Tag: uk.gov

The Royal Navy—What’s happening?

MikeLeave a comment

I have come across a number of recent articles discussing the current state of the Royal Navy. You can find access to the various news items below, which cover lack of manpower and early retirement of ships.

    Finally, this from the Navy Lookout site, which I think has a pretty good handle on the current situation in the Royal Navy.

    It’s sad to see an organisation where I spent many of my formative years in such a mess. I’m not sure what the solutions are to boost recruitment so that we can keep more ships manned. However, I certainly think that politicians of all parties have a lot to answer for their actions (or lack of) over the past number of years.

    It caught my eye… 1-2024

    MikeLeave a comment

    It’s a New Year! So, I am determined to post more this year and there is nothing like the first day of the new year to start off the first post.

    X (previously known as Twitter) continues to change since Elon Musk took over. I have not been a very big poster on the platform, apart from the NHS & Royal Navy tweets (or mini-newsletters as I might call them) that I put out on an infrequent basis.

    I do find that it is still a platform to use when all else fails which can focus a supplier’s attention when you have issues with providers of Gas, Electric and water and they need a bit of persuasion to respond. They just don’t like bad karma!

    One change I have seen over the last year is a drop in the random casual tweets containing nothing of consequence just taking up space on the timeline to the increase in more general information tweets as well an increase in various business related tweets appearing. Not sure if that is to do with my ‘Following’ list or just the tweaking of the various ‘algorithms’ that are behind everything now. However, in my opinion it does not seem to have gone downhill as much as some pundits were predicting, though I don’t think its long-term survival is safe yet.

    Here are a couple of tweets which were not on my ‘Follow’ list that popped up today.

    Marsh Family Songs — Which I always love.

    History

    National Public Radio (NPR) is an American non-profit media organization. NPR Music — one of the best online place to find information on music of all types — is also the home of Tiny Desk Concerts. I’ve been dipping in and out of this site for quite a few years and have found it to be a great place to find new artists from across the world of music, to already established names like Sting, Seal, Florence + the Machine and Mariachi Flor De Toloache to name just few of the many acts to feature.

    If you want to find new music of any genre you can think of, then this is a place to start. Here are some new ones I recently came across — Marta Pereira da Costa from Portugal, Laufey from Iceland and music from the USA Broadway stage show Sweeney Todd.

    Why does it take so long for Governments and particular UK governments to admit to their mistakes and properly compensate people for the errors are committed by them?

    As this story continues to show, there is still a long way to go before the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire and their relatives of get closure on the issue. Likewise, the Post Office computer scandal drags on, as does the Contaminated Blood enquiry.

    Why can’t governments act faster?

    Another nail in the coffin!

    MikeLeave a comment

    How disappointing can one get with the current UK government? I know that if we lived in France, Germany or even Italy, no way would they let one their bastions of industrialisation a.k.a a Steel Industry die a slow and painful death.

    Rules may be Rules, but for heavens sake, the British government needs to have some backbone and put some money into British Steel and save it from disappearing forever.

    Private Equity will have made millions from this debacle, as they have done with other such disasters.