@LedgerLomasM Militarily useful doesn't always mean it's used for the right things. But you didn't explain what you thought would be a reasonable purpose..
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Jonathan Ford
9.5K posts
Jonathan Ford
@Grepsul
Media maven. Likes trouble, cycling and regional crime drama. Doing @altifpodcast & also Business Adventures Substack https://t.co/AGud9IfmPf
London Katılım Temmuz 2010
575 Takip Edilen3.8K Takipçiler
@Grepsul 'Heavily used' in a string of disastrous conflicts is not selling it to me. But thank you: and I hadn't realised people still did the 'read some Orwell' bit.
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This is the sort of attitude Orwell satirised: the person who would "rather steal from the poor box than stand for the national anthem". He doesn't understand the base's purpose but then (despite his admitted ignorance) urges Cyprus to "kick us out" anyway
MichaelLedgerLomas@LedgerLomasM
@john_ritzema I don't understand what this base is for. The Cypriots should kick us out.
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@alexmassie It must never cease! We should not be permitted to stop apologising..
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70 years - 70! - have passed since the UK accepted it was no longer a global power! How many more times does the accepting have to happen?
FT UK Politics@ftukpolitics
The UK must accept it is no longer a global power ft.trib.al/JK1Xm6R
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@EdwardEGibbon @thomasforth Interesting. Hadn't seen that. Not much evidence of it in the GDP stats rel to UK but guess it depends on the comparator. My complaint is more with the structure of the model (3 devolved nations) which is lopsided and has simply created a new predatory tier of govt
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@Grepsul I am very instinctively sympathetic to this, but I am given pause by the point from @thomasforth that Scottish economic performance seems to have improved post-devolution (and diverged from English regions), even as many ScotGov policies seem to have been bad.
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Let's just admit it; Home Rule All Round (an Edwardian idea to fix a specific problem) has been an abject failure...
alexmassie@alexmassie
If the debate on the assisted dying bill was Holyrood at its best, it’s a low bar and no great claim to fame. thetimes.com/article/99a3b5…
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@LedgerLomasM Listening post in ME, close to Suez Canal where much of our trade comes through, military staging post for conflicts around the Near East. (Quite heavily used in the past decades: Iraq 1 and 2, Syria, Lebanon, protect Gulf allies). What's your definition of a valid purpose?
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@ewangibbs Um. It would have to collapse a lot more before it reached the levels at which GB decided to pull the ripcord. The difference is about £40bn
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Just as well Brown sold the gold and got us out of this volatile asset. Am I doing it right?
Spencer Hakimian@SpencerHakimian
🚨BREAKING: GOLD COLLAPSES AS ARAB GULF STATES SELL THEIR ASSETS TO RAISE MONEY
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Brilliant to get the great Steve Sasson - inventor of the digital camera - on the show. That photo on the right is of the first digital camera, sometimes likened to a toaster!
A Long Time In Finance@ALTIFpodcast
OUT TOMORROW: the second in our Turning Point series. It's about Kodak, a company built on relentless R&D and bold innovation, and how it flunked the shift from chemical to digital photography - having invented the first digital camera in the mid 1970s. Give it a listen.
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Jonathan Ford retweetledi
It's hard to separate signal from noise in the UK energy debate - which makes this essential viewing. Absolutely superb explanatory journalism from @EdConwaySky x.com/EdConwaySky/st…
Ed Conway@EdConwaySky
📽️ From Donald Trump to Britain's wind power trade body, there's a growing coalition calling for more drilling in the North Sea. Raising the question: if we DID encourage more exploration, how much oil & gas could we actually get? Our MEGA primer on the North Sea👇 Ps it's longer than usual, but it turns out this topic has SO MANY misconceptions. Time to put some of them right. Let me know what you think
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Jacky Fisher would not be impressed. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in a meeting between him and some of our distinguished recent defence secs - Gavin Williamson or Grant Shapps, say. I doubt they would have got out of the room alive!
Dr. James W.E. Smith@James_WE_Smith
The Admiralty would never have botched management of the Royal Navy or fumbled its advice to HMG as poorly as the UK MoD has. That Britain failed as seapower, naval power & maritime nation–March 2026–would have been unthinkable to Briton's, Parliament's & Gov's in the past.
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Jonathan Ford retweetledi
Utterly delighted and deeply honoured that ‘Allies at War’ has won the 70th @DuffCooperPrize
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Jonathan Ford retweetledi
"We need more history, not less..." 2026 winner Tim Bouverie speaks at the award ceremony last night where he won this year's prize for Allies At War @NewCollegeOx @PolRogerEpernay @HeywoodHill @TimPBouverie
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A bit before my time. The local bars must have done a roaring trade.
Gibraltar 1952
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@Gobst3r Hi there Ruhollah, how's life in Teheran. Must be warm in your kilt..
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@pinstripedline @MarksLarks It's impossible not to see the ISD of 2005 and not wince. The failings of 21st century procurement writ large. It's taken more than a quarter of a century to build seven subs - and the programme not done..
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This is the letter from the MOD to the Treasury seeking approval to place the first batch of ASTUTE Class SSNs on contract. Its dated 5 March 1997, and 29 years later all the hulls are yet to enter service.
Short thread!
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If anybody knows where I can *actually* buy a suit like this, let me know.
(So I can incinerate it.)
Steve Loftus@LoftusSteve
@emilyhewertson It's appropriate if you're an admin assistant at a cleaning products distributor. No senior manager or woman taking meetings would dress like this. This is not the standard of dress we should expect from MPs and you'd say so if a male MP turned up like this.
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The RN is literally turning into the Italian Navy in WW2: confined to harbour because there isn't the fuel to send them anywhere. From memory that static approach didn't end well for the Italians..
Ancient Mariner@pegge49
Just a reminder, that by all accounts RFA Lyme Bay was fully crewed up. So to keep the ship in Gibraltar since Nov/25, rather than say supporting the RM deployment to Norway, the only saving was fuel... Note: UK defence budget 2025/26 £62.2billion... Where does the money go?
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@policy_uk @yuanyi_z She then ran off with the journalist Carl Bernstein while he was in post..
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Her husband was appointed British Ambassador to the US by HER FATHER.
Yuan Yi Zhu@yuanyi_z
Speaking of hereditary peers... (Lady Jay of Paddington is the daughter of Lord Callaghan of Cardiff).
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@ewangibbs There is though a moment when defence gets cut too far and welfare essentially eats the budgets. It's interesting to think where that was. The 70s? It's definitely in evidence I would say with Options for Change & the peace dividend..
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@ewangibbs Agree it's too glib an explanation. Bevin or Duncan Sandys would not have thought they were sacrificing defence to boost health or social security. The trend was downwards for complex reasons - an over-large defence establishment post 45, tech changes (1957) & fewer commitments..
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It's not true that 'we built the welfare state after 1945 by cutting defence spending.'
Defence spending was higher than welfare spending into the 1960s. Britain remained an exceptionally militarised society into the early 1960s too - it still had national service conscription.
Joe Hill@jo3hill
John Bew’s piece in the New Statesman is good because it doesn’t stick to the same tired old observations about how Britain is struggling, and we need national renewal. Instead, it’s clear on the tradeoffs we need to make. We built the modern welfare state after 1945 by cutting defence spending. To increase defence spending, we must cut the size of the welfare state - it’s a fairytale to believe otherwise. Far too many commentators make the same observations about defence spending but aren’t brave enough to say what we need to cut to fund it. (Of course, defence spending isn’t the only answer - supply side reform to build industrial capacity is also really important. But there’s more agreement on that now, whereas finding the money is more contentious) newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/03/…
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