On the other... 'lamentation of our loss of greatness, this purchase restoring some much needed pride'
My own opinion... the pocket carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Invincible should not have been scrapped but kept in service, and sufficient money spent on a decent number of state of the art frigates and destroyers instead. The project to build the two new carriers should have been put off until the economy has been repaired and they could be afforded. But here's the rub... our politicians don't have a plan to repair national finances and wellbeing, but are continuing with the very same economic model to have done all the damage in the first place; meaning the two new ships should not have been built until common sense prevails and a new economic model has been intelligently developed.
One or the other of the simplistic views at the top of this blog, are about as far as thinking is allowed to go in todays shallow minded Britain. It would be very helpful indeed if the politicians responsible for commissioning such an expensive and important project, were to make clear the bigger picture, to which there are both positive and negative elements. My opinion is that the positive far outweigh the negative which is why, even with our economy in tatters, I believe the Navy and the country do need these ships. As to why the 'great and the good' don't promote the 'bigger picture' they almost certainly aren't aware of it, but it does exist and can be viewed.
To design and build such assets as these supports tens of thousands of livelihoods across a whole range of industries. From steel making through the building process and all the way to the careers of the sailors, marines and airmen who'll crew the ships once in service, all are high quality jobs the country desperately needs. Almost every one of the adults concerned will be a head of household and parent, and therefore be responsible for bringing up the next generation. What better role model could any girl or boy have, than a parent who is playing a part in such a project of national importance as this is? Whole communities are involved and these are supported and allowed to thrive when the lifeblood of cash-flow is present. Money radiates outwards from those directly employed and this helps support the livelihoods of others. The alternative to supporting industry is to pay people NOT to work and abandon communities to fester.
So is the argument to build the ships not already powerful enough without the need to add icing to the cake? Well forgive me but I'm going to pile it on anyway!!
It is vital to restore the psychology of the country, especially for young Brits, because since the monetarists took command, our nation has been locked into a downward spiral of decline which has been utterly relentless. The national psychology has in actual fact been battered, as every aspect of life in the UK has been hammered.
Deindustrialisation... loss of livelihoods... ridiculous house prices... perpetual debt... indebtedness for higher education... low skill economy... wholesale destruction of public services... selling every scrap of the family silver... political correctness... risk averseness... alien terrorists running amok... crooked politicians... shallow celebrity culture... even the Union itself brought to the point of breaking apart. That pile of dung is what has become of life in Britain under the regime in place since 1979 and those items represent only the tip of an enormous iceberg named 'decay'. Each is a direct product of the monetarists or is a symptom of their rubbish, minority serving economic model. It's been non-stop-decline and then all of a sudden HMS Queen Elizabeth ceases to be a bunch of computer animations and actually exists! The ship and its sister ship need to be completed and enter service and then the money has to be found to operate them. The only way to do so, is to dump monetarism and start afresh with a new economic model deliberately designed to run a majority serving creative economy. We need rid of obesity through eating cheap crap, food banks, benefits culture, youth hopelessness through having no future prospects and the likes, and the way to do it is to rebuild our nation's culture of creativity and industriousness.
I imagine Her Majesty must have been chuffed to break that bottle of finest Highland Malt Whiskey on the hull of her ship. Makes a mighty big change from her being expected to name foreign owned, built and crewed glorified gin palaces designed to factory farm tourists, on the quayside at Southampton, which is all she's been expected to do for the last three decades.
Looking forward to the next launch of HMS Prince of Wales although I think ARK ROYAL would be a better name!
