Letters / Who’s scaring who?
Douglas, you should have researched your letter Scare tactics (SN 10/11/13) before you made a fool of yourself and proved who is suffering from pure ignorance.
We don’t own the Trident missiles and they are not made for us by a foreign country. We lease them from the Americans, who also maintain the missiles.
Following the acceleration of the US Trident II D-5 programme, the existing Polaris sales agreement was modified in 1982 to permit the supply of the more advanced missiles.
Under the agreement, the UK would lease 65 Trident II D-5 missiles from a larger pool of such weapons based at naval submarine base Kings Bay in the United States. The USA would retain responsibility for the maintenance of the missiles, and the UK would manufacture its own warheads and submarines.
The tankers being built in Korea are for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, not the Royal Navy, there is a difference as they are not crewed by RN personnel.
Douglas, here is a lesson in how to scare people into voting the way you want them to from the most prolific, negative scaremonger ever, Nicola Sturgeon:
“And we know this much: there are Westminster MPs in all the UK parties itching to abolish the Barnett formula and cut Scotland’s share of spending.
“So, I say this to everyone yet to make up their mind. Consider carefully the arguments for a Yes vote. Subject them to scrutiny and ask the tough questions. But do not ever let anyone pull the wool over your eyes about the consequences of a No vote.
They are clear and they are real. Scotland’s social security system will be dismantled Scotland’s public services and universal benefits will be under threat Scotland’s budget will be cut”.
Nicola Sturgeon has also been warned by union leaders not to play politics with Clyde ship building and ship builders jobs. She came under fire for insisting that Scotland could fulfill contracts for UK warships after a vote for independence.
Sturgeon and John Swinney were confronted over the claims when they met unions and management to discuss the redundancies at BAE on the Clyde.
The Scottish yards have been earmarked to fulfill the contract for a new generation of Type 26 warships which will keep them in work for years to come. Union leaders said the SNP had to be corrected on their claims over the future of the yards.
They said: “We are shipbuilders and there is no chance of the Scottish government placing orders for ships.”
It is quite clear if Scotland votes yes, we will not be building ships for the UK government and two thousand jobs will go.
According to Sturgeon, the Clyde has the only shipbuilders capable of doing the work, but that is disingenuous; some of the stuff she said might sound good to people who don’t work in shipyards but it is misleading to say that the UK Government have nowhere else to go.
She coyly omits to say that there are yards on the Tyne, Mersey, as well as Barrow on Furness and Portsmouth capable of building warships for the UK.
As usual Douglas is also being somewhat disingenuous while treating the rest of us like idiots with his claim that a £600,000 MOD contract has gone to France. This contract has not gone to France but to a French company working in the UK, providing hundreds of jobs from the South of England to Glasgow.
French company Thales has signed a £600 million contract for the British Royal Navy and the Sensors Support Optimisation Project (SSOP). The company will repair, update the navy’s sonar and electronic warfare systems across 17 different platforms.
The agreement means Thales will maintain 17 different systems across the British fleet, including the latest Type 45 destroyers, Type 23 frigates and Hunt and Sandown classes of mine hunters. It includes the Navy’s nuclear submarines’ visual systems, including periscopes for the Vanguard and Trafalgar classes. It also extends to work on the new Astute class submarines’ advanced optronic masts, bringing the maintenance together under a single contract.
The contract will secure 230 Thales jobs at sites in Glasgow, Manchester, Somerset and West Sussex. A further 300 jobs will be secured through the UK supply chain.
Signing the contract at Thales’s plant in Crawley, West Sussex, Philip Dunne, Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology, said: “This contract is good news for the Ministry of Defence and UK industry.
“Not only will it secure a number of jobs across the UK whilst delivering savings but will also provide essential support for the combat equipment that helps give the Royal Navy’s fleet of ships and submarines a vital technological edge.”
I thought this was the case, but unlike Douglas I had to research what I thought to be right before I was proved wrong – as once again Douglas is.
Gordon Harmer
Brae
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