others are right it is time to quit this subject here.

[JustAnotherLogin]

Interesting article from Ashcroft

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2015/03/polling-how-i...

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I think Guam you need to go back and read again. Look again at what Ashcroft says, and what his polling has found about what the general electorate actually thinks rather than what you think they should think.

For instance read his previous detailed poling at
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2015/03/why-arent-the...


They don't think Cameron has moved too far to the left. They don't criticise him for what you say. They like Cameron, what they actually think is:

[quote]Uniquely among the leaders, he commands higher approval ratings than his party. But this signals that, in important respects – at least in the eyes of voters – Cameron has not been able to change the party he leads. People are less likely to say the Tories share their values, stand for fairness or would look after public services like the NHS than when they came into office.
[/quote]

[JustAnotherLogin]

But you then went on to say

Guam said:

I think the elephant in the room with voters will be the ring fencing of foreign aid whilst the austerity measures are ongoing
I doubt the average voter will buy into the arguments from the political classes on issues like this
Something that ashcrofts logic in that lecture would strike to

They can't keep punishing the electorate on the one hand and keep pissing increasing amounts away on the other

Wake up the people no longer believe you??

Whereas there does not seem to be evidence that is so. As far as I can there are a number of UKIP voters for whom that is an issue, but they wouldn't vote for the Tories even if that were taken away. You just think it is seen as a big issue because it is reinforced by the same views you hear on here. In the outside world of the swing voter, that as far as I am aware is not registering.

Indeed, as per the 2nd link I pointed to, Cameron's "soft" Toryism is seen as good and he is scoring better than the party. It is the belief that the party is still the old nasty party that is holding Cameron back.

Not something I am terribly pleased about, because I am to the right of Cameron, but that is what the polls are saying, not what we want them to say

[JustAnotherLogin]

Scuffers said:

if you look at the BBC poll of poles, it's consistently ICM that's dragging the UKIP vote down...

if you go back to the Euro elections, according to ICM UKIP were only at 16% when the vote showed them at 26.6% (yes, I know that's not quite the same thing)

More recently also Ashcroft (10%), ComRes (12%) and Yougov (13%)

But just a weeks worth, so could be statistical anomalies

The odd thing about Ashcroft's is that Labour had maintained or improved their scores on all the individual questions but their apparent share of the vote had gone down!

[JustAnotherLogin]

Guam said:

At the other extreme BMRB'ss recent poll is well up on everyone else where ukip is concerned, haven't seen their methodology so difficult to assess why this should be such an outlier either?

http://www.tns-bmrb.co.uk/news/tns-poll-signs-ukip...

I don't know their methodology either, but looking back they have consistently given UKI)P high scores than the others. But interestingly the first para of your link says:

TNS said:

Whilst the latest TNS voting intentions poll has UKIP in third place with support at 17%, there is evidence that the tide is turning against UKIP and that their support may fall away ahead of the election. In particular, the importance of immigration as a public priority has been falling over the last six months and the public’s rating of Nigel Farage is becoming less positive. The new poll by TNS UK also reveals that support for UKIP is softer than for Labour and
Conservatives, with fewer of their supporters saying they will definitely vote for them.

which is consistent with other polls and assertions before about the votes for minority parties being softer (more so for greens than UKIP IIRC)

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EskimoArapaho said:

PRTVR said:

Very strange, she is denying the content of the memo, but wants an inquiry into how it was leaked

Not strange at all. She is denying the words attributed to her. And she wants to find out where the 'memo' came from (i.e. which organisation dreamed it up and passed it off as fact).

The Telegraph won't play ball. It's been stitched up, House-of-Cards stylee, and it would be too embarassing to admit that (see the end of Peirs debacle at The Mirror following the fake squaddie-Iraqi story).

(If you're still scratching your chin, you may have small animals in your beard.)

Oh I think there are still a few questions to be answered.
The most intriguing being that the FO deny the had such a memo, but the Scottish Office are saying they don't comment on leaks. So if it did exist did someone at the Scottish Office leak it? And if so with what in mind?
And if not who made it up? Journo or an "insider" trying to create a story? And again, if so, with what in mind?

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FiF said:

]The view of South Thanet, like the general election, too close to call

Interesting article, and an unjustifiably unremarked post.

Though in truth there are going to be a number of very marginal votes within a wider marginal vote as never before.

After all UKIP is not the only party leader who faces the possibility of losing in their own constituency. Clegg could too. But there are probably more senior figures at risk than ever before.

The South Thanet is particularly fascinating though. For all his strengths, Farage is a very polarising figure, sohas to hope desperately that neither of his main rivals messes up, or their share could drop, and the votes go to the other rival as an "anti-UKIP" vote.

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Esseesse said:

the Tories have deserted conservatively minded people (a long time ago too).

You really need to go and read the history of the Tory party because you keep making these assertions with any basis

Alternatively, perhaps a quote from Lord Lexden (official historian of the Conservative party) from a BBC article the other day might convince you to stop posting this rubbish:

BBC said:

Lord Lexden says flexibility in the face of change has been a strength.
"As Britain evolved from monarchical government to democracy and from intense disputes with a large religious element to purely secular controversies, the Party constantly adapted to change and frequently led the process of change. That has been the secret of its success," he writes.

To not change policies over the years as the situation changes would be incredibly myopic, bigoted and stupid would it not

So yes the Tory party has changed polices, but its values have stayed the same:
promoting wealth creation
open markets
unionist (in the sense of the UK, not trade unions)

etc

Edited by JustAnotherLogin on Friday 10th April 15:16

[JustAnotherLogin]

As always a fascinating insight from Ashcroft

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2015/04/parties-cant-...

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ewenm said:

We've got a choice between blue and yellow here. Yellow MP of nearly 3 decades is retiring, so I expect it to be closer between blue and yellow than 5 years ago. I was disappointed to go to both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat websites today and not find a manifesto. There's plenty, well some, about their priorities for the election but no mention of other policies. Why is it only soundbites and no substance?

Because they haven't published their manifestos
Labour is Monday
Tory Tuesday
Not sure when Lib Dems are

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JagLover said:

Looking across the pond successful Republican politicians tend to be able to portray themselves as a "man of the people" (though that might be far from the truth in cases). In fact looking at our own recent history both Thatcher and Major had relatively humble origins.

With the bulk of the electorate leaning left economically but right socially that might be the only way the Tories will get into power with an outright majority again.

The Tories are trying to win an election in the 21st century with Alec Douglas-Home mark 2.

A Tory party winning 40% plus of the vote would have a leader who looked allot like Nigel Farage IMO. If they continue the drift into a party of the metropolitan elite they will be replaced by UKIP in much of the country.

Edited to add that Ashcroft's article makes this exact same point in a different way

"Conservative defectors to UKIP, for example, are more likely than average to think the economy is improving, that they will benefit personally, and that more austerity is needed (also that Cameron would be a better PM than Miliband and that the Tories have the best approach to most policy issues). But 90% of them say UKIP are “on the side of people like me”, compared to 22% who say it of the Tories, and 88% say UKIP “shares my values”, while only 30% say the Conservatives do so."

Edited by JagLover on Saturday 11th April 09:00

Though if you look at previous Ashcroft research it shows that the problem is not cameron, but the rest of the Tory party. He showed polling which showed that Cameron was more compassionate, did share their values etc, but he was being held back by the (reputation of?) the nasty Tories.

Of course a lot of Kippers think that Cameron has moved too far in that direction, but that wasn't the general perception