Unimportant Little Island Are We ?

[Evans Electric]

Thats what we are according to Russia's President Putin .

If my Dad was still here I'd have to tell him that all that escorting North Sea   convoys carrying arms /tanks etc  to Archangel up in the Arctic Circle to help them fight the Nazis has been forgotten now .   

They didn't welcome our Navy when they got there and it looks like nothing changes .

 

[OnOff]

I'd bet he'd be gutted though with amount of stuff we import now too! When we were "great" we made everything. Good programe a while back about Thatcher and how we moved to service industries, banking etc thus displacing our traditional manufacturing base.

No wonder Putin sees us as a spent power!

 

[ProDave]

Well I wish we would start acting like an unimportant little island (actually an unimportant little archipelago) and just keep our nose out of other people's problems and just get on with looking after ourselves.

 

[Evans Electric]

Agree with those two posts wholeheartedly.

 

[Steve3948]

Yeah I second that and lets get this country back to Britsh and not European with them flooding in to have operations costing billions, we are to soft lets man up and say **** off.

 

[steptoe]

have just heard somewhere today we are sending another load of millions [or was it billions] in aid to somewhere,

HTF casn we do that, its someone elses money, we are skint, maybe, just maybe, if we stopped sending money overseas then we might just start to get ourselves out of debt!

do ya think the bank will lend me some money to give to the RBL,,,,?  :slap

 

[M107]

Steps they need it, had a quote rejected by rbl as over priced.............**** me it was mates rates being ex-services.

Do pira have a rbl equivalent ?

Just wondering!

 

[M107]

Anyway what do the popovs  know.........they got a stuffing through 1914 -18 and needed a hand.

1939 -45 again with out help. Would now be germany speaking untermench.

Then you have the cold war, in fairness they held their own until bob the builder moved in and knocked the wall down ( that was one eventful week in west Germany for Baor....for those that are younger that 30 yes Germany used to be east and west).

And now all they do is say no to what ever anybody else wants to do.

 

[OnOff]

Growing up I honestly still had a sense of national pride. Dad used to talk of his time in the RAF and how the Mustang was nothing until it got the Rolls Royce engine. The news, to a kid, seemed to consisit mainly of Northern Ireland and strikes - so the 70's in case you haven't guessed. I remember being a bit upset that we had cancelled our space programme and projects like the  TSR-2. BUT we still had Concorde as a "symbol" etc and then the Panavia Tornado came along (gotta love Airfix kits). In Russia ALL those projects would have gone ahead and been done in house. As for terrorists you can't say that Putin appeases them! Both Concorde and the Tornado I know done with other countries, was that the "start"?

Then we had the Falklands. Read the book Vulcan 607 - a true life account that reads as good as any thriller. Feted back then as a huge success we were at the time scrapping the Vulcan fleet and only just managed it. They were searching far flung depots for vital parts (one was being used as a door stop). We had sold our in flight re-fuelling tech to the Yanks and had to pull retirees back in to help!

We still had British Rail. Not this mish mash now where a proportion of our extortionate rail fairs go back to the foreign companies that part own the companies. I think its the French STATE OWNED SNCF that has a stake in Southeastern Railways - their profits subsidise French rail travellers fares FFS!

Southern Water - owned by a Canadian / Austrailian conglomerate I think!

And lets be honest how can a country allow stuff made or companies owned by other countries to use the GB/UK name? British General, UKPN etc.

Sorry but I think Putin might have a point! It seems though there's something in the British psyche that when it comes to the crunch the "little man" steps up and gets these succesive governments out of the mire no matter what they do!

 

[binky]

My personal feeling on all this, is that world influence comes from economic power, and aid to foreign countries gives better results than dropping bombs. We need to invest in the UK to regain our economic power base that made us a world player, not get involved in another fight, albeit that anyone using chemical weapons probably deserves a few cruise missles where they hurt!!

I always get the feeling Governments like starting wars to distract public from the 'home front'. Well hopefully they now get the message that we want the home front sorted...

 

[Jono Pashley]

Id care more if it wasnt coming from a jumped up russian hypocrite

 

[binky]

It's all 'big boys' games, just reminds me a school playground sometimes. I have to say though, the USA were knid of taking the wee out of Russia after the collapse of the USSR, so I'm not too surprised by the way Putin acts sometimes. Think he defo suffers Napoleon complex though LOL

 

[Technician]

I have looked again at the tragedy of Syria over the weekend.

Assad has judged (correctly in my view) that the west does not

have the stomach for a squabble.

The nazi menace could have been stopped in Spain if it had

been countered but it took the International Brigade (which my

Dad may have joined) to stand up to the Spanish bully boys

under Franco.

The RAF was quietly changing the countryside from about 1934

onwards with the stations that were built to a central plan for

the simple reason that some within the government and the war

ministry could see darkening horizons.

I believe a similar context is developing now.  Putin's swagger

conceals a nation with a failing infrastructure and a population

that could take to the streets if bread and vodka are in short

supply.

Who remembers the American grain sales to Russia when that

nation could not feed itself?

My Dad told me that it took the freight of one massive coal train

to make up the losses of coal freight that were lost because of

the parlous condition of the rolling stock in service at the time.

Things in Russia have not changed.  For as long as about 50

families control about 90% (IIRC) of that nation's GDP they will

not.

 

[Theorysparky]

Then we had the Falklands. Read the book Vulcan 607 - a true life account that reads as good as any thriller. Feted back then as a huge success we were at the time scrapping the Vulcan fleet and only just managed it. They were searching far flung depots for vital parts (one was being used as a door stop). We had sold our in flight re-fuelling tech to the Yanks and had to pull retirees back in to help!

Read the book and saw the documentary,,,,  amazing that on the way back they were almost out of fuel trying to get to the rendezvous point in thick cloud  only for it to clear and there she was waiting !!!!!