21 November
Yesterday morning, I sat here and my mind was blank, I just couldn’t of anything worthwhile to write about. Today is slightly better in that I’ve been up early for a fasting blood test at the Hussy. The drive back home was easier than the drive up there, I’ve never seen so much traffic in and around the town centre as there was today. There seemed to be a bit of chaos in vampire hall this morning too. My appointment was for 8.35 and I was a few minutes late I’m sorry to say, and by that time people were turning up and taking tickets ready for the 9am normal start for blood tests. The front row of seats were reserved for those undergoing a glucose tolerance test, a test for diabetes. It seemed that different vampires were doing different things and in no order that I could see. We had tried phoning through the switchboard, but that just rang out and cut off after a few minutes. Not clever at all.
Something I forgot to mention about our trip to Brum on Friday; the new Grand Central shopping area which is part of New Street station, was a massive disappointment to us. It’s just a large open space with a few shops scattered around the sides, or that’s what I thought anyway. The place it replaced was called the Palisades and that was much better to my mind, with more interesting shops and cafes scattered around it. The major change as I see it is that the shops and the ticket office and so on, are all on one level now, but you still need to go down one level for the platforms. The architecture is good, both inside and outside, there’s loads of light in there now and there’s more room to move about, so yes, it’s an improvement. The choice of shops is less and the loss of the direct link between the station and the Bull Ring is a disappointment, and I don’t see why there so much of fuss about it when it opened.
Our armed forces are at an incredibly low level these days. The army has been slashed in all its various units, likewise the RAF. The Royal Navy is in the worst position it has ever been in. Here’s a table of the current state of the navy …
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Royal
Navy warships - numbers since 1985
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||||
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Year
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Aircraft carriers
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Assault ships
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Frigates
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Destroyers
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1985
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4
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2
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41
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15
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1995
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3
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2
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23
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12
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2005
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3
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3
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19
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9
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2016
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0
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3
|
13
|
6
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38044967 )
It doesn’t count submarines, minesweepers or patrol craft though. You might point out that we have two new aircraft carriers, but they are not in service yet, nor will they be fully mission capable until the aircraft for them are ready to deploy. I have no idea when that will happen.
These two massive ships, the largest war ships built for the RN, will be capital ships, that means they will need a lot of protection ships when they do finally deploy. But where will those protection ships come from I wonder? Sending the escort at carrier will cut down on the number of ships available to protect the British Iles and to meet our commitments in various places around the world, and the ‘show the flag’ courtesy cruises that our navy has always undertaken.
I said years ago that the so-called peace dividend would go too far, and that one table shows just far it has gone. Let’s hope that we don’t end up in a situation the country was in, in 1939 which left us rushing around to make up numbers in men and machines of war.
Today’s photo …
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