French Don't Float Some Folks Boat.

There has been a plan put forward by the coalition, with their French counterparts to share the joint(ish) responsibility of running the three new flagships of the European nations aircraft carrier fleets. Two of the new carriers are ours, along with one of the French carriers. By pooling resources (the ships will always be under the command of their home countries.) the two nations defence forces can save a couple of bob. One of the new British carriers can't really be scrapped as it is three quarters complete, and would be very costly to get rid of,- ironically in order to cut costs. I mean you can't just take it to the tip for christ sake. There are strategic questions of potential conflicts of interest. Say Britain undertook a naval mission against French interests, or vice - versa. But the finer points of the pros and cons have been drowned out in the letters to the Mail and Daily Star I have seen. No the only downside there is the French themselves, for being ... like - French! The enemy!

How original.

I don't know too much about coordinating defence. If I were in charge of the military, we'd be negotiating the terms of surrender to the armed forces of Andorra. Where the most dangerous weapon is the generals parade baton. But I can see some benefits of sharing costs. Directly unrelated to this story, (for one thing, the plan involves sharing the cost of maintaining flag carriers. Not putting the entire MOD under the froggies commands, as some of the more hysterical responses imply.). a pan-European navy has actually been proposed in the past, in regards to things such as patrolling for illegal immigrant and human trafficking to Europe. As well as co-ordinating, or at the very least - co-operating in the defence of European waters, rather than each country doing their own thing. It is ironic that the former would probably be popular with the Star / Mail. It' s amusing to see them trying to see whose worser, when stuff they don't like are at odds with each other. I thought the Mail approved of prudence? Not if it involves Johnny foreigner getting a nosey in on the John Bulls armada they don't! Fuck thrift and stick it to the Frenchies!

The hysterical comments about Britain being taken over, and the loss of 1000 years of freedom - from people who have read the headlines and no further, and the jingoistic articles that have been written in relation to the story, about how we have been enemies since the dawn of time -are profoundly depressing. Not only do they dig up all the past antagonisms, and imply that a history of adversary is an immutable state of affairs. They also perpetuate the stereotype of Britain as some old fashioned jingoistic bunch of isolationists. Which is all rather depressing really.