Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

HMS Queen Elizabeth, is undergoing a major refit at the moment.

Refit?          Already?         The paint's only just dried! 

Poor Kier. Donald has been dissing him again:

Donald Trump has just posted on his Truth Social messaging platform.
He says "the United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East".
"That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer - But we will remember," Trump says.
"We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!" he adds.

He wishes! 
Yet another Trumpism, when the facts are distorted to suit his feeling of the minute! 

Two? Has Britain got two serviceable and all the support ships necessary…………

Well, no.  The second carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is undergoing a major refit at the moment.  As for the necessary escort ships they, like HMS Dragon and HMS Duncan, require a long notice period to be ready for action.

We just do not have, or perhaps need, a massive fleet, with a Home fleet moored at Scapa Flow, ready for action. War in the 21st century only requires a few, massive fire power ones to make the fleets of old look like pop guns! Then you have the very, more than critical, air power, that can quickly sink the battle wagons of old, and now the smaller versions.  That is why I personally worry about us sending an aircraft carrier to the Med, or anywhere else, without a full escort.  Iran may not posses any full scale submarines, only midget ones, if that, going by Trump’s claims!

But, Russia does!!  

Now Sir Keir has faced a similar issue, with successive previous government, including the Conservatives, severely cutting the Defence Budget and placing the UK in a "unready for war" state.  He now must somehow "make time" with the diminished military and he has already started the process to rebuild, after the previous Conservative Government did make a good decision; to build two full aircraft carriers.  They just need a full back up of supporting destroyers , and cruisers, let alone many more F35's. The trouble is, in the 21st century, developing and rebuilding the military takes significant time, which the issue of HMS Dragon highlights, in its own way, with time needed to build up stocks of munitions, and having no real back up to this specialist vessel.  The very issue that many European countries are now facing.  The Ukraine War has also dramatically shown, to all militaries, that the nature of warfare has changed and has led to a major review of how to conduct a modern fight for survival.

Aircraft carriers are from the 1970s. These days, they are just sitting ducks—as are most other surface ships. As for the F35s, they are inordinately expensive and are arguably inferior to other 5th gen aircraft available elsewhere.

Yes, modern warfare is has changed dramatically and is now dominated by such things as drones, hypersonic missiles (for which neither we, nor the US, currently have the technology), EMP weaponry and all sorts of advanced EW systems.

The days of battleships, lumbering tanks and ground armies will be consigned to history books—there is no place for them in future military confrontations.

Building up a sizeable defence force for the next century would be prohibitively expensive. With ex-service personnel currently living on the streets, it would be as obscenity to throw billions on committing to a larger military "for our survival". We are not under threat.

Far better to establish non-aggression treaties with as many countries as possible—but that involves diplomacy. The future for all of us on the planet depends on rational, honest and possibly even friendly, behaviour...not thinking that we know best how other countries ought to be ruled. What is that approach doing for the US?

And, these days, the UK is hardly a good example of a well-functioning democracy!

Two? Has Britain got two serviceable and all the support ships necessary…………

B58 lump as fitted to M240i/M340i is probably one of the best engines made.

3 litre straight 6 with loads of top end power and 'stump pulling' torque at the bottom end.


My actual car made 445 bhp and 475 lb ft of twist when strapped to the dyno at Viezu. BMW quote a very conservative 369BHP and 369 lb ft of torque.

Yes, I reckon this engine in the 5 series estate, wither this one or the last one, probably makes for one of the best all round family cars money could but. I loved my m140i hugely - when it was working, and the 335d was no slouch either 

To be fair my car is not quite stock.

A used £20 JB+ from Ebay gives something like an extra 4PSI of boost.....and she has always been run on 99 octane petrol.

I never made any attempt to 'run the car in' like days of old.....full boot from day one. I've been told that cars treated like this tend to produce more power. Perhaps it's true.

.
               Well there is an opinion that full boost while running in helps the piston rings seal better, if it’s true or not I don’t know🐣

Yes indeed, pity it took so long to finish the evil bastard.

carlton mk2(83-86) has manual inflation valve ito pump up as req .my cd has this but i fitted a guage as well to see what its at .

Poor Kier. Donald has been dissing him again:

Donald Trump has just posted on his Truth Social messaging platform.
He says "the United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East".
"That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer - But we will remember," Trump says.
"We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!" he adds.

And his throat cut.
 He must have lived in fear, terror and misery until he was put out of it.
Good job too.